STORI’s podcast Sam.wav History Uncompressed explored the history of Samford University and our local communities one human narrative at a time.
Bridging Gaps
"So I think that kind of is what stuck out to me the most with that, just the relationship that we kind of had even though we are different, like, different generations, we have things that we can still relate on . . ."
Faith and History: Half of the History
". . . I often tell students, you cannot understand the civil rights movement if you don't understand the black church and if you don’t understand Christianity."
Faith and History: Looking Forward, Looking Back
"I think history is a source of just learning not facts and dates but learning about who we are, who we were and who we are, and how who we were helped make us who we are."
Faith and History: A Different Crusade
"That’s the biggest challenge to education, to knowledge, and the idea that my worldview somehow disqualifies my understanding of the world, or worse, my worldview tells me that your understanding of the world is disqualified, that’s where we get into trouble. But having a worldview is not automatically a bad thing."
East Lake Together
". . . So my mom, and I really credit her for this, my mom introduced us, particularly me, because I was the youngest, to the changing face of our community. And that was the best gift she ever gave me. "
Music in Marion
"I just think it happens because music breaks the human down to the simplest form. Music doesn’t have a color, it doesn’t have an identity . . . you know, it doesn’t have a race, it doesn’t have a gender. It’s for everybody."
Docena: Coalminers At Heart
". . . coal miners are coal miners at heart, wherever they are. They’re facing danger every day. It brings them closer together. . . . I think coal mining is in your blood."
Docena: Stories from Behind the Recorder
"...and she was writing her mom’s information on the back, and I was, like, 'Oh my gosh! That’s Melba Kizzire!' And she was like, 'What?' I was like, 'No, this is, we have her interview from the seventies!' and so her mom was actually one of the people who, the interviewees that we have from the 1970s."
History in the Recipe: The German Food Invasion
"And what we’re going to do with, with this potato salad is we’re going to have potatoes that we can peel or not peel, okay, and then we’re going to add some onion in there, and we add a little bacon in there, and we add a little pickle juice in it, we’ll add some vinegar, we’ll add some oil and pepper and salt. And that’s it."
History in the Recipe: In the Kitchen with Yujin
". . . like in different countries, they all have their own style of Chinese food which is not real Chinese food. But they call that, they call that Chinese food."
History in the Recipe: Better Than Grandma's Biscuits
"If you can get someone to really connect, to describe an experience of food, I mean it is very strong. And I think that, ultimately, like, food is a container. Food is a vessel that holds emotion, history, feelings."
History in the Recipe - Nigeria: Hope Through Food
"More demand for cassava will lead to more planting. More planting will lead to more exportation. More exportation will lead to more money that can be used to improve the overall living conditions of impoverished inhabitants of developing countries."
History in the Recipe: Appetizers
". . .once you have the food of a different culture, you can start asking questions in a way that might have been uncomfortable in another setting, and how, say, eating Ethiopian at the Pizitz food hall, um, allows you to start to think about, you know, the agriculture of that region, the history of that region, um, why are there Ethiopians in Birmingham, that sort of thing. Um, and you can start to connect to larger issues while also enjoying a meal."
Music in the Magic City
"That's where the great part of the job, for us, is where you're making these connections and you're meeting people from all over the country and they have all these different diverse tastes, because we always ask, 'Is there anything particular?' because we're trying to figure out who they are. . . really what we're doing is we're trying to establish a personal connection."
Immigration in the South
". . . I’ve become a lot more aware of the fact that I’m black, that I’m, I’m a black American. I, and most people would probably categorize me as an African-American, um. I personally wouldn’t, just because I feel like I’m Haitian-American because, you know, I, my roots are in Haiti."
Latin in the Motto
"Again I often see it translated 'Forever,' you know, 'For God, For Learning, Forever,' but one of the clever things about doing something in Latin is to have this kind of word play. . .giving you something to think about, and so the 'aeternitati,' if you look, if you just look at a translation and say, 'For God, For Learning, Forever,' you might miss out on the fact that it is very deliberately crafted to say 'For eternity.'"
Teaser
"Since the 1970s, folks such as Jim Brown, Wayne Flynt, Donald Wilson, Marlene Rikard, and Jonathan Bass have led students in this field. STORI is continuing this good work and is committed to collecting, preserving, archiving, and disseminating oral histories from the Samford community, the Birmingham area, and the state of Alabama."
