GREAT BARRINGTON — Wray Gunn was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1930. One of his clearest childhood memories is walking to church in Henderson, North Carolina, with his mother and two brothers. “Like the mother hen leading her kids, all dressed up,” he recalled of the quarter-mile journey they made each Sunday morning.
When his family ultimately relocated to the Berkshires, the former Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church in Great Barrington was “one of the few, original Black churches in the area,” and the same denomination with which they were familiar. Gunn called it “an icon in Great Barrington,” adding that many Black families who came to the area were looking for church services similar to the ones they had left. Gunn’s deep involvement with the historic church once attended by W.E.B. Du Bois, which spans eight decades, stands as a prime example of the rich material to be captured in a new oral history collaborative aimed at collecting and preserving the stories of African Americans in the Berkshires. The initiative, Quilting Our History: African American Voices of Wisdom and Memory, was born out of ongoing discussions among a trio of organizations: Clinton Church Restoration Project, the Berkshire County branch of the NAACP, and the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College.
“The wisdom and memory captured in these oral histories belong to our community,” said Dr. Frances Jones-Sneed, a member of the Clinton Church Restoration board and chair of the local NAACP’s education committee. As a historian and professor emeritus at MCLA, Jones-Sneed has led NEH-funded projects on African American biography, served as the humanities scholar for the Berkshire County Historical Society’s Invisible Communities project in the 1990s, and is currently interviewing people, like Gunn, associated with the former Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church in Great Barrington. “Just as our ancestors passed their stories down to us, we want to make sure that these voices are preserved for generations to come.”
She and other organizers see the Collaborative as an opportunity to expand on prior initiatives, namely a collaboration between the Berkshire branch of the NAACP and the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center, which was the subject of a 2019 Berkshire Museum exhibit. “Their Stories: Oral Histories from the NAACP” began documenting the stories of individual African Americans in the Berkshires — among them Gunn, of Sheffield, who shared another anecdote. Growing up in what he calls a “heavily segregated” neighborhood in Henderson, North Carolina, Gunn’s family, which consisted of three boys, lived next door to a white family, also with three boys. On Saturdays, it was not uncommon for the six friends to meet at the movies. Despite separate entrances — Gunn and his brothers used the rear entrance while their neighbors used the front door — the boys created a common ground of sorts in the balcony of the theater where, if each trio of brothers sat at the partition, they could enjoy the movies together.
“People are always excited about conducting the interviews,” said Judith Monachina, who directs the Center, “but unless the recordings are properly archived, they may never be heard.” For each hour of an interview, it takes an average of 30 additional hours to complete the process. With support from the Oral History Center, the group plans to host a workshop to train community members and students in oral history methodologies, project planning, and ethical standards. The Center will also provide ongoing advice and technical assistance, including archiving the recordings at the University of Massachusetts Libraries Special Collections and University Archives.
Over the past several years, Monachina has worked with the Berkshire Athenaeum on digitizing and restoring 20 existing recordings from the Invisible Communities project that had been tucked away for years. The Berkshire County Historical Society recently received a grant from Mass Humanities to cover the cost of transcribing and preparing those materials for the UMass archive. Jones-Sneed plans to reach out to other organizations that focus on African American history in the Berkshires or house existing oral histories from the community once the Collaborative is up and running. Furthermore, CCR’s future African American heritage site and cultural center — dedicated to educating the public about the life and legacy of civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois and the Berkshires’ rich African American history — will not only incorporate oral histories into its interpretive exhibits, but also house a StoryCorps-style recording studio for use by visitors.
“I’m glad to see these stories being returned to the community,” said Dennis Powell, president of the Berkshire NAACP and vice-chair of Clinton Church Restoration. An army veteran, born and raised in Pittsfield, and one of the many voices included in “Their Stories,” Powell stresses the importance of capturing the wisdom and memory of our living elders. “We have lost too many people during this pandemic,” he said. “Let’s be sure we don’t lose their stories, too.”
