Join Dr. Kitty Oliver and Guitarist Dr. Michael DiLiddo for an afternoon of Jazz and Multicolored Memories

Wednesday, January 7, 2026

1:30 – 3:00 pm

At The Alvin Sherman Library

Nova Southeastern University

The post Jazz and Multicolored Memories – Kitty Oliver appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

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 channel featuring 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.

Kitty O. Enterprises, Inc.

954-382-0793

kittyoliver2@gmail.com

The post Dr. Kitty Oliver, Veteran Journalist and Academic, Author and Oral Historian appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

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.

The post Dr. Kitty Oliver Florida Journalist and Oral Historian appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

Oral History Projects Dr. Kitty Oliver. 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 pioneered The Race and Change Dialogue model for talking about differences across races, ethnicities, and generations in public forums in a non-confrontational, hopeful way.

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, and the Race and Change Initiative, a multimedia site with archival oral history interviews and writings, video and Web radio programs with elders and youth. 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.

PROJECT CONSULTANT:  Dr. Kitty Oliver is a Race and Change oral history consultant and member of the national Oral History Association who designs oral history programs and stages creative oral history presentations on race relations for communities in racial, ethnic, and cultural transition.

ONLINE RESOURCES: 

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.  For brief excerpts click here.

 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 from such perspectives as: Black Racial Identity, Indian Women Today, A Guatemalan Experience, A Haitian Confronts Bullying, Mexican-American: Overlooked & Undervalued, Middle Eastern (“What Are You?”), Colombian “Pressure to Fit ‘The Mold’”, A Chilean on Prejudice, and White Students on Race (“Parents’ Views Differ” and “Both Sides of Class”.  For additional brief excerpts click here.

 Educational Activities:  

Cultural Bridging Exercises – click here to download pdf of Cultural Bridging Questions

Classroom Exercises (FCAT) – click here to download pdf of Sample Teaching Activities

The post Oral History Projects Dr. Kitty Oliver appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

The 22 male and female writers in this collection represent a range of backgrounds, ages, racial and cultural perspectives. They are from southern and northern parts of the U.S. and from Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean. They are Latino, Jamaican, African American, and Caucasian. The approaches to autobiographical writing vary as well from philosophical examinations of racial divisions to creative nonfiction techniques to explore the pain of prejudice. White writers look at naiveté and ambivalence to racial issues; Black writers discuss family, community and challenges in interracial as well as intra-racial relationships. Other topics include religion and faith in Black and White cultures; responses to one-on-one encounters with differences, seeing themselves through others’ eyes; and views of race from the perspective of people whose worlds have expanded because of their ethnicity or international travel.

The book also includes approaches to launching a Race and Change project or course that have proven effective with a wide range of cultural audiences and the “3R’s of Writing” Exercises. This creative window into the racial experiences of the post-Civil Rights Movement generation juxtaposed with other stories of America’s problematic past is an enjoyable read and can also be used for further study of race and ethnic relations issues.

The post Multicultural Reflections on Race and Change appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

The 22 male and female writers in this collection represent a range of backgrounds, ages, racial and cultural perspectives. They are from southern and northern parts of the U.S. and from Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean. They are Latino, Jamaican, African American, and Caucasian. The approaches to autobiographical writing vary as well from philosophical examinations of racial divisions to creative nonfiction techniques to explore the pain of prejudice. White writers look at naiveté and ambivalence to racial issues; Black writers discuss family, community and challenges in interracial as well as intra-racial relationships. Other topics include religion and faith in Black and White cultures; responses to one-on-one encounters with differences, seeing themselves through others’ eyes; and views of race from the perspective of people whose worlds have expanded because of their ethnicity or international travel.

 

The book also includes approaches to launching a Race and Change project or course that have proven effective with a wide range of cultural audiences and the “3R’s of Writing” Exercises. This creative window into the racial experiences of the post-Civil Rights Movement generation juxtaposed with other stories of America’s problematic past is an enjoyable read and can also be used for further study of race and ethnic relations issues.

The post Multicultural Reflections on “Race and Change” appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

Dr Kitty Oliver
photo by CandaceWest.com

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.”

The post The Race and Change Initiative 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

The post Voices of America: Race and Change in Hollywood, Florida appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

Kitty Oliver’s 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.

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.

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.”

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 The Race and Change Initiative appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.

MP3 downloads and CDs available at
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kittyoliver, on iTunes, and Amazon.com

Special edition signed CDs $18.00 on request.
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The post The Calling of Our Time Inspirational Jazz appeared first on Kitty Oliver Online.