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On Objects and Voices: Material Culture and Oral History in the Case of Shule Ya Kujitambua

"A commitment to black people and the success of their children": Interview with Kofi Lomotey

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Material Culture and Oral History: Theory and Reflection
“How do artifacts become instruments of power? How do power relations materialize in artifacts?”

My favorite artifact is an interview form for Shule Ya Kujitambua, It is printed on a piece of 8 1/2 by 11 paper in blue typewritten ink. There is a list of 12 questions that I assume the interviewee was asked. On it’s own, this seemed like a pretty cool artifact. I was floored that I was holding it in my hands, that I could image a conversation where these questions were asked. I thought that this artifact could stand on its own and tell its own story, When I sat down to speak to Kofi Lomotey I asked him about the hiring process at Shule Ya Kujitambua.I did not think I had much to learn, my aim was to just get him recorded talking about the process. But then, he started talking. He discussed the teachers he hired and the hiring process, but then he kept talking. He talked about the values that the school was focused on, values that I could see mimicked in my Mwalimu Interview artifact. In my interview with Dr. Lomotey it became clear to me why I needed to use both material culture and oral history to learn about this school. In coupling these method, my theory was clear. The material culture that exists is fragmentary, and the oral histories are often unmoored from reality.

Lomotey discussed this artifact, and this story

This project intentionally draws upon both material culture and oral history theories. I utilize both frameworks in order to achieve a more holistic sense of Shule Ya Kujitambua through objects and voices. The intermingling of these frameworks and information sources facilitates access to enigmatic information. Shule has not been extensively studied in Oberlin, despite the effect it had on so many people and the legacy it maintained. I propose that it was not studied because there were not enough artifacts to consider the school ‘meaningful’, and there were not enough oral histories, despite the rich oral history tradition in Oberlin, to encourage this study. Neither discipline contained enough information to warrant study of the school. By using both material culture and oral history theories, this project is able to access an abundance of information. The marriage of these two disciplines allows light to be shed on the Shule in a new way.

I lay out the theoretical background for this project, which is drawn from the work of the sociologist of science Wiebe E. Bijker in his publication "Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnical change" (1997). Bijker emphasizes the importance of understanding social relations via artifacts, and artifacts through social relations. This framework will allow us to understand the social and material ways that Shule Ya Kujitambua was constructed.

The duality of material and social construction begins with artifacts. Using the term artifact in the broadest sense - these are pamphlets, songs, ideas, stories etc. In Bijker’s scheme artifacts work together to form a “technological frame”: a social interaction around an artifact or grouping of artifacts. The shule can be viewed is an assemblage (grouping) of individual artifacts (; the presence of people talking about, attending to, or inciting controversy about the Shule means that it existed within a social structure. This social and material balance of artifacts are spotlighted in this project through oral histories.

A technological frame is defined as the combination of the material artifact accompanied by the social context it existed within. The technological frame requires individual actors to act within a socially constrained system. In the example of the Shule, this socially constrained system is the socio-historical context of racial hegemony in Oberlin. This is the education system that did not prioritize students of color, did not hire teachers of color, and refused to acknowledge these discrepancies. This technological frame is the one where Kofi Lomotey decided to start the Shule to address these issues. For more information about the historical context of these systems see African-Centered Education. Figure 1 expresses a generalized understanding of the artifact to technological frame theory.

Bijker proposes that a technological frame is a ‘working machine.’ He scaffolds this discussion by explaining that a technological frame changes over time, is made up of components (social and material artifacts), and thus performs a function. Bijker intentionally separates the terms ‘working machine’ from ‘successful machine’. He states that ‘working’ is “an intrinsic property of the artifact… [or] machine.” During the substantive years of the Shule, it 'worked.' Students were educated, teachers came into work, and songs were sung. Most importantly, children went back home having learned more than they had the previous evening. Under Bijker’s theory the Shule was ‘unsuccessful’ because it closed down. The obduracy - or amount an artifact is resistant to change, was not strong enough for the school to remain open.

