SOHP Welcomes New Team Members

In August 2007, the SOHP welcomed Kerry Taylor back to the program. Kerry, who serves as associate director, is a recent UNC PhD in history and had worked as an SOHP research assistant from 2001-2003. An experienced oral history interviewer, Kerry's research interests center on social movements, African American history, and labor history. He will coordinate the SOHP's "Long Civil Rights Movement" initiative. Kerry is the coeditor of volumes IV and V of the Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. and American Labor and the Cold War, an anthology of essays exploring the cold war experiences of labor unions and working-class communities.

Dwana Waugh, fourth-year graduate student, first joined the SOHP's "Long Civil Rights Movement" research team during summer 2006 to complete fieldwork in Charlotte. She is writing a dissertation on the long desegregation process in Chapel Hill and Prince Edward County, Virginia public schools. Her work underscores the importance of local oral stories and the salience of former black school buildings as symbols of the proud legacy of African American educational achievement under Jim Crow.

Rachel Martin, a second year Ph.D. student from Tennessee is beginning her second semester as an SOHP research assistant. Rachel is using oral history to understand the school desegregation conflict in Clinton, TN, with an emphasis on how the participants' gender and racial identities contributed to the violence that occurred. Her interest in oral history began during an earlier career as a journalist. When she realized the challenge and the importance of interpreting and transmitting "real live" stories to a larger audience, she traded in band tours for history. Her master's thesis, "Built on the Sand: Gender and Family Relations on Pleasure Island, AL, 1890-1930," examined how the development of the tourist industry along the Gulf Coast affected local fishing families.

The SOHP continues to be anchored by a leadership team with more than eight years of working experience together: In addition to director Jacquelyn Hall and outreach coordinator Beth Millwood, Joe Mosnier coordinates our efforts to make interviews available online.

This past summer, we said goodbye to visiting postdoctoral fellow Dr. Sarah Thuesen, who will be teaching US history at Warren Wilson College near Asheville. Sarah made tremendous contributions to the Long Civil Rights intiative and we are thrilled that she will remain connected to the project.