FEBRUARY 29th, 2016
This week I focused more on acquiring some basic information about Raphael Tshibangu as well as some names of the other Africans listed in the Amherst College Data Book of 1977. This essentially meant scoring through the Biographical Records and trying to find names. From looking at Tshibangu’s Bio File, I found that he was actively involved in the Afro-American Society from his first year to his senior year as well as serving as the vice-president of the international club. On Monday in archives, I want to look through the club files for both of these clubs and see if anything interesting comes up with the goal of trying to better understand the experience of Africans on this campus. I couldn’t find where Tshibangu lived during his time here but I could always ask him that when I interview him this week. I still want to keep my focus on spaces on this campus, in terms of housing, hanging out, and extra-curricular.
Goals for this upcoming week:
Over this weekend, I have putting together questions to ask for when I interview so that by this week I would have either had an email interview or a phone interview (preferred) with some of the people I have found in the Biographical Records (so far all of which have graduated in the 70s). So I will have at least interviewed 2 people by the end of the week and from these alumni interviews I will see what to explore further. Also this week in archives I want to look more into the history of Africans at Amherst and when Amherst started accepting students from Africa or what the relationship was between the continent and Amherst before the 1960s.
Next week I plan to interview another 2 alumni maybe and start creating questionnaires that current students here could fill out.