Five years after her father’s death, a woman hears his voice again through a Duke online oral history.

by Camille Jackson

Durham, NC – “I can’t begin to tell you how powerful it was,” said Madonna Chism Pinkard, a local television talk show host, of what it was like to hear her father’s voice five years after he died. “If I closed my eyes I could have sworn Daddy was sitting right next to me,” she said. “It was such a powerful moment.”

Seventeen years ago, Pinkard’s father Tolbert Chism of Brinkley, Ark. contributed to an oral history project by Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. The project recorded stories told by older African Americans who survived the Jim Crow south. It was later turned into a book, Remembering Jim Crow.

In November, Duke University Libraries posted 100 digitized versions of the oral histories online.

When the university announced news of the digitized archive, Pinkard,
the community relations director at an NBC affiliate in Youngstown,
Ohio, received the announcement.

“It shocked me,” said Pinkard, who knew about the book but not the
digitized archive. She said hearing her father’s voice again was
“unbelievable.”

“My father has one remaining sister and she just turned 90. For her to
hear that, you must understand … how much it meant,” said Pinkard, who
shared her father’s digitized oral history on the Chism family Facebook
page.

Chism shared many stories with his daughter about what life was like during Jim Crow.

“As a child, we heard all of these stories about how important it is to
go to school. He had to go to a school for colored students only. We
always heard how important it was to receive an education and how hard
it was for him to receive,” Pinkard said.

Yet, she says her father did not tell her about his involvement with
the oral history project, nor that he was included in Remembering Jim
Crow.

In 1995, Paul Ortiz, the graduate student who’d interviewed Chism, sent
a box of complimentary copies of Remembering Jim Crow to the Chism
home.

Pinkard, who lived with her father at the time, thought the surprise
box of books was a scam. She thought her father’s credit card had been
charged and chided Ortiz for taking advantage of senior citizens. He
corrected her and explained the oral history project. Ortiz had
conducted the interview during Chism’s class reunion at the Fargo
Agricultural School in Arkansas.

“I felt like this was a groundbreaking project,” Pinkard said. “Jim
Crow doesn’t exist, but his sons and daughters do. The book was very
powerful.”

It inspired Pinkard to continue exploring her family history. She can now trace her family back to the 1870s.

“It gave me even more of a profound respect for Daddy. He would tell me
about (historical moments like) the Trail of Tears and how our people
were transplanted from the Mississippi Delta,” said Pinkard.

Hearing her father’s voice again, she said, was “the best Christmas gift ever.”

Originally published by today.duke.edu/2012/01/btvchism