HBCU Radio Preservation Project: Sheila Lee
Sheila Lee talks about her journey into radio, faith as inspiration, spreading joy, her love of gospel music, and more
Wake up with a cup of coffee or tea perfectly paired with this week’s edition of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project! As a collaborator in the project, the Margaret Walker Center is serving as a repository for the histories of HBCU stations and the community members who have been a part of them.
This week, we learn about Sheila Lee’s story. Sheila is from Suffolk, Virginia, and was raised in Norfolk, where her father worked as an aircraft mechanic on a naval base in addition to his car detailing business. Her mother worked in the Chesapeake Public School System as an accountant. Sheila and her brother were both involved with their church, and Sheila participated in ministries and the church choir. She credits her strong love of gospel music for helping to shape her interest in radio. Involved in pageantry and cheerleading in high school, she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to pursue modeling and fashion design, earning a degree in fashion merchandising.
Sheila later married her husband, Pastor Robert E. Lee, and moved to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where she went on to begin her radio career. Along with gospel music, Sheila reflects on how listening to women in radio during her childhood and viewing her voice as a gift from God inspired her to enter the industry. She first started as a volunteer at WRVS, where she was mentored by Dorothy Keith. Now retired, Sheila worked at WRVS for over twenty-five years as a full-time on-air personality for the Morning Joy show. She is also heavily involved with her church as the First Lady of Powerhouse Church of Redemption. She credits this involvement with having been a great source of joy for her on-air presence. Other sources of her joy and fulfillment come from her family and her entrepreneurial work.
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.
