Reverends George Cummings (l) and William McNabb (r) bridge Bay Area histories through dialogue.

Eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, say Reverends George Cummings and Bill McNabb. This pointed observation is one they witness every week at their respective churches.

Dr. Cummings resides over a predominantly African-American congregation at Imani Community Church in Oakland, and Dr. McNabb’s Piedmont Community Church is in the affluent, predominantly white and Asian-American town of Piedmont. Both California churches are merely six miles from each other, yet in some ways they are worlds apart.

Dr. Cummings and Dr. McNabb met at a community clergy meeting in 2006 and decided to take an unusual leap. They planned a one-time event to bring members of both congregations together and develop what they hoped to be an on-going, deep-reaching partnership between the two churches.

Now, six years into the partnership the sister churches recorded interviews with StoryCorps San Francisco to further their efforts to foster dialogue and sharing. The idea was to encourage members to sit down with one another, share stories about their lives, and reflect on their churches’ partnership. Hosted by the Imani Community Church, several members of the two congregations shared their stories with each other. Read the rest of this entry »

StoryCorps Atlanta had the pleasure of hosting students from Girls Inc., a national youth leadership organization dedicated to providing girls a safe space and after-school activities. Girls Inc. of Greater Atlanta serves over 3,000 girls, aged six to eighteen, with outreach programs, after-school and summer camp programs, and community partnerships throughout the metro area.  Their mission: to inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold.

Three middle school students embodying these qualities visited our recording booth for the first time. In addition to helping our visitors record stories, StoryCorps volunteer Amelia Bower and I led the girls in listening and storytelling games and gave them a tour of the WABE/PBA studios to meet the staff and learn how public radio and television work. Although uncertain about what to expect, the girls jumped into recording with enthusiasm and curiosity.

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Since November 2010, Lambda Legal has partnered with StoryCorps Atlanta to collect the stories of trans and gender non-conforming individuals, people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. To date, 20 people have shared their stories through Lambda Legal’s Trans Tell Your Story Project.

Holiday Simmons, Lambda Legal’s national community educator, travels the country to inform people of LGBTQ issues.  In his trainings for law enforcement officers, healthcare providers, and teachers, he uses audio from the Trans Tell Your Story Project to bring voices of trans and gender non-conforming individuals into each session.

Lambda Legal recently hosted an event to share some of the stories they’ve collected and to encourage others to share their own. After listening to excerpts from the conversations, A.J. Jones, the project’s coordinator, invited  several participants to share their experiences of recording their stories.

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This year, Friendship Baptist Church celebrates its 150th anniversary, and the anniversary committee has been hard at work on sesquicentennial plans, including helping church members pronounce the word that means “150th anniversary.”

The church has come far since its humble beginnings in 1862, when congregants met in a boxcar because they did not have funds to buy land. Both Morehouse and Spelman Colleges held their first classes at Friendship. And Atlanta’s first African-American mayor, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr., was not only raised in the church; his father was one of only six pastors who have served the community in its history.

Many of the church elders remember all of the pastors except the very first, Reverend Frank Quareles, who served until 1881. One important event  for the anniversary committee will be the dedication of new tombstones for Reverend Quarles and his wife, whose unmarked graves were discovered at Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery.

The anniversary committee  is also collecting oral histories of the church, and Vanessa Brown, a member of the Anniversary Committee, invited church elders to record their memories of Friendship Baptist Church and its leaders with StoryCorps Atlanta.  Read the rest of this entry »

Close to one quarter of American high school students drop out before graduation. In Oakland, California, the dropout rate is higher at 35 percent. Last month, Northern California’s KQED hosted it’s first American Teacher Town Hall at Laney College in Oakland. Educators came from across the Bay Area to discuss these high dropout rates and the state of education in their communities – in California and across the nation.

StoryCorps San Francisco was also there to highlight the work we’ve done, locally and nationally with the National Teachers Initiative. For the past year, the National Teachers Initiative has supported the work of teachers nationwide by recording and preserving their stories and broadcasting them on NPR’s Weekend Edition. StoryCorps also supports the American Graduate Initiative by recording stories with public media hubs in communities where the dropout crisis is most acute.

