What was life like for African Americans at UD and in Newark in the 1950s-1980s?
Posted: 7-28-2022
The oral history interviews in the HIST 268 Oral History Interviews: African Americans and the University of Delaware collection (MS 0989) were collected by the students in Dr. Roger Horowitz’s HIST 268 section, “Oral History: African Americans and the University of Delaware” class during the fall semester of 2021. Students conducted 25 interviews, with participants drawn from two principal communities: African American alumni of the University of Delaware and residents of the Newark, Delaware’s New London Road/Cleveland Avenue neighborhood. The collection can be accessed at Special Collections at Morris Library. Interviewees were identified through a close collaboration with the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and its representative, Denise Hayman, a University of Delaware alumna and former Newark, Delaware, resident. Their recollections are framed by Delaware’s troubled experience with de jure and de facto racial discrimination, as interviewees reflect on their experiences living in Newark and/or attending the University of Delaware in the 1950s-1980s. An online exhibition featuring selected interviews from this collection – with recordings and transcripts – is available on the UD Library site: “Oral History: African Americans and the University of Delaware.”