Student-written biographies of
influential African-Americans
throughout the university’s history
will be formally unveiled this Thursday,
Feb. 16, during a celebration honoring
the faculty, staff, students and financial
supporters behind
the African-Americans
at the Johns
Hopkins Institutions
Project.
The fete, which
is open to the
entire Hopkins
community, will
take place from 5
to 7 p.m. in 210
Hodson Hall on the Homewood campus.
James West, a research professor
in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, will deliver the
keynote address, and the event will
also feature an awards ceremony and a
24-panel timeline display chronicling
selected events from Johns Hopkins’
history, with an emphasis on contributions
from African-Americans. Much
of the students’ work is already online
at http://afam.nts.jhu.edu, the project’s
permanent Web-based exhibition.
The event is the capstone of the
project’s first three years, during which
20 undergraduates recorded the oral
histories of some of Hopkins’ renowned
African-American doctors, professors,
researchers, alumni and staff for independent
study credits.
"The idea behind the project’s creation
is to look at the contributions of
African-Americans at Johns Hopkins in
a reciprocal way—what they contribute
to Hopkins and what Hopkins contributes
to them—across all divisions,” said
Franklin Knight, the Leonard and Helen
R. Stulman Professor of History, who
directs the project. Knight is also the first
black faculty member to gain academic
tenure at the university and is one of the
scholars profiled on the Web site.
The site currently features 15 profiles,
among them physicians Benjamin Carson
and Levi Watkins; Douglas Miles and
John Guess, two of the founders of the
university’s Black Student Union; Shirley
Dilsworth, Karen Freeman Burdnell and
Gail Williams-Glasser, the three African-
American women enrolled as freshmen in
the first undergraduate class to formally
admit women to Hopkins; and Frederick
I. Scott, Hopkins’ first African-American
undergraduate to be admitted and to
receive a degree.
In addition to the written histories, many
of the profiles will include an audio component,
and at least one, a video. An
excerpt from the video, whose subject is
Minnie Hargrow, a longtime assistant in the
President’s Office, will be presented during
Thursday’s event.
The purpose behind the African-Americans
at the Johns Hopkins Institutions Project
is twofold, according to one of its founding
members, librarian Sharon Morris.
"One idea is to collect these stories and
the other is to start thinking about what
it means, to analyze the role of race and
achievement,” Morris said. "We need to
explore what it is that African-Americans
bring to the table. To be able to articulate
our own value is an important part of this
project.”
In many cases, the histories of these individuals
are being written for the first time,
noted Melanie Shell-Weiss, one of the project’s
faculty mentors. "Many of the people
featured in the project played critical leadership
roles while at Hopkins and then went
on to do pathbreaking work in their field of
study or in their communities,” Shell-Weiss
said. "This is not just about Hopkins history.
It also illuminates important chapters of
African-American history.”
Though the primary goal of the endeavor
is to improve the Hopkins community’s
understanding of the collective influence of
its African-American members, the project
is having an impact off campus as well. When
Roland Smoot, the first African-American
faculty member at the School of Medicine,
died in late January, both The Baltimore Sun
and The Washington Post quoted Homewood
senior Claudette Onyelobi’s biography of
Smoot in their respective obituaries, attributing
the work to her.
Smoot and Onyelobi, who plans to go to
medical school, stayed in touch after the
project was completed. "Dr. Smoot provided
me with goo-gobs of pre-medical and medical
advice,” Onyelobi said. "[He] shared his
time and wisdom with me.”
Morris said that one of the offshoots from
this project that they hadn’t predicted was
the bringing together of the generations.
"When [the students] interview the alumni
or faculty or staff, this magical stuff is happening,”
she said. "There is a mentoring role
that people are taking on, and they don’t just
end the relationship with the interview.”
According to Morris and Knight, the
goal as they move forward is to transform
the independent study project into a
regular undergraduate course, most likely
through the Center for Africana Studies or
the History Department. With continued
assistance from the Digital Media Center,
Knight would like the projects to become
more interactive and to use even more of a
multimedia approach with more photos as
well as audio and video clips.
"What you see now on the Web page
is really just stage one,” Knight said. "We
think it is a very important project that tells
us a lot about the institution as it relates
with the community on both a local and
international level. We look at it as a living
part of Hopkins culture—what is, has been
and will be.
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