Whaling National Park wins grant to preserve New Bedfords oral history

By DON CUDDY

NEW BEDFORD — The African-American experience over the passage of time in the local community will be chronicled thanks to a grant from the National Park Foundation.

The Whaling National Historical Park has received an $8,750 impact grant for the oral history project. Jasmine A. Utsey, a Brown University alumna who graduated with a concentration in African-American studies, will conduct 10 interviews for the series known as Having Our Say: From Civil War to Civil Rights.

The National Park Foundation is the official charity of Americas national parks and the Whaling National Historical Park will contribute another $3,250 to meet the projects $12,000 total cost.

The expected completion date for the series is Sept. 30, according to Janine V. da Silva, a cultural resource specialist at the New Bedford park; the interviews will become part of the national parks oral history collection.

We are very excited about this, da Silva said. We received a similar grant in 2010 to do a Cape Verdean oral history project. But that one was not on camera.

This time, the two-hour sessions will be filmed by a professional videographer, she said, and a number of people have already been identified as potential subjects for the interviews.

I think Leonora Kydd Whyte, who turned 101 in June, is very important. Her grandfather was in the 5th Cavalry, da Silva said. There is another person whose great-grandfather came up to New Bedford during the Civil War. Its important to get these stories before they disappear, even if they are not in the first person.

Lee Charlton, former president of the New Bedford branch of the NAACP, has agreed to participate and will discuss the civil rights movement and the struggle to end segregation in the 1960s. Joan Beaubian, a former president of the New Bedford Historical Society, will also appear in the series to speak about the citys history from an African-American perspective.

The National Park Foundation and its partners have issued impact grants to 62 national parks across the country totaling more than $500,000, according to a news release. The impact grant program is intended to give parks the financial support needed to transform innovative ideas into successful in-park programs and initiatives, the release said.

This unique program helps the parks enhance the visitor experience, engaging more people, and ultimately building a stronger community of park enthusiasts, said Neil Mulholland, president and CEO of the National Park Foundation, in the release.