StoryCorps tour visits Columbus to record community stories and memories
City by city, story by story, person by person , StoryCorps documents, preserves and shares history.
During a tour of several Southeastern cities, StoryCorps visited Columbus, making audio recordings June 9-13 of residents’ stories, including those about the Liberty Theatre for inclusion in StoryCorps’ “Brightness in Black” project.
StoryCorps’ website describes the project as “a celebration, a truth-telling, a showcase of the richness and complexity of Black life in America — with your stories front and center.”
“I just think it’s really hard for people to really understand that there’s history right in front of us every single day, that there are voices that, you know, not necessarily anyone’s going to ever hear,” Justin Cummins, associate director of interview collection for StoryCorps, told the Ledger-Enquirer.
Cummins said it’s important to ensure those stories don’t get lost to time.
“This tour is allowing me to actually go out there, make a difference, collect those stories, make sure that they get archived in the Library of Congress, make sure they’re there for the future generations of families and to really allow everyone to have a voice rather than just a few,” he said.
The idea to record at the Liberty came from Oz Roberts, vice chairman of the Liberty Theatre advisory council.
“About two years ago I participated in the One Small Step initiative that StoryCorps had, and I mentioned to the facilitator at the time about the Liberty Theatre because we were about to celebrate the centennial of the Liberty Theatre,” Roberts told the Ledger-Enquirer.
Roberts said StoryCorps representatives contacted him this year and told him the Liberty Theatre would be a good fit for the “Brightness in Black” project. Roberts said he then contacted about 16 people, asking them to share their stories about the Liberty and Columbus.
“We had not many places at all to attend during the summer months and during the day,” the Rev. Peggy Banks Myles, pastor of Ship of Zion Ministries International in Columbus, told the Ledger-Enquirer. “Our parents saw the importance of us staying busy, and that kept most of the children from getting in trouble, so we would come to the Liberty Theatre. Our admission fee was six Royal Crown Cola tops, and we collected those tops during the week.”
Roberts, who facilitated the conversations, also has a personal connection to the Liberty Theatre. His wife and daughter have performed there, and his father worked at the Liberty.
“He took tickets here and also helped manage it in the early days as well,” Roberts said, “so this was like home for me. I was here practically every Saturday. I saw my first movie here.”
“The theater has great history and value and memories, not necessarily only for people that were here 50, 60 years ago, but just, you know, 10 and 15 years ago,” Roberts said.
The StoryCorps tour launched in Atlanta with two weeks of recordings and also includes visits to Tuskegee, Birmingham, Nashville and Charleston, South Carolina.
While in Columbus, Cummins said StoryCorps also partnered with the National Infantry Museum, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company and Warriors Set Free.
“We’ve had a longstanding relationship with Columbus over the past five years,” he said, “and I see nothing but that relationship continuing to grow. So thank you, Columbus.”
Cummins said StoryCorps has a variety of ways for people to become their own historian.
“We offer in-person recordings, we offer virtual recordings, and we also have a StoryCorps app that you can download and record at your convenience with your family whenever you would like to,” he said, “and all that stuff gets moved on to the Library of Congress.”
