The Quakers of Color International Archive:
Meet Our New Interviewees & Host/Exhibitor
For Educators, Students, Scholars, and the General Public
This Black History Month, the BlackQuaker Project is blessed to announce that our Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA) has a new home at the Haverford College Library’s Quaker and Special Collections, which has released 17 new interviews from distinguished Friends of Color around the world. These videotaped interviews and transcriptions are now available to educators, students, scholars, and the general public online at TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections: Quakers of Color International Archives Oral Histories. Our initial wave of 13 interviews remain available online through the UMass Amherst W.E.B. Du Bois Library’s Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center.
Conceived by Harold D. Weaver Jr. as a multi-media study-and-research collection by and about Quakers of Color worldwide, the QCIA launched in spring 2019 with a pilot program of in-person interviews championed and overseen by Friend Robert F. Cox, the late director of Special Collections and University Archives at UMass Amherst. Videotaped and transcribed Interviews with the following Friends of Middle Eastern, African, African American, and Caribbean descent are now available at Haverford:
- Joyce Ajlouny, General Secretary, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Palestinian American. Bethesda Friends Meeting.Write to hc-special@haverford.edu for access to her interview and transcript.
- Lauren Brownlee, Deputy Secretary of Friends Council on National Legislation (FCNL). African American. Bethesda Friends Meeting.
- Francisco Burgos, Executive Director, Pendle Hill. Dominican American. Harrisburg Friends Meeting.
- Oskar Castro, Coordinator, Quaker Voluntary Service in Philadelphia. Puerto Rican. Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting.
- Brian Corr, Deputy Monitor & Community Liaison, Louisville Community Commitment Consent Decree; Member of the Board of Directors, AFSC; Former Executive Director, Police Review & Advisory Board, City of Cambridge. African American. Friends Meeting at Cambridge.
- Rashid Darden, Associate Secretary of Communications and Outreach, Friends General Conference (FGC). African American. Friends Meeting of Washington.
- Debby Flack, Britain Yearly Meeting Reparations Committee; Volunteer Witness, Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine. Caribbean British. Godalming Quaker Meeting, UK.
- Keith Harvey, Former AFSC Northeast Regional Director. African American. New England Yearly Meeting of Friends.
- Ayesha Imani, CEO of Sankofa Freedom Academy. African American. Ujima Friends Meeting and Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting.
- Phliip Lord, Former Presiding Clerk, AFSC; Executive Director of the Tenant Union Representative Network (TURN). African American. Ujima Friends Meeting and Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting.
- Samuel Chi-Yuen Lowe, Chaplain at the Boston Medical Center; former AFSC Board and Third-World Coalition member. Chinese American. Framingham Friends Meeting.
- Hezron Masitsa, Justice & Peace Secretary, Friends World Committee for Consultation World Office. Kenyan. Nairobi Yearly Meeting.
- Clinton Pettus, Former Clerk of the Board, Pendle Hill; Former Associate General Secretary, AFSC. African American. Third Haven Friends Meeting.
- Paula Rhodes, Attorney; Professor Emerita of Law, University of Denver; former Board Member, AFSC. African American. Mountain View Friends Meeting.
- Diane Rowley, Emerita Professor of the Practice of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; former Board Member, AFSC. African American. Atlanta Monthly Meeting.
- Niyonu Spann, Organizational Developer, Founder of Beyond Diversity 101; former Executive Director of the Green Circle Program. African American. Chester Friends Meeting.
- Dwight Wilson, Educator, Administrator, First African American General Secretary of FGC, Former Headmaster of the Detroit Friends School. African American. Ann Arbor Friends Meeting.
We owe these exciting developments to the longtime support of our QCIA Advisory Committee: Mary Crauderueff, Curator of Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College; Curator Emerita Dr. Emma Lapsansky-Werner; and Jordan Landes, Curator of Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. We are also grateful for the dedicated work of senior team member Cooper Vaughn, responsible for scheduling, producing, and, since 2025, conducting all interviews; and the contributions of former team members Jasmine Reed, Laura Mercedes, and Katalina Kastrong, all alums of the Haverford College Center for Peace and Global Citizenship.
We share observations from two members of our QCIA Advisory Committee about the importance of this QCIA collection–now at Haverford–to Quakerism and to the accurate telling of world history:
Mary Crauderueff
Curator of the Haverford College Library’s Quaker and Special Collections:
“This exceptional, growing collection of oral histories of Quakers of Color from around the world is important to Quaker history in general, and assuredly will be used by scholars, students, and Quakers around the world.”
Emma Lapsansky-Werner
Professor Emerita of History at Haverford College and Emerita Curator of the Haverford College Library’s Quaker and Special Collections:
“It is exciting to see Haverford College’s Quaker Collection providing a home to an archive of what “Quakerism” looks like as that small cell of 17th-century northern-European Friends has moved across the world–and across the centuries to embrace–and to be outnumbered by–adherents from “the global south”-The interviews will form an invaluable trove of information for future scholars and religious “seekers”–to enrich understanding of religious inquiry and behaviors!”
We hope you will explore the archive and welcome any thoughts or questions you wish to share. In the future, we expect to spotlight the remarkable lives of various interviewees from our Haverford and UMass Amherst installation of our QCIA collection.
Are there specific Quakers of Color worldwide that you would like to see interviewed? Are there questions of interest which you would like to see us pose in the future? How do you find these interviews especially enlightening? Please write to us for any suggestions or questions at theblackquakerproject@gmail.com.
Peace and Blessings,
The BlackQuaker Project
Wellesley Friends Meeting,
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)
www.theblackquakerproject.org
12 February 2026
Friends Association for Higher Education 