Learning Gems Tucked Away in UMass Amherst W.E.B. Du Bois Library

Dear F/friends,

Our celebration of Black History Month continues. Recently our ministry announced an exciting, new chapter for the Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA) at Haverford College. This development would not have been possible without our pilot program of testimonies from 12 weighty Friends of Color, which remain available at the UMass Amherst W.E.B. Du Bois Library’s Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center.

Conducted between 2019 and 2021 by active Quaker scholars and archivists: Max Carter (MCa), Robert S. Cox (RSC), Mary Crauderueff (MCr), Emma Lapsansky-Werner (ELW), and Harold D. Weaver Jr. (HDW), these rich testimonies are a tremendous learning and teaching resource for educators, students, scholars, and the public.

We invite you to experience interviews with Quakers from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asian America, and African America:

1. Joan Countryman, pioneering school administrator; former Head, Lincoln School; co-founder, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership School for Girls in South Africa; first African American graduate of Germantown Friends School. African American. Germantown Friends Meeting. Interviewer: ELW. 
2. Maurice Gray Eldridge, pioneering college and arts administrator; former Vice President, College and Community Relations, Swarthmore College; co-founder and former  president, the Chester Charter School for the Arts. African American. Swarthmore Friends Meeting. Interviewer: ELW. 
3. Carolyne Lamar Jordan, academic administrator and consultant; former Dean of Academic Affairs, Cape Cod Community College; former Board member, AFSC. West Falmouth Friends Meeting. Interviewer: HDW.
4. Lawrence M. Jordan, physicist; active leadership with the Quaker Institute of the Future; former Clerk, Memphis Friends Meeting and West Falmouth Friends Meeting. African American. West Falmouth Friends Meeting. Interviewer: HDW.
5. Emma Lapsansky-Werner, historian, biographer,  and author of several important texts; Emerita Professor of History and Emerita Curator, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College. African American. Lansdowne Friends Meeting. Interviewer: MCr. 
6. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, Founder and Director, Embrace Dignity; South African Anti-Apartheid Movement Leader; Former Deputy Minister of Health and Former Deputy Minister of Defense, Government of South Africa. South African. Cape Western Monthly Meeting. Interviewer: HDW. (Interview in two parts). 
7. Emma Condori Mamani, Director, Friends International Bilingual Center in Bolivia. Author, Educator, and Scholar. Indigenous Bolivian (Aymaran). Bella Vista Friends Church. Interviewer: HDW. 
8. Kenneth A. Oye, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, MIT; former Director of the Program on Emerging Technologies, MIT; Board, AFSC and Quaker United Nations Office. Japanese American. Wellesley Friends Meeting. Interviewer: HDW. 
9. Dancan Sabwa, Minister; Former Presiding Clerk of Quaker Youth, Kenya Chapter; Assistant Treasurer of Quaker Men International; Co-founder of the Kitale Youth Project Fund. Kenyan. East Africa Yearly Meeting–North. Interviewer: HDW. 
10. James Varner, NAACP leader; Former President and CEO, Maine Human Rights Coalition. African American. Orono Monthly Meeting. Interviewer: HDW. 
11. Harold D. Weaver Jr., Founder, BlackQuaker Project & Quakers of Color International Archive. Pioneer in Black-Quaker Studies & Africana Studies. Advocate for Paul Robeson and Bayard Rustin. Founding Chair, Africana Studies Dept., Rutgers. Author/editor, books & audiobooks: new narratives on violence, Black Quakers, the Cold War. Interviewer: RSC 
12. Jean Mikhail Zaru, Human Rights Movement Leader; Author, Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks (2008), a necessary reading on systemic violence; Founder, The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. Palestinian. Ramallah Friends Meeting. Interviewer: MCa.

The BQP hopes you will find these testimonies at UMass Amherst illuminating and nourishing. We also encourage you to visit the QCIA’s new installation at Haverford College, home to both recent and forthcoming videotaped interviews and transcripts. Together, the testimonies across these two libraries offer us not only a portrait of Quaker life around the world, but new narratives and new models for 21st century Quakerism. 

As always, we strongly encourage your feedback and insight: theblackquakerproject@gmail.com. 

Peace and Blessings,

The BlackQuaker Project
Wellesley Friends Meeting, 
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)
www.theblackquakerproject.org
23 February 2026