About this Project
"And to me, you have to have somebody that remembers and tells it. And if you don't, it fades into history. I mean, it just fades away"
Purpose of this Project
The goal of this project is to document the history of Shule Ya Kujitambua, a school precariously situated in Oberlin, Ohio during the 1970s. Through this project, the audience will gain a greater understanding of the intersections of race and education in the town of Oberlin, home to a college credited with accepting the first Black students into higher education and a reputation of progressiveness that precedes itself. Instead of viewing Oberlin as a racial utopia, we interrogate the racial history of the public school system and explicate the outstanding ways that Black residents confronted the lack of support provided by the public schools.This project is significant because it adds to the narrative of Oberlin as a complex town. This school is an example of resistance to race-based educational inequities by Oberlin’s African American residents. These residents were at the cutting edge of racial equality. Shule Ya Kujitambua, an Afrocentric school in Oberlin during the 1970s, was a marker of the Civil Rights and the Black Power movements in Oberlin. Oberlin is considered a ‘racial paradise’; as a result of this narrative, historical resistance to racism is often disregarded. Opened roughly ten years after the school board’s decision to effectively integrate the elementary schools, Shule demonstrates a need for an educational model that recognizes and considers race rather than ignores it. The school’s evolution disrupts the narrow, binary narrative of segregation as “bad” and integration as “good.”
Theory and Methods
“How do artifacts become instruments of power? How do power relations materialize in artifacts?
In this project, community members are the experts and the sources for the research; transcripts from oral history interviews act as both expert testimony on the Oberlin racial landscape, as well as material objects that become part of the archive. We are complementing archival sources and the greater historiography of northern segregation and African-centered educational models with the lived experience of community members who still occupy this space. Through this model we hope the audience reconsiders their production and engagement with history. Further, the dissemination of research via a public website reinforces the mission of making this story accessible to the very people it impacts. This is a community-based learning project that utilizes oral history and material culture theory. Through these frameworks, I analyze research with dynamic, multidimensional understandings centered around personal experience and sense of place. Further, the use of a public website to disseminate our research reinforces our mission to make this story accessible to the very people it impacts.
Positionality
I am approaching this project as a middle-class white woman. I am in no way an expert in this historical moment, and have been incredibly lucky to have the trust, support, and partnership with community members and Oberlin College faculty. Without this, my project would not have been possible. I have created this project as completion of my Archaeological Studies and History majors, though this is not the main goal of this website. The intention of this website is to make accessible a formalized archive and narrative of this moment in history to those who were involved with or are interested in Shule Ya Kujitambua.Additionally, this project primarily highlights the voices of Dr. Kofi Lomotey - the school's founder, Ms. Phyllis Yarber - a parent of a child at the school, and Ms. Angela Yakemba Padilla - a former student at the school. With limited resources and time, I was unable to interview more people involved with the school.
If you or someone you know participated in the Shule and would like to be featured on this website, please email me at murrayellab@gmail.com
This project was made possible by a generous grant from the Oral History in the Liberal Arts Association (OHLA), a Mellon Foundation-funded initiative of the Great Lakes College Foundation.