The Oral Tradition and Contemporary Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives

This interview with Dr. Catherine Adams (Claflin University, Associate Professor of African American Studies) emanates from her essay — “(Re)Defining Hi-Stories: Conducting and Preserving Oral Histories in Africana Studies” — in my recent book, “Diversity Matters: The Color, Shape, and Tone of Twenty-first Century Diversity.”

I had the opportunity to sit down with this research scholar and professor as part of my continuing examination of the centrality of the African American oral tradition in the reconstruction of historical knowledge about the socio-economic lives of African Americans in the United States of America. Specifically, my examination seeks to connect the centrality of revisiting and studying primary and secondary materials of the African American oral tradition in the contemporary construction of historically responsive DEI programming and initiatives.

Dr. Adams’ essay addresses this centrality as she exposes how the knowledge collected from the oral tradition can provide an entryway into macro-level questions about the historical socio-economic conditions and political impacts on the lives of African Americans. Dr. Catherine Adams is actively engaged in research and writing at the intersection of African American historical and literary studies in relationship to contemporary issues of equity, inclusion, and belonging within a diversity footprint.

Last month, Dr. Adams sat down with me to discuss the centrality of conducting and preserving oral histories in a heightened atmosphere of various articulations of DEI work. She explains the break between “hi” and “stories” as one “to culturally foreground (and in some cases re-establish) the “high” position of elders and their stories of long, lived experience, particularly among members of Africana communities who revere earned eldership.”

Emily Allen Williams (EAW): Dr. Adams, thank you for sitting down to discuss your essay in my book, Diversity Matters. Your essay is getting a lot of attention from scholars throughout the country. In your essay entitled “(Re)Defining Hi-Stories: Conducting and Preserving Oral Histories in Africana Studies,” you take a close look at the art of listening and learning as central in the oral tradition. Can you speak to why this “art” is central in making sure that the knowledge pathways from the oral tradition are representative of truth-telling and relevancy?

Catherine Adams (CA): Growing up, I understood that knowledge came from books. There were always books at home, school, and in the library. One of my earliest memories was of my mother sitting me down in the book section of a department store so that she could get some shopping done, and she knew I would be right where she left me with a book open, reading, with no sense of how much time had passed. But I also spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother until she died when I was ten. I learned from my time with her that I would not have to leave the room when grown folks were talking if I were quiet and still. And she would take me everywhere because I was quiet and still. Those early years were invaluable for me. My grandmother told stories about growing up in southwest Georgia, and I can still hear her voice as if she were sitting next to me now. She planted seeds in me regarding the importance of listening and learning — especially from the storytellers — from the elders.

EAW: You were centered in the oral tradition from an early age. The orality — the narratives one on top of the other depending on how many people were in discussion — was multi-layered and complex. It makes me think instantly of our multi-layered, second-by-second inundation of social media narratives and sound-bites.

CA: Indeed… We live in a time where we are disproportionally inundated with more misinformation and disinformation [than truth] from the internet and from books someone printed on the internet without any regard for truth. But the oral tradition –the stories our elders tell if we are quiet enough to listen — are probably the closest thing we have to truth and what we need to remember about our collective past.

EAW: I have been thinking deeply about the discussions — really amazing narratives from my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and community elders — that I wished I had been “quiet” enough to listen to more intently toward realizing that those narratives contained gems of history that inform our DEI work today. How important, then, do you view the oral tradition in the contemporary work of diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and belonging?

CA: I do not know how you do DEI work without human stories and relationship building. Sometimes we have to rely on written stories; sometimes, we can get the stories from the people — the elders — who lived them. We read novels to build empathy, but sitting with someone while they narrate their story is the best way to see people beyond checked boxes and categories and the best way to hear their humanity. It is easy to dismiss, judge, exclude, or ignore whole groups of people, but when you sit and spend time with a person and listen to their story, that interaction stays with you even after the person is gone. We need to be willing to listen and open to the humanity of others to do DEI work and to be transformed by it.

EAW: The conversations — the “porch discussions” of the African American cultural tradition — turned into more or less formalized interviews over the years. My mind goes quickly to a text from the late 1990s, “The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller’s Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan” (Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures Series).

