Oral History Workshop...Saving our history




Saving our history

 

An Oral History Workshop will be hosted by the African-American Genealogy Group of KY (AAGGKY) on Saturday, August 18 from 1:00-4:00 at the Mercer County Public Library 109 West Lexington Street, Harrodsburg.  The workshop will be conducted by Sarah Milligan of the Kentucky Oral History Commission.  She will focus on techniques and equipment used to capture the memories of our aging generations.

Sarah Milligan is the administrator for the Kentucky Oral History Commission.  She has a master's degree in folk studies from Western Kentucky University's Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology and worked as a folklore specialist for the Kentucky Folklore Program. As administrator for KOHC, Milligan assists with a statewide oral history preservation effort encouraging new and exciting oral history documentation in Kentucky.  Currently she advises the James Harrod Trust initiative, documenting African American life in Harrodsburg/Mercer County.

Sharyn Mitchell, co-founder of the AAGGKY recently stated,   “Our stories are often hidden in un-indexed volumes, stored forgotten on dusty shelves and omitted from the traditional history books of our country. With every passing minute we are losing our histories to death, memory loss, and record destruction.  The  African-American Genealogy Group is attempting to minimize this loss…to save our history and pass it on.”

The AAGGKY is a non-profit organization, member orientated group,  seeking  to promote African American genealogical research and the values of family, fellowship, and education.  These are principles which bind us together. Of one blood, God made all nations of men.

For more information contact:  aaggky@yahoo.com or (502) 422-4457 or visit us on our website at aaggky.org

April in Paris - April 21, 2012

The April 2012 Third Saturday meeting will be held on April 21, 2012 at the Paris-Bourbon County Public Library at 701 High St. in Paris, KY.  This month's speaker and topic will be Reinette Jones, editor of the Notable Kentucky African Americans (NKAA) Database, who will tell about the formation of the database and the treasures found there.

"There are more notable African Americans with Kentucky roots and ties than any
one person knows about. Very little has been written about many of them and it
is a challenge to find what was written in the past. For some, their stories
have only been told by word of mouth. The Notable Kentucky African Americans
Database (NKAA) has been developed as a finding aid to bring together a brief
description of pertinent names, places, and events, and to list the sources
where additional information may be found."
The program will start at 1:00 p.m., but some of us will be there early (around 10:00 a.m.) to research the Library's extensive history and genealogy collection.  Why not join us?