Dr. Kitty Oliver Race and Change. 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.
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.
