Students Create Digital Archive of Podcasts Recorded by Local Activist

A School of Information Studies course is giving students an opportunity to learn digital archiving through a partnership that has ties to local history.

Five students of the Archives Fieldwork class, under instructor Kaitlyn Griffith MLIS ’21, spent the spring semester creating a digital archive of Free ‘Em All Radio.  The weekly podcast, which dates back to 2016, is hosted by activist Fred Hampton Jr., the son of Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton.

The podcast focuses on issues of race, activism, politics, imprisonment, current events, Black history and more. Hosted on Dominican’s website, the archive is searchable by keywords and subjects. It also includes an abstract for each episode, a timestamped listing of key points and topics and audio links to each podcast.

“This project in particular approaches the podcast as an oral history,” said Griffith, who began the archival process as an independent study project while she was an MLIS student. “It asserts that this podcast is relevant to the historical record and should be treated as such.”

Dr. Cecilia Salvatore, professor in the School of Information Studies and coordinator of Dominican’s Archives and Cultural Heritage Program, developed the fieldwork course to give students hands-on work and archival experience with trained experts to guide them.

Wanting to create archives of the stories of marginalized people and social justice efforts, Salvatore saw Griffith’s partnership with Hampton Jr. as one way to fulfill this mission. She believes this work can also help in efforts to further develop Hampton House, the childhood home of Fred Hampton that was designated last year as a local historical site and houses Black Panther Party artifacts.

“I’m grateful to Katilyn for building this partnership with us,” Salvatore said.

Griffith and the students presented their project to Hampton Jr. in April at Hampton House. 

“In a practical sense, I hope this is helpful for students as they work with digital archival materials and get the lay of the land,” Griffith said of the project. “I also hope they walk away from the class seeing that the communities they come from are historically significant and that their stories and those of their families are worthy of recording.”

There are plans to continue the podcast archival process during the Archives Fieldwork class offered in the fall.