MARCH 25, 2023
Discover and Uncover Your Legacy
The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center (NAAMCC) in Wilberforce, Ohio hosted the Charity’s Children Project in an interactive talk show with authors and historians. The event was moderated by Patricia Smith Griffin, founder of the Charity’s Children Project and executive producer of the podcast series, The Legacy of Charity’s Children. This interactive event explored community archiving and the importance of preserving vanishing perspectives in Black and women’s histories.
Patricia Smith Griffin
Moderator
Patricia Smith Griffin is a historian, genealogist, and the founder of Charity’s Children Project, Inc., a non-profit organization committed to resurrecting The Old Castle On The Hill to establish a multicultural center at the former site in Dayton, Ohio. Patricia also serves as writer and narrator on The Legacy of Charity’s Children, a short story podcast series that chronicles the life of early Ohio settler Charity Davis Ceasar Broady and generations of her descendants.
As a direct descendant of Mrs. Broady, Patricia also executive produces the series which illuminates the generational journey of one of Dayton’s oldest African American families. A staunch advocate for women's issues, Patricia is committed to teaching others about the importance of how to maintain a family’s legacy through records, archives, and oral history. Patricia was recently featured by The Art Show's "National Votes for Women Trail" short documentary where she discussed her great-grandmother, the renowned Jewelia Galloway Higgins, and the role she played in advancing the Women's Suffrage Movement.
Dr. Sharon Lynette Jones
Panelist
Dr. Sharon Lynette Jones is a Wright State University Department of English Language and Literature professor. Dr. Jones is the editor of “Conversations with Angela Davis.” The book explores Davis’s role as an educator, scholar, and activist who continues to engage in significant social justice work. It features seventeen interviews ranging from the 1970s to the present day. It chronicles Davis’ relationships with such organizations as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Communist Party, the Green Party, and Critical Resistance.
Dr. Jones is an author or editor of several books, including “Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race, Class, and, “Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and Dorothy West,” and “Critical Companion to Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work.” Dr. Jones also edited “Critical Insights: Zora Neale Hurston” and the book “The Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Literature, which she co-edited with Dr. Rochelle Smith. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Clemson University and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.
Dr. Holly Y. McGee, Ph.D.
Panelist
Hailing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Holly Y. McGee specializes in U.S. History and African American History, emphasizing black women’s activist and intellectual history, comparative political activism in the United States and South Africa, and popular culture in the twentieth century. Currently, Dr. McGee teaches undergraduate courses in black history and film, culture and counterculture, and African American history in early and colonial America. Secondary specialties include local histories of the American South, South African women’s history, and oral histories.
Presently, Dr. McGee is conducting research for her book, a biographical oral history of South African activist Elizabeth Mafeking. Mafeking was one of four women featured in Dr. McGee’s dissertation, “When the Window Closed: Gender, Race, and (Inter)Nationalism, the United States and South Africa, 1920s-1960s,” which describes new scholarship regarding black radical women of the Left in the United States and South Africa during the 20th century. Dr. McGee’s most recent publication credit, ‘It was the wrong time, and they just weren’t ready’: Direct-action protest at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College (AM&N),” appeared as a reprint in Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, an edited collection on SNCC’s pivotal role in transforming the status of racial discrimination in Arkansas in the 1960s. Additionally, she has forthcoming articles in the fields of local Arkansas history and South African women’s history.
She has a B.A. in English from Dillard University, Master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Florida A&M University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
