Items

• Oral History: Harris, Donald, 2013

  Donald Harris was born in New York, New York in 1940. He attended Rutgers College and graduated in 1963 with majors in English and Physical Education. At Rutgers, Harris was a member of the Air Force ROTC and also played football and lacrosse. He worked as a Civil Rights activist during his student days at Rutgers and, later, as a fieldworker for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Southwest Georgia in the early 1960s. In August 1963, he was arrested in Americus, Georgia, while trying to register African-American voters. Harris and two others were charged with insurrection, a capital offense in Georgia. The case stirred support on the Rutgers campus and across New Jersey in the Fall of 1963. Harris was released in November after a federal court declared the law under which he was charged to be unconstitutional. He went on to pursue graduate work at the City University of New York, Harvard Law School, and Columbia University. He worked for Philip Morris International Management and retired as the Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications.
• Oral History: Jackson, Linda, 2015

  Linda Jackson was born in New York, New York in 1953. She attended Douglass College and graduated in 1974 with degrees in Theater Arts and English. She has had a long career in theather and opera.
• Oral History: Wall, Cheryl A., 2015

  Cheryl Wall (1948-2020) was a Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English and former Chair of the English Department. Wall was an author and a specialist in Black women’s writing, the Harlem Renaissance, and Zora Neale Hurston. She was a co-chair of the President’s Council on Institutional Diversity and Equity. Joining Douglass College in 1972 as an assistant instructor, in her interview Wall described her role in the development of the college and its legacy today. She discussed the intrinsic value of the humanities in the context of a liberal arts education, student activism on campus, and the evolution of the Douglass Woman.