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Race and Ethnic Conversations On TV – Excerpts from public television and PBS productions show the range of candid conversations Dr. Oliver has conducted from discussions of interracial and intra-ethnic relationships, Latinos and skin color, and Caribbean and African American cultural differences, to international historical perspectives on race, negotiating conflicts, and envisioning the future.

Younger People Talk About Race – Voices of Race and hange: The Younger Generation, with over 50 stories of college students and teenagers of diverse immigrant backgrounds about their race and ethnic experiences today.

Memories of the Boomer Generation – Voices of Race and Change: Oral Histories and Podcast, exploring race relations from the perspective of older people from a variety of cultural backgrounds, including excerpts from the Race and Change Oral Histories archive.

Multimedia Race and Change Presentations – Dr. Oliver is a singer-songwriter and composer who blends music, memoir, and media with research and oral history storytelling into events for White, BIPOC, and immigrant audiences to bridge cultures, and leads intergenerational dialogues to spark wider conversations about social justice issues and working together for change.

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A product of the civil rights era who came of age with integration in the U.S., she brings an innovative perspective to race and ethnic relations sharing research and stories across cultures in Race and Change dialogues where people can explore race in a hopeful, progressive way.

She is founder of the cross-cultural Race and Change Oral History Archive, the largest of its kind in size and scope, housed in Special Collections at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center. Her books and television documentaries are used widely in public schools, college classrooms, and community forums. She has also assembled an online resource of Race and Change programs for youth including an iTunes radio channelfeaturing stories of scores of native-born and immigrant college students and teens.

In 2019, she presented the first “Agents of Race and Change Award,” to encourage today’s youth who are building bridges across the racial and ethnic divide. Signup for the email list for information on how to submit a nomination.

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“The Race and Change Initiative” is a multimedia project that promotes a 21st Century discussion of race and ethnic relations and differences through the innovative use of archival oral history interviews, video and Web radio programs, and performance presentations. Youth and adults share their stories.

The Initiative is based on The Race and Change Dialogue a model for talking about differences across races, ethnicities, and generations in public forums, and doing it in a non-confrontational, hopeful way.

“The Race and Change Project” is an ongoing research study of race and ethnic relations, geographical history, and social change through the collection of oral histories of Whites, African Americans, and immigrants of various Hispanic/Latino, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds.

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Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl. (The University Press of Kentucky, $25.00/hardcover, $17.95 paperback) Kitty Oliver takes readers on a journey of exploration from her hometown of Jacksonville to the halls of the University of Florida as one of its first African American freshmen in 1965 and far beyond. One reviewer describes it as “a thinking woman’s memoir of a journey with many side trips” in her search for a sense of “home.” With humor, poignancy, and lyrical language (reminiscent at times of another Florida writer, Zora Neale Hurston), Oliver shares her passages from the “old world” to the new as an immigrant’s journey, indicative of the American experience. Blending past and present, she searches for roots from the Gullah or “Geechee” culture of South Carolina to the urban streets of northern Florida to the multicultural mix of South Florida, exploring America, Europe and Africa. These autobiographical essays are an upbeat journal – part travelogue, part memoir, described as “a delightful field trip” that’s educational, too. Part of the Women in Southern Culture series. For information and ordering contact The University Press of Kentucky (1-800-839-6855).

Dr. Kitty Oliver is a veteran South Florida journalist, author, oral historian, and university professor with a Ph.D. focusing on race and ethnic communication. She has been featured on CNN news, “Black in America,” for her race relations work. She is also president of Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc., a cultural diversity consulting firm based in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and director of the new Race and Change Initiative at Florida Atlantic University.

A native Floridian, she specializes in books, television and radio documentaries, and literary performances which explore race and ethnic issues in innovative ways. She has produced landmark research documenting the state’s mushrooming diversity that has become a mirror of American society and speaks widely on African American history.

She pioneered the cross-cultural “Race and Change” research project in South Florida that has expanded to Ghana, West Africa. The work has resulted in an historical archive of oral histories on race, a multimedia website on race, and consulting for historical, tourism, social service, and government organizations.

Her public television and video productions are used widely by schools and libraries She is producer and host of the 10-part series “Crossing Cultures/Changing Lives”, airing on WBEC-TV. In addition, she produces videos, podcasts, and blogs on race and ethnic relations and changes across generations. She is a lecturer and workshop leader on creative nonfiction writing techniques and memoir writing, and a professional jazz singer. She conducts community oral history field work and is a member of the Oral History Association.

