Members of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project team will present at a roundtable for the 2026 Association for the Study of African American Life and History Annual Conference held in Norfolk, Virginia on September 25, 2026. The session is titled, “This Is My Jam!: Emerging Preservation Professionals & Memory Workers at the HBCU Radio Preservation Project,” and features team members Phyllis Jeffers-Coly (moderator), Kayla Foster, Breighlynn M. Polk, Vincentt Craft Sutton II, Olivia Green, Dana Green, and Chinyere Neal.
From the 2026 ASALH program:
This Is My Jam!: Emerging Preservation Professionals & Memory Workers at the HBCU Radio Preservation Project explores the HBCU Radio Preservation Project’s training and development program, one of three components of the Project’s model. The HBCU RPP provides professional development opportunities and mentorship for early-career preservationists from diverse backgrounds and under-represented populations. Our internship and fellowship opportunities are designed for HBCU graduates who have completed or who are completing graduate studies in a relevant field. These opportunities, alongside our work with early-career field archivists, podcast producers, and digital storytellers, have cultivated a new generation of Black cultural workers engaged in the process of storytelling, memory work, and preserving the important histories of HBCU radio and the communities they serve.
“This Is My Jam!” is a declaration that might be enthusiastically uttered when someone is doing rewarding and fulfilling work that feels aligned with their ambitions, hopes, and dreams. Similar to enthusiastically uttering “That is My Jam” when a radio DJ at one of our HBCU radio stations plays track that speaks to us.
This session will focus on the ways in which the “jam” of the organizations’ interns, fellows, and early career professionals have been and are being impacted and informed by the training and development component of the HBCU RPP. In addition to discussing the ways they have gained real-world, practical skills in audio preservation, presenters will offer insights on the ways that working with the HBCU RPP has offered them a chance to affirm their raison d’etre and enjoy their jam, whatever that specifically looks, tastes, sounds and feels like for them as members of a new generation of Black memory workers.