(Chicago, IL – November 1, 2022) – The HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive, has chosen Grambling State University Senior Faith Kelly Carr (History) as one of its 2022-2023 Student Ambassadors. This program recruited 14 Student Ambassadors in 2022 representing 11 colleges and universities across the country.
“We have a wonderful group of Student Ambassadors, and we are extremely excited about what lies ahead. We will be able to provide them with 21st-century skills while they bring their innovation, creativity, and knowledge to work to increase awareness and use of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive on their respective campuses,” says The HistoryMakers Founder and President, Julieanna L. Richardson.
The HistoryMakers’ inaugural Student Ambassador Program, established in 2020, was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The 2022-2023 program was generously supported in part by a grant from Toyota Motor North America, which funded Student Ambassadors at select Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The Student Ambassadors serve as the official representatives for The HistoryMakers Digital Archive on their respective campuses. They will be tasked with doing in-depth research, creating weekly blog posts and developing a plan to build awareness and to mount a campus-wide 2023 Black History Month Digital Archive Contest. The HistoryMakers Digital Archive is a state-of-the-art electronic resource that provides unique access to almost 3,400 stories recorded in 413 cities and towns across the United States and is accessible from desktops, portable devices, and smart phones 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, anywhere in the world. The HistoryMakers Digital Archive is now available at 148 colleges and universities, public libraries, and K-12 schools—with more being added each year.
ABOUT THE HISTORYMAKERS
The HistoryMakers, a 501(c)(3) national non-profit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is the largest digital repository of the Black experience in the country. The HistoryMakers Collection represents the only massive attempt to record the black experience since the WPA Slave Narratives of the 1930s. In 2014, it was announced that the Library of Congress would serve as the permanent repository for The HistoryMakers Collection. To date, the organization has interviewed over 3,400 African American leaders including General Colin Powell; civic leaders Julian Bond and Marion Wright Edelman; business leaders former American Express CEO Ken Chenault, Merck CEO Kenneth C. Frazier, and former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns; poets Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni; actors James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad; sports Halls of Fame inductees Hank Aaron, Barry Sanders, and Oscar “The Big O” Robertson; music icons Berry Gordy and Quincy Jones; 211 of the nation’s top scientists including Katherine Johnson, who was featured in the Hollywood movie Hidden Figures; lawyers Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill; and political leaders such as the late Congressman John Lewis, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and President Barack Obama (when he was an Illinois State Senator), among others.