The History & Culture Access Consortium aims to digitize and share archival material that tells the story of African Americans and their influence on American history. JSU joins four other historically black institutions in the consortium, which was established by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Gerrad Lee is the Digital Humanities and program manager at the Margaret Walker Center at JSU, an archive and museum that highlights African American history. He says that the program's mission is to bring more attention to this information and make it more accessible by making it digital.
“We’re looking at just a historical lack of access to these things,” he said. “this is an initiative to… making these collections and just the history in general more accessible to the public.”
He says that they plan to contribute some oral histories, as well as some first-person accounts of Mississippians throughout history.
“They had senior citizens recollect about their days in Mississippi,” he said. “We have people telling stories from as far back as the 19th century… so we’re gonna be able to digitize some of those and make those available online.”
Through the HCAC, students can participate in multiple ways at the Margaret Walker Center such as internships and research opportunities. Chioma Ajuonuma is a Graduate Fellow with HCAC. She says that she attended Jackson State for years and didn't even realize what all the museum had available to her until this program.
“It’s so many resources, there’s so many important documents regarding the civil rights movement in Jackson,” she said. “I think its just important for this information to be accessible to everyone.”
The program plans to collect archival data for the next five years.
