HBCU Radio Preservation Project: Jawharah Hayes
Jawharah Hayes discusses the draw of working in radio, the value of genres like jazz, learning skills, enjoying the HBCU experience, and more!
Don’t tell us—your New Year’s resolution was to learn more about HBCU radio, right? Lucky for you, it’s Wednesday, so we’ve got a new video on our YouTube! Part of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, the Margaret Walker Center is serving as a repository for the histories of these stations and the community members who have been a part of them.
Listen in this week to meet Jawharah Hayes, Digital Media Producer at WNCU and radio host of Tuesday and Thursday Evening Jazz. Born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina, Jawharah learned the values of strength, ambition, and being adventurous from her parents. Jawharah remembers her earliest experiences with radio stations like 102 Jams and being impacted by how those stations gave back to the community. Growing up, she knew she wanted to pursue a career involved with music and communications, so radio drew her in.
Jawharah attended North Carolina Central University during the pandemic, and radio stood out as a means of self-expression. She first got involved with WNCU by volunteering to help with a fundraiser, which turned into a job shadowing opportunity, allowing her to learn a variety of skills such as script writing and voice tracking. She emphasizes the value of an HBCU radio station and the importance and relevance of music genres like jazz and R&B. Jawharah also states how radio is necessary as a reliable means of communication apart from wifi-enabled devices. Her proudest accomplishment is being chosen to attend the Future Now media conference.
There’s much more to hear, so click on the video below!
About the Project
Each Wednesday, tune into our YouTube channel, @mwalkercenter, to catch a new oral history from the HBCU Radio Preservation Project!
We are proud to partner with several organizations for the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, which is dedicated to honoring and preserving the rich history and cultural resource of HBCU radio.
Here’s some more info from their website:
Much of the material created at these stations is at risk of being lost, though they document the rich history and diversity of the Black experience through the Civil Rights era and beyond. The goals are to preserve the stations’ audio collections and to foster a community of sustainability for the stations and institutional archives on campus.
The project provides preservation training and workshops for campus stations, archivists and community members, recruiting HBCU graduates as interns and fellows.
Field archivists will collaborate with stations and campus archivists on collections assessments and follow-up field services such as inventories, reformatting, rehousing, and other preservation activities.
Oral historians will interview a range of community members to document the history of the stations. Training in gathering oral histories and using historical audio in content creation will also be offered. Other goals include launching an interactive website, a podcast series, and annual symposia.