CA: I do remember how the story-telling narrativity of Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan’s works were explored in that text.

EAW: I really am interested in how you are viewing the centrality of the oral tradition for contemporary understandings of DEI work in light of the messages that come through Zora Neale Hurston about how she developed her relationship to be able to interview Kossula “Cudjo” Lewis, known as the “Last Cargo” (one of the last Africans to be captured in his native land and brought to these United States of America).

CA: In 2018, when I first read Hurston’s rendering of Kossula’s story, I immediately identified with Hurston as a young person sitting at the feet of that elder so still and quiet while he traveled back to his earliest memories. He took all of us back to what freedom was before his forced journey to America. It was family, community, purpose, and order. After the moment of capture, the walk to the barracoons, the transport on the Clotilda as human cargo, plantation slavery, and even emancipation — all of it was free-ish. Not free. Free-ish.

EAW: How, then, Dr. Adams, does Zora Neale Hurston’s listening and recording of the history of Kossula serve as an exemplar toward informing contemporary DEI work?

CA: Fundamentally, the oral tradition and the collection of that orality enables a different vantage point into the realities of a time that is in many ways insufficiently documented. In the case of this work, “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo,'” we are indebted to the young Hurston who sat with Kossula, listened to him, tended to him, and preserved his story in the way that she heard it and not in the way Viking Press wanted to print it. She preserved his truth, his memories, and his culture so beautifully and bravely. Truth-telling; simply put, truth-telling.

EAW: You are a university professor at Claflin University, and I know of your close relationship with your students in teaching, research, and mentoring in moving beyond the first level of discourse in textual readings. In working with students of the 21^st century, how do you assist them in connecting the oral tradition with the words – diversity, equity, inclusion, access, belonging, and social justice — with what is learned from the African American oral tradition?

CA: So much of the collective story of people of African descent in the United States of America has been about the struggle for equity, inclusion, access, belonging, and social justice. Too often, students enter the university as first-year students having heard sterile and culturally inaccurate narratives about Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass. Without question, each of those ancestors is much more dynamic than the recycled soundbites, and we need to know the fullness of their stories. My responsibility is to open up the door and fill the void of misinformation and disinformation.

EAW: Dr. Adams, what can we do even now to lift up DEI work through a closer connection to the oral histories of the culture?

CA: We should all be sitting with our family members to learn what they did in their “before lives” so we can take the best approaches, add to them, and discard the things that did not work and apply them to contemporary DEI initiatives. Yet, let us reflect on this listening and learning! These family conversations do not always come easy. There is pain, trauma, and shame that need healing, time, and patience to extract the value of the stories within the spaces of pain, trauma, and shame.

When students can start to put together who they are and to whom they belong, they are more creative in their approaches to building the kind of world they want to live in. They bring that creativity, energy, passion, and desire to that building work. It’s like when you are on an airplane, and they tell you if the oxygen masks drop down, fit the mask on yourself before you assist someone else. Well, gathering our stories in the African American Oral History course at Claflin is like putting on our oxygen mask first.

EAW: I am always looking forward to the “what’s next” question as to how we place into implementation what we know and how we share what we know with others. What can we do in uplifting and connecting the African American oral tradition with contemporary DEI work?

CA: That question brings me full circle back to Hurston. She recorded Kossula’s story, and she guarded the documentation of his story. He entrusted it to her, and she honored that trust. She did not destroy his speech patterns just to get published. Even towards the end of her life, when she struggled with her health and finances, she honored that trust. Last semester, I showed clips of “Descendant,” the documentary on the descendants of Kossula and his shipmates, and I was in awe. Look how far an elder, an octogenarian, ready to narrate his story and a student willing to improvise on her academic training can go. I think of how much stronger Kossula’s energy as an ancestor has grown since Deborah Plant put the finishing touches on it and published the book. But to your point, we must connect young people with elders ready to talk. Then, they will show us what is possible — the “what’s next.”

EAW: Dr. Catherine Adams, it is always a pleasure to speak with you; always amazing insights. Thank you for connecting the oral tradition of African Americans with the contemporary work of DEI.