University Libraries - Iowa Women's Archives

Release: March 1997

Giving Voice to Their Memories: Oral Histories of African-American Women in Iowa

IOWA CITY, Iowa — This spring the African-American Women in Iowa project takes on a new dimension. The Iowa Women’s Archives has been awarded a $3,000 grant by the University’s Cultural Affairs Council to fund a project called “Giving Voice to Their Memories: Oral Histories of African-American Women in Iowa.” The project is part of IWA’s larger effort to document the lives and experiences of African-American women with Iowa connections. Assisted by Julia Siverls, a doctoral candidate in education, project director Kathryn Neal will record interviews with ten Iowa women who are or were affiliated with the University of Iowa. This will include some faculty members, students, and the often-forgotten individuals who were housekeepers in sorority and fraternity houses or ran boarding houses for students. The interviews and any supporting photographs and papers will be housed in the Iowa Women’s Archives and available for research to the university community and the general public.