For more information and bookings, contact:
Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc.1323 SE 17th Street, #108, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33316
(Phone) 954-382-0793

The post Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

(The University Press of Kentucky, $25.00/hardcover, $17.95 paperback) Kitty Oliver takes readers on a journey of exploration from her hometown of Jacksonville to the halls of the University of Florida as one of its first African American freshmen in 1965 and far beyond. One reviewer describes it as “a thinking woman’s memoir of a journey with many side trips” in her search for a sense of “home.” With humor, poignancy, and lyrical language (reminiscent at times of another Florida writer, Zora Neale Hurston), Oliver shares her passages from the “old world” to the new as an immigrant’s journey, indicative of the American experience. Blending past and present, she searches for roots from the Gullah or “Geechee” culture of South Carolina to the urban streets of northern Florida to the multicultural mix of South Florida, exploring America, Europe and Africa. These autobiographical essays are an upbeat journal – part travelogue, part memoir, described as “a delightful field trip” that’s educational, too. Part of the Women in Southern Culture series. For information and ordering contact The University Press of Kentucky (1-800-839-6855).

For more information and bookings, contact:
Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc.1323 SE 17th Street, #108, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33316
(Phone) 954-382-0793

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University of Florida Black History Month. Dr. Kitty Oliver ( Race and Change), a celebrated journalist, nonfiction writer, and oral historian, entered the University of Florida in 1965. She was one of only 35 African American students of 18,000 enrolled and one of only 5 black freshmen to integrate campus housing. She tells her story in “Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl”. In her narrative, Oliver recalled young adulthood in her mid-1960s transition from Jacksonville to Gainesville: her participation in voter-registration drives and picketing stores that racially discriminated; being “randomly selected” to have a black roommate in the dorm at UF, and the next semester, being immediately rejected by the white roommate assigned; some students’ treating her as “exotic” and her first flirtations with non-black men; guarded but fruitful relationships with black physical plant workers and local residents of Gainesville; intense and shifting intraracial disagreements over “Black Power” or “flower child” campus identities. Dr. Oliver discloses the hardships of being one of a handful of blacks at UF, but she also expressed appreciation to those who had come before her to “kick down the door” so that she could have a choice of institutions and be “one of the first to see daylight and walk on in.” #UFTrailBlazer #BlackHistoryMonth

Her public television and video productions are used widely by schools and libraries She is producer and host of the 10-part series “Crossing Cultures/Changing Lives”, airing on WBEC-TV. In addition, she produces videos, podcasts, and blogs on race and ethnic relations and changes across generations. She is a lecturer and workshop leader on creative nonfiction writing techniques and memoir writing, and a professional jazz singer. She conducts community oral history field work and is a member of the Oral History Association.

For more information and bookings, contact:
Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc.1323 SE 17th Street, #108, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33316
(Phone) 954-382-0793

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Kitty Oliver Lecture Performances. Kitty Oliver is an author and oral historian, TV and radio producer, Ph.D. race relations scholar and “inspirational jazz” recording artist who shares these talents in enlightening, non-confrontational lecture-performances and workshops that bridge differences and promote reconciliation and progress.

Entertaining and educational topics for civic, community, professional and business groups include:

Lecture-Performances and Workshops:

“Race” and Change: A 21st Century Dialogue on Differences (features cutting edge research)

Beyond Diversity: How to Be a Race and Change Agent (developing cultural bridges in your organization/community/personal life)

Answering the Call of Our Time: A Journey of Jazz and Memories.

The Baby Boomer Generation: A Multicolored Journey (also adapted for secondary school students)

Cross-Cultural Stories of Race and Change in the U.S. (also adapted for secondary school audiences)

How to Tell YOUR Stories of Race and Change and Make a Difference (also adapted for secondary school audiences) 

For more information and bookings, contact:
Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc.
1323 SE 17th Street, #108, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33316
(Phone) 954-382-0793
or email KittyO@KittyOliveronline.com

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The Race and Change Oral History Collection has over 125 interviews on race relations and is one of the only historical archives which features multicultural-multiethnic narrators. Blacks, Whites, Hispanics/Latinos, Caribbeans, and Asians share their growing up experiences in various parts of the U.S. as well as other countries, and their encounters with race, focusing largely on the era prior to and just after passage of the Civil Rights Acts of the mid-1960s. The interviews, collected by Oliver and university students she has trained, are housed in Special Collections at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL. and available to researchers.

“The Race and Change Project” is an ongoing research study of race and ethnic relations, geographical history, and social change through the collection of oral histories of Whites, African Americans, and immigrants of various Hispanic/Latino, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds. Research sites have included the South Florida cities of Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, Delray Beach, and Boca Raton; North Fork and Liberia, historically-significant Black communities; towns along Florida’s landmark Lake Okeechobee; and Ghana, West Africa where women who have experienced America’s racial climate shared their stories.

Oliver has taught field study courses for Florida Atlantic University’s School of Communication and Multimedia Studies where students have assisted in the collection of memories and produced projects for public presentation.

For more information and bookings, contact:
Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc.1323 SE 17th Street, #108, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33316
(Phone) 954-382-0793

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