“I Sat with Elders to Learn from Them — Now I Have Become One”
I was asked recently to speak as an elder of color for an activity at Atlanta Friends Meeting. I said I was not an elder. I interview elders so that I can hear their life stories, learn about their ways of living. I never thought of myself as one, although I am in my 60s and hold a Medicare card. How can I be a person others would like to learn from, possessing wisdom comparable to those whose lives I see as having spanned decades of fighting the good fight, of making changes through segregation, through the Depression and world war? I am the one with so much to learn. I stopped and listened to myself, to my excuses, then realized that I am the older generation of those who have lived for decades, lived through segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and more. Let me tell you about my own awakening, my transition from that person sitting at the feet of those I honor, to becoming a person with stories of my own to tell a younger generation now ready to hear them.
Dr. Althea Sumpter is a researcher and scholar who uses her expertise as an ethnographer to document cultures and preserve the Southern story of the United States. With her native Gullah Geechee culture as a prototype collecting the oral histories of elders, she teaches ways to research the cultural history within a community, then how to use documentation technology to memorialize and preserve the stories of a community for future generations. She presents talks and workshops on documenting cultural history for others wanting to preserve stories in their own community or the cultural story of a family. Her research and work can be viewed at: altheasumpter.com.
- Facilitator: Libby Ware
- Musicians: Craig Rafuse & Jean Heinrich