FEBRUARY 18th, 2016
I was initially going to do my final project on the politics of race and space but I had to do some major thinking about why I was taking this course and have since been having conversations with Mike about Africans at Amherst – myself being an African and the founder of the African and Caribbean Students’ Union my freshman year.
I’m obviously not sure of where I want to go with this topic but have found some stuff this week. Mike sent me a document of the names of international students at the college from the Amherst College Data Book of 1977. Just from going through the names of countries which students were classified as residents of from 1968 to 1977 I found some interesting numbers. For example, in the class of 1974 there was a student from Zaire. I went through the alumni biographical record for that year and found him!
His name is Raphael Tshibangu and he went on to become an OB/GYN in Rochester NY. Once I go to archives next week, I plan on going through the records again to find the names of the 4 Ghanaians in the classes of ’76 and ’77 or the student from Congo in the class of 1970. I really want to focus this project on interviewing some of these people and asking questions about their experience here and what “blackness” meant to them being at Amherst, MA in the USA. What dorms did they live in? What student groups did they get involved in? This is all broad at the moment but Mike suggested going through yearbooks to find photographs. With regards to my initial project idea, I think I still want to pursue it to a smaller extent and write about it as one of my 2 reflections to be posted on our blog. That is the goal.
-DMM