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SPOHP alum Dr. Jessica Taylor presents newest book

Taylor will present on her newest book, Plain Paths and Dividing Lines: Navigating Native Land and Water in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake Bay, on Tuesday, March 5th, at 6pm at the Matheson History Museum! We invite the public to join us for this free event. Dr. Taylor’s work explores escape attempts of indentured servants and enslaved people in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake.

Mississippi Freedom Project Town Hall

a group of people posing for a photo in front of a statue.

Join us on Wednesday, February 7th from 5-7pm in the Pugh Hall Ocora. SPOHP’s Mississippi Freedom Project (MFP) brings students into the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta regions to conduct interviews with civil rights activists and organizers. Interested in taking part? Come and see how you can help document civil rights history with the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.

Challenging Racism at UF

The SPOHP’s Challenging Racism at UF public program series highlights stories of students, community organizers, faculty, and others who have been on the front lines of the effort to create a more just and welcoming world.
(Pictured: People gather after the “OverKome! Creating Pathways for Collective Community-Led Development” event.)

Joel Buchanan Archive

The Joel Buchanan Archive of African American Oral History contains over 700 oral history interviews with African American elders throughout Florida and the wider Gulf South. These interviews and the overall projects […]

End of Year Social

Join SPOHP for our end of year social on Tuesday, December 5th at 12pm! You are cordially invited to the O’Neill Reading Room on the second floor of Pugh Hall for refreshments and merriment. We look forward to seeing you there!

Calling all UF students!

HIS4944 Introduction to Oral History: Stories of Freedom Seekers and Freedom Conductors offers students training in the field of oral history, best practices and ethics, and fieldwork and processing. Email us to get on the waitlist for spring!

A Racial Reckoning in Gainesville

UF’s Ytori magazine highlights SPOHP’s Challenging Racism at UF initiative. “In oral history, we learn about the power of storytelling. This reveals truths that can sometimes be very uncomfortable,” SPOHP director Dr. Paul Ortiz told Ytori. “If we’re going to be a top-tier research institution, we need to use the tools of historical research to make the university a more welcoming place.”

Supporting a Forthcoming Federal Resolution Recognizing Thomas Garrett as a Heroic Abolitionist

On Tuesday, May 16th, 2023, the Delaware General Assembly honored the life of Thomas Garrett, who helped more than 2,400 people to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Click “read more” to learn more, or click here to follow Samuel Proctor’s National Park Service grant story.

Oscar Mack versus the Ku Klux Klan

Two years after the Ocoee massacre, and one year before the destruction of Rosewood by a White mob, one Black man stood up to the Ku Klux Klan in Jim Crow Florida. Black WWI Veteran Oscar Mack received a federal appointment as Postmaster in Kissimmee. One hundred years later, interviews with Mack’s descendants reveal the true story.

Thank You!

The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) is thankful for all of the years and contributions that Ms. Hendrix continues to make to the program. Ms. Hendrix is an invaluable member of the SPOHP family. Without her hard work and support, SPOHP would not be where it is today. This piece by the Independent Florida Alligator recently featured Ms. Hendrix’s work.

Bringing African American History into the K-12 Classroom

The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, the UF Department of Linguistics, and the All Y’all Social Justice Collective presents Oral Histories as Curriculum: Bringing African American History into the K-12 Classroom, and educational and panelist event supported by the NEH Reanimating African Americans Oral Histories of the Gulf South grant project.

The Future of Florida Springs: A Discussion on Springs Health

A panel of four distinguished spring activists and scientists will present their perspectives on evaluating the health of Florida Springs, followed by audience Q&A. Following the presentation, guests will have the opportunity to participate in one of three workshops: Science communication, wildlife photography, and communicating with different stakeholders.

“OverKome!” Persevering with Collective Community-led Development

Please join us on February 13, 2023, at 6 pm Eastern Time, at the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center for a community presentation about UF’s impact in the Black communities of Gainesville. The program will focus on housing, healthcare, and income inequalities. The event will take place at the historic Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center: 837 SE 7th Avenue, Gainesville, FL 32601

Stayed on Freedom

Please join us on February 23, 2023, at 5 pm Eastern Time, either remotely or in person, for the book presentation and signing of Stayed on Freedom with the author Dan Berger. The book is the biography of Dr. Zoharah Simmons, who will be a distinguished guest and co-speaker at this event.

Beyond the Headlines: Exploring Gainesville Sun’s Coverage of Race Relations from Reconstruction to the Present

Our first public event for the Challenging Racism at UF – 2023 Public Program Series was completed this past weekend in collaboration with the Cotton Club Museum. The cosponsored event by SPOHP and the Cotton Club Museum was a great success. To view the day’s proceedings, please click here.

