Last year, a group of archivists took CDs and reel-to-reel tapes out of a dusty closet at Central State University’s radio station in Wilberforce.
The HBCU Radio Preservation Project spent months digitizing and restoring the recordings from WCSU as part of the organization’s nationwide effort to protect radio history at historically Black colleges and universities.
On Wednesday, those sounds are coming home. They won’t be sent in a cardboard box or via email. Instead, the organization is hosting a homecoming celebration at WYSO in Yellow Springs.
HBCU radio stations are critical parts of communities, said Phyllis Jeffers-Coly, the project’s assistant director of administration and outreach.
“They document what's there, they contribute to what's there, they're woven into those Black communities all over the country,” she said.
What’s been preserved
The launch of WCSU made history in 1962 as the nation’s first federally-licensed HBCU radio station.
Jeffers-Coly and her colleagues recovered around 24-hours worth of recordings of original programming from Ohio’s only public HBCU. The programming captures years of campus and community life, including conversations with civil rights advocates, community leaders and local musicians.
The restored recordings also capture moments of community grief. One episode of “WCSU Community Conversations” covered the passing of Toni Morrison’s and the 2019 mass shootings in Dayton.
“We want to know, Senator, now having read your statements about the shootings in Dayton, what are the next steps that you’re going to take?” interviewer Felicia Chapelle asked then-U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in a 2019 interview.
A ‘lifeline’ for Central State students
Jeffers-Coly said the project is not just about preserving recordings that might be in danger from mold or deterioration. The organization also records interviews with the stations’ former staff and alumni to give first person accounts on the impact of these historic recordings.
Assistant director of public history and programming Will Tchakirides spoke with John Garland, former president of Central State University, in June. In that interview, Garland reflected on his time as a student at the university. He said he remembered WCSU keeping students informed during the Civil Rights Movement.
“It was the lifeblood, the lifeline to what was going on on campus,” Garland recalled. “When I was a student, the community of Xenia was not welcoming to us. There was an organized campaign that would march into Xenia to desegregate facilities. And that’s what we would do … Brave the cold … and march the four miles from Wilberforce to Xenia.”
‘You can’t erase history’
These oral histories will become part of the broader archive returning to WCSU. Jeffers-Coly said the handoff of the audio itself is designed to feel ceremonial.
“We will give them this beautiful, stylized, sleek black box with the hard drive in it, a placard with unique and original artwork,” she said. “And we'll celebrate the current station manager and staff at the station and do an official return of the materials to the institution.”
Then, Central State University will get to decide whether or not they will make their collections accessible on online repositories, like the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and or the HBCU Digital Library Trust.
Jeffers-Coly said the work is never fully complete. Her organization may continue to record oral histories and build up the repository. The celebration marks a commitment to audio preservation as WCSU continues to broadcast to Wilberforce.
That preservation is more important now than ever, she said.
“In this moment where there's a significant attempt or apparent attempt to erase or ignore or rewrite history broadly, it's important to say they've been here, they're still here, and they're worth celebrating,” Jeffers-Coly said. “Fundamentally, you can't erase history.”
