To the editor:

Recently, the Second Century Fund at St. Luke AME Church sponsored an oral history workshop, in partnership with the Lawrence-Douglas County African-American Families Oral History Project and the Lawrence Public Library. Leonard Monroe is the director of this project.

The workshop, funded by the Kansas Humanities Council, was free and open to the public. Turnout from across the community was excellent, and presenters Dorthy Pennington, Geneva Price and Sherrie Tucker received rave reviews.

We appreciate the Journal-World’s help in publicizing and covering the workshop. However, the article failed to mention several key people who have been essential to the success of local African-American oral history projects that laid the foundation for this workshop.

In February 2002, at the Langston Hughes symposium at Kansas University, Alice Fowler and LaMerle McCoy, longtime Lawrence community leaders, spoke of the important and urgent need to record and preserve local African-American history.

Soon afterward, an oral history group – dedicated to collecting, preserving, and honoring local African-American history – was founded. Since then, both Alice Fowler and Leonard Monroe have given countless hours interviewing people who wished to share their stories.

Public interest in the project has been high, and funding assistance from the Capitol Federal Foundation and the Lawrence Sesquicentennial Commission has helped us share this important history with the community. Through tapes, transcripts, exhibit panels and public appearances, this project has helped preserve African-American history and made our work available in libraries, churches and businesses, as well as through local programs and in the local media.