Listen Backs – Oral histories of Colorado’s Black community

The “Listen Backs” series invites public engagement with the oral histories of Colorado’s Black community. Attendees will dive deep and engage in thought-provoking dialogue around the Black experience in this predominantly White state. A community-based project called Proclaiming Colorado’s Black History will be more than two and a half years underway at the time Listen Backs begin and its namesake exhibit will be open for its two-year run. As part of this initiative, the predominantly Black team has been recording and digitizing over 25 original oral histories of Black Coloradoans conducted by the NAACP Boulder County’s Historian, Minister Glenda Strong Robinson. The Creative Director of Programs at the Museum of Boulder, Nyasha James-Davis, would like to bring these oral histories to life for the public with live events in which an audience listens to an oral history and then engages in a facilitated dialogue with prominent Black Coloradoans after its completion.

The goal of Listen Backs is to illuminate local Black history and experiences through the oral histories and ground facilitated discussions about race in personal stories. The Museum of Boulder has the obligation and privilege to share these stories and embrace their complexity.

February 29 | Dr. Reiland Rabaka: Dr. Reliand Rabaka is the Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies and Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also a Research Fellow in the College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Dr. Rabaka has published 18 books and more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays, including The Negritude Movement; The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism; Du Bois: A Critical Introduction; Civil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement; Black Power Music!: Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power Movement; Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music: Soul Sisters, Black Feminist Funksters, and Afro-Disco Divas; The Hip Hop Movement; Hip Hip’s Amnesia; and Hip Hip’s Inheritance. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution, the Eugene M. Kayden Book Award, the Cheikh Anta Diop Book Award, and the National Council for Black Studies’ Distinguished Career Award.

March 28 | Minister Glenda Strong Robinson: Ms. Glenda S. Robinson is a long-time resident of Longmont, Colorado. In the early 1980s, she founded an award-winning Facilities Maintenance Company. Ms. Robinson is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach with a B.S. Degree in Criminal Justice. She is also a graduate of Leadership America. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Ms. Robinson was an impressionable, young Junior at Memphis State University located in Memphis, Tennessee. While there, she became an active participant in the Movement led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. just prior to his assassination in 1968. That involvement set her on a course to keep the King Dream Alive. A picture of that involvement rests at the Smithsonian African American Museum of History and Culture, the National Civil Rights Museum, the Withers Museum and Gallery, and the Stax Records Museum of Memphis. She has worked tirelessly to make a difference through Special Events, Workshops, Group Meetings, Conferences, Lectures, Storytelling, and the like. All with the desire to simply make a difference. Ms. Robinson’s family relocated in 1980 from California to Colorado with IBM. Continuing her heartfelt concern and sense of social responsibility, Ms. Robinson became actively involved in community service. Her work and efforts to advance change continue.