The Race and Change Initiative Archives - Kitty Oliver Online

Race and Change Oral History Projects Dr. Kitty Oliver

kitty — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 15:42:32 +0000

Race and Change Oral History Projects Dr. Kitty Oliver. Race and Change Consultant – Author, oral historian, and media producer Kitty Oliver has a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies focusing on race and ethnic communication and an MFA in Creative Writing. She is an oral history consultant and member of the Oral History Association. She pioneered the Race and Change Dialogue model of talking about race in a nonconfrontational way across cultures and generations in public forums.

Race and Change Collection – She founded the Race and Change Oral Histories archive with125 interviews on race relations, one of the only historical archives of its kind and scope, with stories of cross-cultural narrators in the U.S. and Ghana, West Africa prior to and after passage of the Civil Rights Acts of the mid-1960s.

Oral histories are housed in Special Collections at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL., and her work is part of the American Folklife Center Civil Rights History Project archive.

Race and Change Videos – The Race and Change Initiative has spawned multimedia explorations of intergenerational oral history interviews including numerous videos of Race and Change on YouTube.

Race and Change Radio Programs- Stories of Elders: Voices of Race and Change: Oral Histories and Podcast, includes cross-cultural conversations and excerpts from the Race and Change Oral Histories archive.

Race and Change Radio Programs – Younger People Talk About Race: Voices of Race and Change: The Younger Generation, with programs produced by college students and immigrant teens across cultures sharing their personal experiences with race and ethnic issues today.

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The Race and Change Initiative

kitty — Fri, 08 May 2020 04:42:32 +0000

The Race and Change Initiative promotes a 21st Century discussion of race and differences in cross-cultural public forums using archival oral history interviews, video and Web radio programs, and creative performance presentations.

The director is Dr. Kitty Oliver, an author and TV producer and adjunct professor of oral history writing and race and ethnicity within the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. This site is generously funded by the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties and the Knight Foundation Fund, and New Visions Educational Foundation, Inc.

The Race and Change Initiative is an innovative 21st century approach to dialoguing about differences across races and ethnicities. It includes over 125 audio-taped and videotaped interviews of Whites, Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asians collected for the historical Race and Change Oral Histories archive, television documentaries, and podcasts, as well as university courses and community action workshops. The Youth Outreach Project creates intergenerational bridges across cultures as college students and teenagers of diverse immigrant backgrounds produce radio broadcasts and videos on the race relations experiences of their peers and elders.

“Race” is considered a metaphor for the differences that separate us, causing conflicts and creating inequities. Skin color, ethnicity, class, and even sexual orientation, across generations, also play significant roles in determining how certain groups are perceived as inferior or superior. From there, discriminatory patterns evolve. Race, as W.E.B. Dubois wrote, is the experience of discrimination.

The Race and Change Oral Histories archive ranges from life histories of baby boomers – U.S. born and immigrants – who came of age with the Civil Rights Movement, to interviews in Ghana, West Africa. It is the only cross-cultural collection of its kind and scope in the U.S. where ordinary people reflect candidly on race relations experiences over the years and how society and they have changed.

The Race and Change Dialogue strategy is a model for talking about differences in a non-confrontational, inclusive, hopeful way, opening the door to global conversations and progress.
“Sharing the truth of our story, all that we have grown through, the progress as well as the pain, can be a healing experience – for the speaker, and the listener – and provide hope for generations to come.”

Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc.

1323 SE 17th St., #108, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316

954-382-0793

kittyoliver2@gmail.com

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Voices of America: Race and Change in Hollywood, Florida

kitty — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 04:02:43 +0000

Voices of America: Race and Change in Hollywood, Florida. (Arcadia, $18.99), is the result of a three-month long oral history project at the dawn of the new millennium interviewing a cross-section of 42 Blacks, Whites and immigrants who were born and raised in or who migrated to this South Florida area between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Their memories span 75 years of racial and ethnic change. They tell tales of segregated beaches, buses and bathrooms; facing the culture of a new country; and of causes over the years that have brought different ethnic groups together. Recording their memories for the archives of the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale, these individuals provide valuable, often poignant insight into race relations in America, in their own words – the painful and the uplifting. Says one reviewer, “A must reading for anyone who earnestly cares about the state of ethnic relations in the Sunshine State.” For information and ordering contact Arcadia Publishing (1-888-313-2665).

Companion video: “Crossings of the Racial Divide: Hollywood Stories”, written and produced by Kitty Oliver as a companion public television documentary of this project, is also available ($30.00). The half-hour program was produced by Kitty Oliver in cooperation with WBEC-TV. It has aired widely on public TV and is used as an educational resource for middle and high schools, universities and colleges, and community groups. A FCAT-related Teacher’s Guide is provided. For information and ordering, contact KittyO@KittyOliverOnline.com.

Dr. Kitty Oliver is a veteran journalist and academic, an author and oral historian, a media producer, and a professional singer with an MFA in Creative Writing, specializing in literary nonfiction and memoir, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies, focusing on race and ethnic communication.

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.

Watch her in a brief but pivotal segment of the recent award-winning Ron Howard documentary film on the Beatles – “Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years” – where she shares personal experiences with the band and segregation in Florida. Her cross-cultural intergenerational race and ethnic relations work was also chronicled by CNN.

You can hear her original inspirational music on the CD “The Calling of Our Time” that she also shares as an entertaining aspect of her Race and Change public presentations.