At our table, current and former teachers and students listened to stories we recorded with teachers, including Antero Garcia and Roger Alvarez, Sarah Benko and Meliza Arellano, and Ayodeji Ogunniyi. Town Hall participants also wrote messages of thanks to teachers who have inspired them. (Below are just a handful of those notes.)

Do you have a favorite teacher? Thank them in the comments below!

To wrap up Black History Month, Monica Foderingham, Outreach Services Librarian for Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, created the Letters To My Grandchildren Project.  In partnership with Senior Citizen Services of Merto Atlanta and StoryCorps Atlanta, conversations of African Americans who grew up during segregation and the Civil Rights Movement were recorded for posterity.

On February 28, 100 seniors from Auburn Senior Center, Dogwood Senior Center, Northside Shepherd Senior Center, Southeast Center, and New Horizon Senior Center gathered at the central library to hear twelve storytellers share their experiences.

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Before there was the written word, there were oral storytellers, and  StoryCorps Atlanta had the pleasure of recording conversations at the National Black Storytelling Conference and Festival held in Atlanta, Georgia.

This recording day was phenomenal.  It was an honor to hear amazing stories by professional storytellers and to hear these professionals share the ordinary stories of their lives, the raw human material that StoryCorps knows all too well that has inspired them to make storytelling a way of life. Below are a few highlights.

Barbara Eady (l) and Jacqueline Boyd (r)

Barbara Eady and Jacqueline Boyd, both from Ohio, discussed how they began storytelling. Barbara shared a poignant story about an elder mother in her church, who knew her as a child and remembered her many years later when Barbara brought her own children to Sunday service.  The elder’s detailed memories of Barbara as a child touched her and has encouraged her work. Today, Barbara is a living vessel of memory and history.

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Happy Lunar New Year, from StoryCorps San Francisco!

The team had a table at the Oakland Museum‘s annual Celebration of the Lunar New Year and Other Asian Traditions.  The family event welcomed 2012, the year of the dragon, with a plethora of fun activities and special performances throughout the day. The colorful, lively party included an opening ceremony with a dragon parade, a mochi pounding demonstration, face-painting and calligraphy, and many tasty treats to sample.

At our table, attendees learned more about StoryCorps in the Bay Area by answering two questions on post-its: What is your earliest memory? and What are you most proud of?  We got many wonderful responses from party-goers of all ages!  Check out our pictures from the day’s happenings below.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Please note: The mochi pounding demonstation video was shot by our own San Francisco staff.

If there’s one thing I’ve witnessed time and time again while working at StoryCorps, it’s the power of storytelling and sharing to bring families, friends, and communities together. Stories also create the histories of the spaces we inhabit together, especially the neighborhoods and cities in which we live. I was reminded of this when StoryCorps San Francisco returned to Oakland’s Peralta Hacienda Historical Park to record interviews at this unique museum and community cultural center located in the city’s Fruitvale District.

Originally a prominent, Spanish colonial hacienda of 1800’s California, Peralta House is now a fully restored and preserved historical site. The center is, in a sense, a “living museum.” Through interactive  multimedia exhibits and an array of community programs, the center brings to life the site’s past and celebrates the stories of the Fruitvale District today. In a city already known for its diversity, residents of the neighborhood trace their roots to all corners of the country and the globe, including recent immigrants from Latin America and Southeast Asia, as well as African-American, Latino, and Caucasian families that go back several generations. Their stories are the center of the museum’s exhibits and certainly celebrated in their motto, “Every human being makes history at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park.”

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Have you ever heard of the mahasi?  What about the clip grip or the rotary creel?  These and other unique inventions sprang from the mind of Hans Simon Singer, a weaver who moved from Wattwil, Switzerland to the United States in the early 1960′s.  He rapidly established himself in the textile industry around Spartanburg, South Carolina, but his most important legacy is the love and family that is still strong today.

Aside from textiles, Hans leaves his legacy in three daughters, all now in their 50′s: Lynmarie Singer Storey is the oldest; Monica Singer Franklin is the middle child; and Susan Singer is the youngest of the family. The sisters met at the Atlanta StoryBooth in November 2011 to mark the 20th anniversary of their father’s death and share their favorite memories of him.

Monica, Lynmarie, and Susan Singer at StoryCorps Atlanta

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