Of 104 HBCUs in the United States, 29 have active radio stations. The money will allow WYSO’s HBCU Preservation Project to expand to all 29 HBCU radio stations and their campus archives or libraries.
“This is sacred work,” says Jocelyn Robinson, the project’s founding director and the director of radio preservation and archives at WYSO. “And now we can help every HBCU station save precious primary recordings and other historical source materials that document the diversity of the Black experience. And we’re not just preventing the loss of invaluable historical records — we’re encouraging institutions in developing a culture and practice of preservation. That will ensure they never face the looming preservation crisis this project was created to prevent.”
A collection of reformatted historical HBCU radio material will available at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting along with an oral history collection that will be housed at Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center.
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