By don terry T r i b u n e p h o t o b y c h r i s w a l k e r Go

Julieanna Richardson urgently pursues a mission—to build an enormous ‘livingt archive’e of African-Amerllican history, one compellingi pertson at a time

Julieanna Richardson, the hard-driving, bespectacled hunter of African-Ameri- can treasures, is sitting in a room surrounded by her excavation tools: omni lights, tape recorders, monitors and a JVC K429 digital camera. n The year is 2001. It is early in the life of her audacious dream to create “a living archive’’ of 5,000 videotaped interviews of African-Americans from all walks of life—some famous, such as Eartha Kitt, some unsung, such as Junius “Red’’ Gaten, a 103-year-old man who delivered ice from the back of a horse-drawn wagon to customers in ’s Black Belt—including anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and boxing champion Jack Johnson. Richardson views the man she is about to interview as somewhere between the entertainer and the iceman. Isaac Hayes Carol Moseley Braun Eartha Kitt Musician, composer Former U.S. senator Singer, actress Civil rights leader

he room she occupies is at the top of the stairs of a former automobile dealer- the clock. Many of her initial interviews ing the first game, pitching the second. Both wouldn’t have a . I don’t know Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the were with people in their 70s, 80s and beyond. were victories. “I had a good career,’’ Rad- if he understands that. I know for a fact that Chicago Public Library, “is by far the largest ship on South Michigan Avenue’s Motor Row. Richardson has made it her base They were early civil rights pioneers, edu- cliffe said. “I can’t kick.’’ the young people in my class don’t under- general oral history for African-Americans camp on the southernmost edge of downtown Chicago. On this day she is going cators, artists, dancers, ministers, lawyers, His face lit up when Richardson asked him stand that.’’ that has ever been done.’’ over her notes one last time, mapping out her strategy for prying what she doctors, businessmen and women, Pullman about the time he played against Ty Cobb Juanita Thurman is trying to make sure “The project is quite remarkable for its car porters, Negro League baseball players, in Cuba in 1925. “He tried to steal second,’’ that the students in her African-American size and scope across so many fields of hopes will be a treasure trove of memories from the man, a little-known South Tuskegee Airmen. They were survivors of Radcliffe said. “I throwed him out both times. history class at Lincoln Park High School endeavor,’’ Flug continues. “African-Ameri- Side pol with a toothy smile, an unflappable demeanor and places to go. Northern segregation, Southern Jim Crow, He quit. He said, ‘I ain’t gonna play against understand. Thurman has been taking her cans are the most under-documented group Indiana lynching. They were stubborn striv- no nigger. Ain’t no nigger gonna throw me classes on field trips to The HistoryMakers in the whole country in archival terms. The In fact, when the pol arrives at her office, he gives Richardson the impres- ers and unrequited patriots. But now they out.’ ’’ since 2002. struggle to document the under-documented sion that he is in a considerable hurry. were dying off, taking their stories of tragedy Cobb could have saved himself the embar- Not long ago, Richardson asked the stu- is a tremendous struggle. It’s a massive proj- Undaunted, Richardson starts plying him with questions. She wants to and triumph with them to the grave. rassment of getting thrown out by a colored dents in Thurman’s latest class what they ect. Julieanna Richardson is doing a great “There’s a saying, every death is like burn- catcher if only he had taken the time to read knew about the history of their families. service.’’ know everything about him. ing a library,” says Richardson, who is 54. “I the words Radcliffe had inscribed on his “My great-great-grandmother was a share- Gloria Swanson—the legal secretary, not Everything. feel a real sense of urgency to tell our story, chest-protector: cropper in Mississippi,’’ a boy says. the actress—has transcribed about 250 of the because so little of it has been recorded.’’ “Thou shalt not steal.’’ “What’s a sharecropper?’’ Richardson interviews that typically last three hours or probes. more. In 2004, she heard about Richardson’s Negro League star Ted “Double Duty’’ Rad- A few years ago, Richardson was courting “It’s basically almost a slave,’’ he says. project and wrote her a letter, thanking her cliffe never spent much time in libraries. But a potential financial supporter. She and the Someone else’s grandfather was a fisher- for “stepping up and documenting this his- What’s your favorite food? towns as far away as Oslo, Norway, who has he was filled with stories. He was a few weeks white businessman were having dinner when man; another was a farmer in Puerto Rico. tory so it wouldn’t be lost.’’ tRed beans and rice. sat down with Richardson or her staff for shy of his 99th birthday when he sat down he said, “What history? Blacks didn’t do any- Richardson asks a 17-year-old about his “I offered my services,’’ says Swanson, who Favorite color? interviews as part of The HistoryMakers, with Richardson in 2001. thing before the civil rights movement.’’ family history. The boy says his father left does freelance transcriptions. “I assumed she Blue. an ambitious, non-profit oral history project Radcliffe said he never saw snow before he The remark felt like a slap. when he was 3. But his stepfather has been in had somebody. As it turns out she didn’t.’’ Favorite saying? whose mission is to document and digitalize arrived in Chicago in 1919 from Mobile. Nor “I wanted to go over the table at him,’’ Rich- his life for more than 10 years and “made up Richardson handed Swanson a tall stack of “I’m tired.’’ [The man has a young daugh- the African-American experience from slave had he ever owned a suit with long pants until ardson says. for what my real daddy didn’t do.’’ videotape and Swanson took the tapes to her ter at home.] cabins to the White House. The collection a gambler called “Snoochy’’ bought one for Since the rise of Obama, she’s been hear- His stepfather never had “nothing grow- home office. The work took longer than she Where’s your father from? contains more than 8,000 hours of taped him. “I was wearing short pants until I was ing even more nonsense about history and ing up, so he chose the street life. He stopped expected. She kept stopping to laugh or cry. Kenya. interviews. 18,’’ Radcliffe said. race. selling drugs to take care of us, his family. “The interviews were so interesting,’’ Swan- Your mother? “I didn’t put ‘Black’ in the name because I Snoochy also gave Radcliffe one of the only Obama is the end of black politics. He tells me every day to be a better man than son says. “The old people from the South told Kansas. don’t want a project that just speaks to black jobs he had outside of playing ball. He put We’re living in a post-racial America. he was.’’ sad stories.’’ For three hours, Richardson asks ques- people,’’ she says. “I want to mainstream the Radcliffe to work at the front door of his gam- Race doesn’t matter any longer. Richardson nods her head, listening as Someone would forget to bow and scrape to tions about his life and he answers. She has history.’’ bling house, “searching the people and taking “How do you take hundreds of years of rac- intensely as she does when interviewing a a white man or avert his eyes when passing a made the busy pol slow down, as he gives his She says the interview subjects themselves the knives off them.’’ ist stereotyping and erase it on one election politician or business leader. white woman in Alabama or Mississippi and take on being a black man in America. take a back seat. “I’m not so much interested As racism forced to night?’’ she says. “You don’t. I like the poten- “We believe here that everyone has a his- they would have to leave town in a buckboard His mother, he explains, had “inculcated’’ in the people,’’ Richardson says, “but in the carve out a separate universe, paralleling tial, but we’re still a long, long way away.’’ tory,’’ Richardson tells the students. “It all wagon or freight train. “They were the front in him the sense that being “African-Ameri- history that lies within. I’m looking for nug- every aspect of life, Chicago was a hotbed of Robert Starks, a professor of political sci- begins with the personal story.’’ runners of Emmett Till,’’ Swanson says. “But can is a wonderful thing, that it is special in gets of history that will provide a bigger pic- black baseball. Radcliffe was a living link to ence at Northeastern Illinois University, says they got out alive. They lived to tell their sto- some way.’’ ture.’’ those days. Richardson was determined to The HistoryMakers is an antidote to igno- n the 1930s, the Works Progress ries to me and you.’’ Years later, a representative for the poli- Richardson founded The HistoryMakers keep him alive in her archive. He passed away rance, white and black, old and young. “Afri- Administration—the WPA—dis- Richardson has a knack for finding people tician would climb the steep stairs leading in 1999, shortly after visiting the Civil Rights in 2005 at the age of 103. can-Americans are left out of history and peo- patched writers all over America to like Swanson to help her keep HistoryMak- to Richardson’s third-floor offices to review Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Radcliffe grew up in Alabama with a lanky ple don’t know what we’ve done,’’ he says. interview and, in some cases, tape ers moving forward. She also has a knack for the interview. He wanted to make sure that where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassi- hard-throwing “wizard’’ of a pitcher, Leroy “Obama didn’t just fall out of the sky,’’ record, the memories of former slaves. chasing them away. “I can be a little intense,’’ his boss, Barack Obama, the man who was nated on April 4, 1968. She did her first inter- Paige, known as “Satchel.’’ Starks continues. “The national press has While influenced and inspired by the Richardson says with a laugh. “I have to be in such a hurry, hadn’t said anything that views in 2000. “He could throw that ball so hard it would given all the attention to Obama and has project, which was turned into a book careful sometimes how I talk to people. I don’t might derail his bid for the presidency of the The History Makers, housed at 1900 S. act like lightning,’’ Radcliffe told the cam- overlooked the blood, sweat and tears all the and radio documentary in 1998 called mean any harm.’’ . Michigan Ave., began as her brainchild. It era. way back to [Jean Baptiste Pointe] du Sable “Remembering Slavery,’’ Richardson Larry Crowe, who has conducted more has become her life. “I wanted to leave a leg- New York sportswriter Damon Runyon that laid the groundwork for this young man Idid not want to focus her archive on any one than 800 interviews for The HistoryMakers President Obama is one of nearly 1,900 Afri- acy,’’ she says. “I didn’t have children.’’ christened Radcliffe “Double Duty,’’ after to become president. If you had not had a area of black American life. The HistoryMak- project, says Richardson “is driven by an can-Americans in more than 80 cities and In the beginning, she was racing against watching him play a double-header, catch- Harold Washington and a Jesse Jackson, you ers, says Michael Flug, senior archivist of the invisible whip.’’ guage-understanding technologies. With a Evening With . . . ,’’ Richardson says. “Her a celebrity or a big shot to be interviewed few computer keystrokes, the digital archive career spanned six decades. You think of all by The HistoryMakers. Richardson was can be searched by a name, a word or a sub- the people she touched, all the history that hurt and couldn’t hold back her tears. “An ject matter. You can type “Barack Obama’’ she represented, all in one person.’’ Evening With,” she protested, was how she and “civil rights’’ and up pops that section of But the rehearsal earlier that day with Kitt helped pay the bills. the interview. and her band had not gone well. There was “I work so hard, and to be misunderstood She hopes that a digital version of the low energy. Then the doors opened late. There was painful,’’ she says. Still, she does not collection will someday be available on the was a mixup about the seating. Richardson deny that there is a strong undercurrent of Internet. But like newspapers and other busi- had some heated words with the show’s direc- achievement in the archive. She makes no Bobby Rush John H. Johnson Vernon Jarrett nesses feeling their way along the informa- tor. “I was being very direct,’’ she says. “It had apologies either. “What I saw missing when I U.S. congressman Publisher Journalist Professor, activist tion superhighway, Richardson is trying to been very stressful.’’ started was the black middle class,’’ she says. figure out how to “monetize the collection so Kitt was tired and, as it turns out, she was “There is a purposeful attempt to expose the we can continue our efforts.’’ slowly dying. But when it was time for the other side of the black community.’’ Funding is never far from Richardson’s 81-year-old diva to perform, she made the Richardson doesn’t like to admit it, but thoughts. “I move one step forward and then audience gasp with an over-the-head leg kick being interviewed by Julie, as everyone calls my funding gets funky and I move a step that someone half her age couldn’t have per- her, has become a sort of status symbol in back,’’ she sighs. “I want to be catapulted formed. the nearly 10 years she has been collecting forward.’’ Later, as Richardson was editing the pro- African-American memories. Although she Richardson says to reach her goal of 5,000 gram for the PBS broadcast, she wasn’t happy says she still has to chase after some inter- interviews she will need $30 million. So far, with the shot from one of the five cameras. viewees, others lobby to get grilled by her. she has raised $11 million from corporate She was looking for a better angle when she After all, being anointed a HistoryMaker puts Katherine Dunham Jesse Jackson Barack Obama contributions and other fundraising, includ- noticed something she had missed on the you in heady company: the new president of 65th secretary of state Dancer, choreographer Minister, civil rights leader 44th U.S. president ing the black-tie gala, for which The History- night of the performance. the United States, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Time Makers is perhaps best known, “An Evening After Kitt finished the song, “Here’s to Warner chairman Richard Parsons, Colin With . . .’’ The event, which is taped before Life,’’ she raised her glass—and she was cry- Powell, actress Diahann Carroll, dancer “She wants you to get it done twice as fast ing her shoelaces for church the next morn- an adviser to Richardson’s project. “But I’ve a live audience and aired on PBS, features ing. Katherine Dunham, journalist Lu Palmer, as humanly possible,’’ he says. ing. found the interviews to be very rich, fully one famous African-American interviewed She died on Christmas Day. publisher John H. Johnson and Mr. Cub, Crowe recalls traveling to Denver with “It was thoroughly frightening,’’ Davis appropriate for the most exacting kind of by another high-profile African-American Another library gone. Ernie Banks. Richardson to interview an African-Ameri- said. scholarly research.’’ about his or her life. In September, the late A few years ago, Merri Dee, the longtime “We are not a who’s who,’’ Richardson can theologian for the archive. When Crowe Richardson asked her what she discovered What she is, is a woman deeply in love Eartha Kitt was interviewed by journalist Chicago radio and television broadcaster, insists, making no attempt to hide her irrita- and Richardson arrived at the man’s office, about black history at the time. “It was so with the souls of black folks. Yet mention . made Richardson cry. They were having tion at the very notion. “What we’re really he wasn’t there. He had apparently suffered important for us to learn, as black children, Black History Month and Richardson reacts Richardson was a nervous wreck. “Eartha lunch when Dee told her that people in the Continued on page 29 a heart attack and was at the hospital. that we were much more than what the pre- strongly. was the oldest one we have featured on “An neighborhoods believed a person had to be While Crowe was giving the man’s assistant vailing authorities represented black people As soon as February rolls around, Rich- his condolences, Richardson was whipping as being; mainly inferior. We were barred ardson is deluged with requests from com- out her address book, searching for someone from the white schools, we were barred from munity groups, schools and corporations, else in the area to interview. She didn’t want most aspects of society in Birmingham, so seeking her help—often at the last minute— to waste a minute. “Here’s a number,’’ she that I utterly appreciate the fact that so many in putting together a black history program said, handing Crowe her address book. “Call of my teachers must have been thinking very for their church, classroom or wood-paneled him and let’s go.’’ consciously about subverting that sense of boardroom in the clouds. “She can cut it to the bone sometimes,’’ he inferiority that might well have become She often obliges. But just as soon as the says. “She’s not playing. She’s trying to get entrenched.’’ month is over, the flood of requests slows to this done as fast as possible.’’ One person Richardson has not been able a trickle; the history is put back on the shelf to persuade to sit down with her and her digi- and, Richardson fears, is forgotten until the hen she first tal camera is Berry Gordy, the founder of next dreary winter. “Our history has been began The His- Motown Records. He has yet to respond. She marginalized, crammed into the shortest toryMakers, will keep trying. “Motown is synonymous month of the year,’’ she says. “It drives me Richardson con- with the 1960s, cultural awakening, and the crazy.’’ ducted all of the civil rights movement,’’ Richardson says. In the archive room on the second floor interviews her- “Yet it meant much more. It was the ultimate of The HistoryMakers building are the hun- self. “I was try- of creativity and it humanized the black dreds of videotapes and DVDs that make up ing to figure out experience. Furthermore, Berry Gordy, good the collection so far. There are also hundreds our processes,’’ or bad, was a founder and being a founder, of photographs and scores of magazine Wshe says. She also didn’t have much money. I have a special affinity for founders. I am articles, books and newspaper clippings on Overall, she estimates that she has person- always looking for parts of myself in their prospective HistoryMakers yet to be inter- ally conducted about 300 of the interviews story and I also look for things that I could viewed. To see it, a researcher, student or and holds the record of 37 in one month. use from them to improve my organization, anyone else has to make an appointment to When she interviewed Professor Angela my success.’’ climb the 32 steps to Richardson’s office. Davis, the ’60s radical icon, Davis focused on Richardson is working hard to make the American terrorism. A Harvard-trained lawyer and a magna cum archive more accessible. Currently, brief Davis grew up in Birmingham, Ala., in an laude graduate of , Rich- descriptions of the interviewees are avail- area named “Dynamite Hill,’’ so called, she ardson is not a professional historian or able on the Web at TheHistoryMakers.com. told Richardson, because “the Ku Klux Klan archivist, a fact that has arched not a few They are divided into 15 categories, depend- and other racist formations were determined ivory-tower eyebrows. ing on profession, such as ArtsMakers, to prevent black people from moving into that “She’s basically a builder, not a historian,’’ PoliticalMakers or MedicalMakers. So far, part of Birmingham.’’ says Michael Frisch, a professor of American 400 of the interviews have been digitized by One of her earliest memories as a child Studies and History at the State University of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie was “the sound of this thunderous, warlike, New York at Buffalo and the President-elect Mellon University in , employing end-of-the-world’’ explosion as she was wash- of the Oral History Association, as well as speech-alignment, image-processing and lan- Photos: Moseley Braun, Mike Theiler/Reuters; Hayes, Ron Jenkins/Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Bond, Paul Sancya, AP; Powell, Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP; Dunham, Stephen Chernin/AP; all others, Tribune file photos. all others, Tribune Dunham, Stephen Chernin/AP; Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP; Powell, Sancya, AP; Bond, Paul Star-Telegram; Worth Jenkins/Fort Hayes, Ron Photos: Moseley Braun, Mike Theiler/Reuters; Archive it down and have her build it again. “He Continued from page 15 instilled in her [a philosophy] of no com- plaints,’’ says her mother, the receptionist trying to show is the diversity of the Afri- at The HistoryMakers. “You might fall but can-American experience.’’ you get right back up. He never allowed Richardson herself is diversity personi- anyone to make him feel inferior.’’ fied. A small-town girl now living in the city When Richardson was 9 and her father of broad shoulders, she has been described had retired from the Army, the family as mercurial, brilliant, spacey, artsy, a con- moved to Newark, Ohio. One day when trol freak, passionate, entrepreneurial. Richardson was in 4th grade, the teacher “I saw in Julieanna a person who had asked the students to talk about their fam- come up with an idea and is so passionate ily backgrounds. A boy said he was half- about it that she’s bringing it to life despite German. A girl said she was part-Irish. the odds,’’ says B. Joseph White, president Richardson was getting more and more of the University of Illinois, which is in nervous as it got closer to her turn. She the second of a three-year research and was the only African-American in the class educational partnership with The History- and had no idea what to say. She didn’t Makers. “There are many, many more good want to just say she was black or Negro. All ideas in the world than there are ideas that she could remember studying about black are turned into action. This is a seriously people was the remarkable things George important archive.’’ Washington Carver could do with a pea- In college, Richardson wanted to be nut and the shame of slavery. “It was hard an actress but decided there weren’t a lot for my 9-year-old mind to think positively of roles for black women, certainly not about black history,’’ she says. enough to make a living. She ended up It was her turn. going to Harvard Law School and practic- She said she was part Cherokee, part ing law for Jenner and Block, a corporate black and part French. firm, when she first moved to Chicago in “The teacher looked at me like I was 1980. “I hated being a lawyer,’’ she says. She the biggest fraud of all time,’’ Richardson has been Chicago’s acting cable admin- says. “I was a child without a history.’’ istrator and ran her own cable shopping For high school, Richardson attended channel, “Shop Chicago,’’ in the late-1980s. the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michi- “I lost my shirt with the cable channel,’’ gan. At Brandeis University, she majored she says. “But everything I’ve done in life in American studies and theater arts, still has led me to what I’m doing now.’’ planning a life as an actress. But in her sophomore year of college, Julieanna’s journey began in the hill and there came a turning point she wouldn’t steel country of . She was fully understand until several years later. born in Pittsburgh, the oldest of four sis- Richardson did an independent study ters. She spent her early life in the mill project on the . She town of Duquesne, about 12 miles away. spent much of the year in Harlem, a “The sky was never blue,’’ Richardson tape recorder slung over her shoulder, remembers. “It was orange.’’ She lived interviewing people about that African- with her mother and her mother’s mother American cultural explosion of the 1920s. on top of a steep hill while her father, She interviewed Butterfly McQueen, the Julius, was away serving in the Army. squeaky-voiced actress from “Gone With She’s named after her father. Her mother, the Wind.’’ Margaret, taught piano. The house on the “She sounded just like she did in the hill was always filled with music. movie,’’ Richardson says. As a child, Richardson watched a lot More importantly, Richardson discov- of television and just knew that any day ered the treasures contained in the Schom- she would be discovered on the streets burg Center for Research in Black Culture of Duquesne and whisked away to Hol- in Harlem. She spent hours there, immers- lywood. “I was a child who lived in her ing herself in black culture, fortifying her head,’’ she says. soul, building her confidence. “I knew the Her father had wanted to be a lawyer, white community inside out,’’ she says. “I but he stayed in the military to support did not know the black community.’’ his growing family. He eventually became She remembers sitting in the Schom- a professional golf instructor. Richardson burg on a gray afternoon, listening to “I’m used to caddy for him. Just Wild About Harry,’’ a song written by He pushed the education of his children Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle for the 1921 hard. He even enrolled in education classes groundbreaking “Shuffle Along,’’ the first at the University of Pittsburgh so he could successful Broadway show to have an all- better help his daughters in school. He told black cast. everyone that some day his little Julie was “I felt a whole part of me had been going to go to Harvard. hidden from me,’’ she says. “It gave me a “My husband always challenged her,’’ sense of myself as a black person. It’s like Richardson’s mother says. When Richard- a whole world had opened up to me. It was son was a child she’d build a castle out of liberating.’’ wooden blocks. Her father would knock [email protected]