Ava Smigliani- Reclaiming Silenced Histories

This summer, I worked with Dr. Chavis on a handful of projects through Reclaiming Silenced Histories. This included administrative work with the Dark Branch Descendants Association, a group of descendants of enslaved individuals in a few plantations along the Cape Fear in North Carolina. This included setting the organization up as a nonprofit, and grant writing. I also did a lot of research, working to uncover the histories of their ancestors, and creating a narrative of plantation history that centers the enslaved.
I also worked in the archival framework through the Chipman Center, working to archive and preserve their cultural materials. The Chipman Center is set to be one of several networks of independently owned and operated archives, operated by communities, for communities. I did archiving, digitization, and organization of the Chipman Center archives.
Through this program, I gained incredible amounts of career experience, and was able to network in a way I have never had the opportunity to before. Working as a historian, the field can be tough to break into, and the STIP program gave me the opportunity to gain experience in a variety of different subjects relating to historic research. I was also able to work one on one with Dr. Chavis, a professional in the field, and was able to learn a lot about how it operates.

I have removed filler words, such as “˜um,’ and “˜uh,’ for the sake of clarity

Throughout the summer, I worked with Dr. Chavis on a handful of different projects through Reclaiming Silenced Histories. I mostly worked through the Dark Branch Descendants association. Based out of North Carolina in an area along the Cape Fear called Plantation Row, there are a number of plantations, largely, the history of these plantations centers around the owners of these plantations. However, those who stewarted and worked the land for over a hundred years were not, in fact, the owners, but they were the enslaved individuals. The Dark Branch Descendants Association is a group of descendants of these enslaved West Africans along the Cape Fear in North Carolina, and wants specifically to center the narrative around enslaved individuals, while also centering it around the wants and needs of the descendants, who are still alive. Through this project, I provided mostly research and administrative support, working on making the association a nonprofit, and doing all the paperwork that comes with that, as well as writing different grants so the association can function as an organization, and working to plan the creation of a cultural center, so their cultural resources and stories can be told. The goal of my research specifically was also to create a cohesive narrative, to have a sort of understanding of exactly what individuals were doing in their day to day life, how they functioned, what their traditions were, those kinds of things. As part of this research, I had the opportunity to go down to North Carolina to do some of this research, working in archives, coordinating with local historians, planning with the association in person, doing some document and archive cataloging.

A secondary project I also worked on was in Salisbury Maryland through the Chipman center. Dr. Chavis also works directly in communities who want to set up an archive of their own cultural resources. For many organizations, specifically cultural and in communities, having their documents and cultural artifacts preserved means they have to be turned over to a third party institute, whether that be a university, or a larger cultural center, which can be a barrier to getting these kinds of documents and archival sourced publicly available and well preserved. So Dr. Chavis is working to create a network of these different independent archives. Sort of, we give them the resources, the manpower if necessary, to catalog, digitize, sort through documentation on their own, so they have control over their own cultural resoufes. Specifically, I worked to setup the framework for how these resources could be archived, worked on organizing documents, and participated in the archiving itself. And, In Salisbury, Maryland, which is where the Chipman Center is located, we also worked to support the community through helping with the cultural center, as well as helping with the Juneteenth parade.

So the opportunity through STIP has given me invaluable experience, both career wise, and personally. So, I study history, however, you tend to be a little removed from the information or the people that you’re researching. This gave me the opportunity to work directly with these communities, and do work that I feel is important, instead of doing something I’m a bit removed from. I also had the opportunity to network with a lot of local historians, which is an opportunity I definitely would not have had otherwise. Career wise, I’ve had the opportunity to do grant writing and archiving, which is something that is sort of difficult to get into. And I also worked with metadata and digitization, which is an incredible skill, as well as sort of understanding historic preservation, how that process works, working through National Park Service grants, getting something on the Register of Historic Places, and all of those kinds of things. The opportunities that I have had through this program are things that I never would have had otherwise. It was absolutely wonderful to work on projects that I am incredibly passionate about. A great thing about the STIP program, and OSCAR in general, is getting to work directly with a professional in the field I want to get into, as a historian, and this has given me the opportunity to get that one on one experience that I definitely would not have been able to get otherwise, and I am incredibly thankful for what this program has been able to do for me.