On the 23rd of September, 2023, Our very own Griot Intern Michaiah Augustine presented her ongoing 4-year project on Civil Rights, where she digitized the archives to make it more reader-friendly. She transferred data from the old website to a new website, as she added her own niche into it, for example, adding tributes of people who are prominent but not too many people know that they visited Bucknell, like Jackie Robinson, in comparison to Martin Luther King Jr and the focus around him during Black History Month.
She opened the discussion by introducing herself and discussing her struggles and successes. She also stressed the importance of her project. Since black stories have a history of being ignored, she wants to provide an avenue where black students in Bucknell can see themselves through history and even be part of this history. The project works hand in hand with the Griot Institute storytelling project, which gives context to most of the civil rights project by documenting the everyday school life of black students, alumni, faculty, staff, and the neighborhood. She gave three main timelines for activism and protest: 1960, after the burning of a church cross by Phi Lambda Theta; 1961, when 500 hundred Bucknell students protested against the tavern downtown, which is now discontinued; and the 2023 sit-in protest between the BSU(Black Student Union) and BSG(Bucknell Student Government). With all that background information, Michaiah expressed that she believed the university was more united than it is now.
In the audience was an alumnus, Frank Wood, who was part of the Phi Lambda Theta and gave his account of the time in the 60s. There was also some light shared by the audience on the 1986/87 demand letter that was cross-parallel to the demand letter of BSU in the spring of 2023. Vernice Edgehill Walden gave an account of the civil rights atmosphere of her time (the 80s) and showed that it is still the same fight being fought in a span of 40 years.