This is where material culture theory falls short. Archaeology prioritizes things that exist within the material record, but the Shule no longer ‘exists’- there is only fragmentary artifacts that have lasted. Oral history is able to step in as a mechanism to understand what is only an atomized grouping of things.
"...the slippages between intended meaning and experienced substance contain some of the most challenging analyses of materiality"

Oral history allows researchers to address the “symbolic ambiguities” that are difficult to access through objects alone. Interviewees are able to elucidate the complex social histories of individual artifacts. In his article "The Rhetoric of Things" (2014) historical archaeologist Paul Mullins argues that “if we actually try to preserve [oral history’s] ambiguity and acknowledge that such ambiguity is central to the meaning of things”, we can gain a more holistic understanding of things and their social worlds. Mullins explains that archaeologists are “unable to capture the depth of consequences invested in things.” Oral history does this by “break[ing] from linear narrative and rhetorical conventions, and reveal[ing] the complicated physical and symbolic depths of even the most prosaic things.” By approaching Shule Ya Kujitambua with a narrative historical account, we are able to acknowledge and honor the complexities of the school. The utilization of artifacts and stories brings the viewer a portrait of the Shule with minimal gaps.

The lack of study of Shule is devastating. This was an incredibly rich historical moment, filled with people, things, and activism that is nearly unparalleled. Study of the Shule can exemplify the supreme social complexity that exists in Oberlin, Ohio. As artifacts and stories unfold, we are able to knit them together to tell a true and abundant story.

Hunting for the artifacts was exciting. The thrill of pulling out a piece of paper from a dusty box that I was fairly certain no one had looked at since it was put in there gave me goosebumps. They brought life to the project, made it clear to me that this school, this story was tangible. But that life only existed within the archive. Without their social context, it felt like each artifact had lost its soul.

As a researcher, I tailored my questions about the objects to the ‘why’ rather than the ‘how’. I wanted to know why these things were made, why they were used, why the Shule existed rather than how the objects were used and how the school existed. The how is answered with physicality, the why, conceptual.

The oral histories on the other hand, were rich and complex. These stories too had not been unearthed in many years, this was clear in the interviews with ‘oh my god i totally forgot’s and ‘wow I haven’t thought about this in years’s. From my knowledge, this is the first time Shule Ya Kujitambua has been formally re-told. The interviewees had years and years of memories, lifetimes of the ways the school had affected them in the intimate facets of their lives. I feared being reductionist by focusing primarily on the objects during the interviews. I was worried that if I could not find complexity from them, it would be rude to ask my interviewees to do that work themselves. Did I fear the banality of asking them about mundane artifacts - a menu here, a vocab list there, because I was too focused on the big picture?

I felt the objects had no alternate stories to tell, their only job was to say ‘look at me! I’m real!’ not to further complicate the story of Shule Ya Kujitambua. Or that was the only job I allowed them? The artifacts strengthened this retelling, I believe they bolster my point rather than complicate it further. But I have to wonder, is reinforcement enough? Did I do this history justice? Did I do these objects, these people justice?

Maybe, just maybe, there needs to be a story for the ‘things’ to make sense. Maybe we must imagine the setting, the smells, the conversations to fit our artifacts in. Maybe, this process is not linear. Maybe it cannot be broken down by theory, because by siloing the work we lose the circuitous nature of storytelling. Maybe we need things to remember the stories, we need the stories to enlighten the things, and we need to continue this cycle in order to access even the smallest glimpse of the past.
Teachers The initial iterations of the Shule were completely staffed by unpaid Oberlin students. Kofi Lomotey explains that they were unable to afford salaried employees so students would get credit through the African American Community Student Development Program (AACSDP). There was no formal teacher training, rather the teachers “participate[d] in weekly parent/teacher workshops, where ideas are exchanged and information from other Independent Black institutions is evaluated and implemented.” When the Shule moved to Carter's nursing home the college students, Kofi Lomotey and his wife Nahuja, were accompanied by two paid teachers.