SPOHP Representation at AHA Annual Meeting

Dr. Paul Ortiz and Dr. Yiorgo Topalidis are both presenting at this year’s American Historical Association Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Ortiz will take part in a roundtable titled, Unions in Higher Education—Historical and Contemporary Realities. Dr. Topalidis will present his recent work, Ottoman Greeks in New York City: Negotiating Identity with the Greek Immigrant Community during the Early 20th Century as part of a panel organized by the Modern Greek Studies Association.

Fieldwork Announcement: Eastern Pennsylvania, May 2023

In May of 2023, OGUS oral historians will visit eastern Pennsylvania communities to interview descendants of migrants from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, Imbros, Tenedos, and the islands in the Sea of Marmara. If you or anyone you know is interested in being interviewed, please fill in the interview scheduling form using the following link: https://ogus.portal.clas.ufl.edu/spohp-v2/welcome/contact-us/interview-scheduling/

Fieldwork Announcement: Underground Railroad Project, Washington D.C. January 2023

UF students will represent SPOHP at the National Park Service in Washington D.C. to conduct interviews with descendants of conductors and freedmen this coming January. UF students will also visit the Harriet Tubman museum as part of the collaborative grant between the National Park Service and SPOHP.

Please join us for our upcoming public program regarding our 15th annual trip to the Mississippi River Delta.

Please join us for our upcoming open house.

SPOHP’s Director Dr. Paul Ortiz discusses the legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune on the From Florida podcast. Click here to access the podcast.

SPOHP’s OGUS project is cohosting a one-day virtual conference on September 10 titled, Assessing the Ethnic Groups of the Late Ottoman Empire through a Decolonial Lens 1900 -1922. The link for the event can be found here.

REPORT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL TASK FORCE ON AFRICAN AMERICAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

The University of Florida’s African American and Native American History Task Force was created by President Kent Fuchs in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. The task force’s responsibility was to create a detailed report pertaining to UF’s historical oppression of People of Color and Indigenous People. Click here to read the report.

Thomas D. Rider

Thomas D. Rider

The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program mourns the loss of Thomas D. Rider, longtime Gainesville resident and former co-owner of Goering’s Book Store, who passed away on March 17. Mr. Rider moved to Gainesville in 1972 and started working at Goering’s Book Store, becoming the co-owner in 1981. The bookstore was for many years a treasure for readers and a true hub for the local community. Tom will be deeply missed by the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.

SBSHS Oral History

List of speakers include, Rebecca Bakker (FIU – Digital Collections Librarian), Christopher Jimenez (Broward College – Library Faculty), Historian Emmanuel George, Author and oral historian Dr. Kitty Oliver, and SPOHP Director Dr. Paul Ortiz.

Book Launch

Join us on Zoom or SPOHP’s FB on January 27 at 3:00 pm to listen to co-editors Jake Gordon and Paul Ortiz and various chapter authors, as they discuss the making of the book African American Studies: 50 Years at the University of Florida.

Central Academy

Central Academy High School, in Palatka, Florida, was Florida’s first accredited Black high school. The school was founded in 1882 and accredited in 1924. In 1969, the school was integrated […]

Celebrate Women’s History Month with SPOHP! SPOHP holds the largest repository of oral history interviews from the 2017 Women’s March on Washington in the nation. Check out our archives on […]

 12th Annual Mississippi Freedom Project Panel

On Wednesday, October 16th, 2019, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) at UF will host a public program at Pugh Hall titled “Mississippi Freedom Project Panel.” MFP is an experiential learning initiative where students interview civil rights movement veterans in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta region. For 12 years, UF students have documented the efforts of teachers, museum professionals, high school students and others to apply the lessons of the freedom movement today. This summer, the SPOHP student team stopped in Montgomery to visit the Equal Justice Initiative’s “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration” museum and memorial to lynching victims. Next, the team traveled to Natchez, Mississippi to help restore a historically black cemetery.

From Segregation to Black Lives Matter Symposium: free registration available now!

2019 marks the 10th anniversary of the African American History Project at the University of Florida. Funded by the UF Office of the Provost, this research initiative has resulted in over twenty-five public history programs, university seminars on African American studies, conference presentations and scores of community-based oral history and Black History workshops across the country. The new collection includes over six hundred oral histories with African American elders in Florida telling stories of memories of slavery, resistance to segregation, anti-black racial violence, the coming of the modern civil rights movement and narratives of Black and Latinx intersectionality among many other topics.

Home Away from Home: Remembering Refugees in Florida

Welcoming Gainesville and Alachua County and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida are holding a public event titled “Home Away from Home: Remembering Refugees in Florida” on September 20, 2018 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm at Pugh Hall Ocora (296 Buckman Drive Gainesville FL 32611). The event will feature the oral history of refugees in Jacksonville, Florida, collected by Seyeon Hwang, a doctoral student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida, and various state-wide and national efforts in refugee advocacy, followed by a talk-back session with refugees and refugee resettlement professionals from Florida.