Oberlin Student Research Assistants
Imani Badillo
Oberlin 2022
Spring 2019 - Present
Initially, I helped to conduct and transcribe oral history interviews during the first year or so on the project. For my second year, I've been helping Pastor Tucker create a series of paintings about the formation of Africatown and painting portraits of past community members. Being a part of this relationship with Africatown has been the most important part of my experience at Oberlin; I've learned so much about community and the importance of history, and I truly feel invited into a loving and joyful family.
Oberlin 2020
I have been involved with the Africatown community since my second year at Oberlin. I worked with a number of students over the years, but Ify Ezimora was a part of everything I did so it feels odd not to say that. Our projects included community health surveys, research, and presentations based on identified concerns of the community, oral history archive interviewing and archiving and video editing, as well as independent research on the impact of pollution and intellectual property agreements. We have worked with C.H.E.S.S. (Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe, and Sustainable Cities), MCTS AA (The Mobile Country Training School Alumni Association), and the Africatown community to do these community-based projects with the guidance of Major Joe Womack.
Nathan Carpenter
Oberlin 2020
Fall 20-- - Present
Santiago Roman
Oberlin 2020
Fall 2017 - Present
Santiago (they/them) graduated from Oberlin College in 2020 with a degree in Environmental Studies centered on Environmental Justice. Starting in the fall of 2017 they worked with the Africatown Oral History Project to conduct oral history interviews, complete environmental research, and begin the construction of the digital archive. Santiago shares the sentiment with many other student researchers, past and present, that the opportunity to form relationships with the Africatown community while learning and documenting their powerful and rich history has been one of their greatest life privileges.
Zite Ezeh
I joined the Africatown Oral History Project in the fall of 2017 and was a part of the collection and transcription of oral histories from community members as well as the environmental research and the beginning stages of the digital archive. In 2020, I had the opportunity to write a grant for the Africatown Blueway Connections Project which is still underway. The trip we took to Africatown in October of 2017 was one of the most memorable moments of my college career; it was such an honor being able to spend time in the community and form deeper bonds with the people we interviewed. I’m so grateful for the amazing group of students I got to know in the process of this work, as well as the caring leadership of Professor Jay Fiskio.
Brandon Lopez Toro
Oberlin 2022
Fall 2020-Spring 2022
Jay Fiskio reached out to me the summer of 2020 to invite me to be part of the Africatown research group during the Fall semester, which I was very excited about even before she had given me the details about the group! She had talked to me a bit about it before then, and it sounded like such interesting and important work to me. I started working with the group as part of the Junior Practicum provided for 3rd years at Oberlin during the Fall semester we had off due to COVID. During that time, I focused on transcribing interviews conducted with the Africatown community members regarding the history of the town. This gave me the opportunity to learn more about the people’s connection to the town itself and the community they had raised in it.
After the practicum, I was invited to be a more long term part of the group, which I eagerly accepted! Once I joined the group, I still continued to do a bit of transcription work, but also shifted to focus on a very important part of the community with Africatown leader Mr. Anderson Flen: Mobile County Training School. Specifically, I was to research the school’s connection to a great network of schools across the American South called Rosenwald Schools. These schools were constructed or amended to using resources acquired with the help of the Rosenwald Fund, which was a fund created by Julius Rosenwald to help the African American community, for he believed that their education was for “the well-being of mankind.” MCTS’s connection to the Rosenwald Schools was a bit difficult to find initially due to the few records available, but we were eventually able to find these records to show that MCTS did receive funding from the Rosenwald Fund. The next step is to use this valuable information to bring awareness to the school’s importance to American history as well as to encourage the government to take steps to protect the school building and the land it is on. With the passing of the Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Schools Act of 2020, we hope for this legislation to make it easier for these goals to be met.
But I would not have been able to do all of this work on my own without the help of the others in this group, such as Professor Jay Fiskio, Major Joe Womack, Mr. Anderson Flen, and many others!
Dru Baker
Dru (she/her) is a community-engaged environmental and energy justice proponent who graduated from Oberlin in 2016, with a focus on geological, environmental, and Africana studies. As the first RA on the collaboration in 2015, Dru worked with MEJAC and Professor Fiskio to build out the initial projects to defend Africatown against oil and manufacturing polluters. She surveyed the community to initiate the oral histories project, helped to facilitate phase 1 EPA soil, water, and air samples, and researched the process for endangered species identification to use an alternate route to protect Africatown. Working with such a resilient community, this formative experience taught Dru the importance of utilizing academic and institutional resources to bring the vision and protection of a historically invaluable community, such as Africatown, to life.
Howard Sinclair
My work with Africatown transpired over my senior year, where initially, I assisted in the research process of finding suitable grants that would provide funding for Africatown’s Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe, & Sustainable (CHESS) initiative. I would then go on to assist in the transcribing and organizing of interviews in the oral history archive and presenting the complex and compelling history of Africatown’s past and present inhabitants. Working on the Africatown project was one of the most significant experiences I’ve had in experiencing community due to the acceptance, enthusiasm, and positivity I received from professors, classmates, and Africatown natives alike as we collaborated on the construction and expansion of the Africatown project.
Eli Presberg (they/them)
Eli Presberg (they/them) graduated from Oberlin in 2020 with a Politics major. They initially joined the Africatown EJ partnership in 2017, and participated in every semester until their graduation. They conducted oral history interviews, canvassed to collect community health surveys, and grocery shopped and cooked to keep everyone fed during visits to the community. They are originally from Georgia, now live in Brooklyn, and work in progressive electoral politics.
Ifunanya “Ify” Ezimora
Oberlin 2019
Ifunanya “Ify” Ezimora (all pronouns) graduated from Oberlin College in 2019 with a double major in Psychology and Environmental Studies. Ify’s work in Africatown started in 2015, initially focusing on canvassing door-to-door completing community health and environment surveys with residents. Following, Ify supported the creation of the oral history project, working with groups like the Mobile County Training School Alumni Association and Clean, Health, Educated, Safe, and Sustainable, Inc. Through the oral history interviews, Ify had the opportunity to interview MCTS alumni, veterans, and Africatown community members, and support the creation of a platform through which local knowledge could be immortalized for generational healing. Because of their meaningful work in Africatown and impactful relationships formed with Africatown residents, Ify especially values community partnership and honoring the lived expertise of Black community members, and works to bring these values into other research spaces. Currently, Ify is a senior clinical research coordinator on the Juvenile (in)Justice Behavioral Health Team at the University of California, San Francisco, conducting research that focuses on leveraging technology to increase behavioral healthcare access for youth impacted by the child welfare and juvenile legal systems.
Oberlin 2024
Fall 20-- - Present
Oberlin 2024
Fall 20-- - Present
Oberlin 2024
Fall 2022 - Present
Sequoia Jacobson
4th Year Environmental Studies Major
Ashland, Oregon
2023—Present
Growing up among the mountains and rivers of Southern Oregon, Sequoia became passionate about protecting the environment at a young age. Through the Environmental Studies program at Oberlin College, Sequoia deepened his knowledge of intersectional environmental issues and was introduced to Africatown and its story in the fall of 2022. Since then, he worked alongside fellow students under the mentorship of Professor Fiskio to collaborate with the people of Africatown as they share their stories with the world.
A little more about Sequoia: He has 2 younger brothers, aged 19 and 14. He enjoys rock climbing and fishing. He has driven across the country 7 times to get from his home in Oregon to Oberlin in Ohio.