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Reviewed by:
  • Apollo Theater Oral History Project and the Apollo Theater Oral History Project at C.S. 154by Harlem Apollo Theater
  • James Anders Levy
Apollo Theater Oral History Project and theApollo Theater Oral History Project at C.S. 154, Harlem Apollo Theaterand Columbia University Center for Oral History Center, 2008–present, https://apolloeducation.org/schools/partnerships/the-apollo-theater-oral-history-project-at-cs-154, http://library.columbia.edu/locations/ccoh/new_projects/apollo_theatre.html, and http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/05/M154/newsandinfo/News/Apollo+History+Project.htm.

In 2008, Harlem’s Apollo Theater partnered with Columbia University’s Center for Oral History to create the ambitious Apollo Theater Oral History Project, a wide-ranging initiative that features over one hundred and fifty key figures in the theater’s history, including performers such as Smokey Robinson and Gladys Knight, former directors and staff, and a diverse selection of community members and business leaders associated with the Apollo. The project, originally conceived by the Apollo Theater in anticipation of their seventy-fifth anniversary (celebrated in 2009) and involving multifaceted collaborations among the Smithsonian Institute, Columbia schools and departments, K-12 schools in Harlem, and local community organizations, now includes over seventy hours of interviews, both audio and video.

No doubt the collection will offer scholars, students, and media makers a rich fount of narratives not only about the world-famous theater but also about Harlem, the African American experience, and, more broadly, the intersections of community, race, celebrity, and cultural tourism in America. Already the collection has provided important content for a Smithsonian touring exhibit Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment. With the help of faculty and students at Columbia’s Center for New Media and Learning, who facilitated the videography of twenty-two of the interview hours, the oral histories have also been used as content for courses in several different departments at Columbia at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels.

But given the common goal of so many location-based oral history projects to help empower or otherwise serve local populations, the community-engagement aspects of this project deserve special attention and praise. A particularly promising initiative along these lines involves a partnership with the Harriet Tubman Learning Center, a New York City Community School (C.S. 154) located just two blocks north of the Apollo. Led by the Apollo Theater’s Education Program, which developed curriculum inspired by a Columbia Center for Oral History K-12 project, the Apollo Theater’s collaboration with C.S. 154 offers a good model of community collaboration and their work with Columbia is noteworthy, especially considering the very long and complicated history between Harlem residents and the university. Leaders of the project have wisely built on an already-established Columbia-Harlem partnership in working with C.S. 154. [End Page 134]The school has been involved in Apollo Theater education projects since 2008. The school is also a partner with the “Harlem Children’s Zone,” a community education and student retention initiative of Columbia’s Teacher’s College begun in 1970 (C.S. 154 joined in 2005) that was described in the New York Timesas “one of the biggest social experiments of our time” (Paul Tough, “The Harlem Project,” New York TimesSunday Magazine, June 20, 2004, 44). Indeed, the project’s ability to draw from already-established or otherwise self-organized groups and institutions is one of its most powerful attributes. In addition to the Children’s Zone and the Apollo Theater itself, an impressively well-organized and committed group of local residents and personalities, known as the “Significant Elders of Harlem,” served as narrators for the classroom oral histories.

The in-school program is both well conceived and well executed. Fourth and fifth graders are trained in oral history methods by Apollo educators. They then interview the Harlem elders. From these interviews, students produce theatrical vignettes and edited radio programs. The produced pieces are impressive. A fourteen-minute radio program, “A Picture of Happiness: A Radio Program,” now on CD, includes edited excerpts, music, and student introductions from recorded interviews by fifth graders. A live 2012 performance...

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