The Amplifying Black Voices in Iowa project has digitized thousands of resources created by Black Iowans from the 19th through 21st centuries.
The project has digitized The Iowa Bystander, the oldest Black newspaper west of the Mississippi, issues of The Waterloo Defender, a weekly paper from the 1960s to 1970s, photographs, letters, oral histories and more. On this episode, we learn about the project with some of the people that made it possible — Iowa State University archivist Amy Treslan, Felicite Wolfe of the African American Museum of Iowa and historian Ricki King. The online portal hosted by the ISU library is the work of a four-year grant project making over 6,000 resources publicly available, highlighting the impact of Black communities in Iowa.
Then, the spotted hyena is a fascinating creature with incredible hunting skills, problem solving abilities and a matriarchal pack structure. We talk with Michigan State University behavioral ecologist Kay Holekamp, who has spent the last 35 years studying hyenas in the field. Holekamp will be speaking at Iowa State University on Thursday, Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Memorial Union.
Guests:
- Amy Treslan, grant co-principal investigator, rare books and manuscripts archivist, Iowa State University
- Felicite Wolfe, grant co-principal investigator, curator and collections manager, African American Museum of Iowa
- Ricki King, advisory board member, genealogist and historian, Roots to Branches Genealogy, LLC
- Kay Holekamp, distinguished professor emerita of integrative biology, Michigan State University
