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so I'm Katherine Lambert Kennington and

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I was part of the original group I guess

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the old-timers that conceived of

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crossroads and began the planet and

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think about how we would do this and how

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both in terms of methods and in terms of

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cataloging and how it might be used and

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who would work on it and the purpose

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well I was just retiring from the

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classroom you know 5:06 stirring my

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memory around about this I think I have

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rust Wigington to blame for getting me

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involved in this just before I retired

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and then after I retired lingering

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around to work with students on the

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interviews that was all starting 506

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well I had been I was finishing up my

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PhD in anthropology and had just I think

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finished my dissertation and maybe

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graduated so then that was 2005 and

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since I had a lot of experience doing

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interviews with people as an

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anthropologist you do tons of interviews

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and I grew up here in Memphis was very

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invested and interested in Memphis

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history and civil rights and got pulled

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into this because I was around and had a

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skillset that was useful and was looking

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for something worthwhile to do and she

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knew a lot more about Memphis than I did

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I teach 20th century intellectual

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history had never done any local history

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had not done an african-american history

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really other than teaching classes on

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the civil rights movement but it was a

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learning experience for me to dig deeper

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into Memphis history and to work with

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students on these projects and Katherine

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knew the city knew the literature about

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really well it was fun yeah we went to

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go to Richmond Virginia to look at the

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shoot Charlotte's the famous or infamous

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yes infamous Charlottesville it was a

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beautiful weekend up there and which

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really well-known historian it airs at

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the University of Virginia introduced us

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to his work and to the technical crowd

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we took our tech people from here Stacy

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Pennington and then others and we

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learned a lot from them as we started

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thinking about building a website it's

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interesting to think about crossroads

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now because technology has changed so

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much in the last 10 years when we

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started this project there was the

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YouTube and the idea of posting videos

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online was out there but it wasn't that

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there was not the kind of use that you

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see today the sort of smaller very

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powerful cameras were just coming on the

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market they were still pretty expensive

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your camera didn't do video like audio

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quality was much more difficult so the

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way in which if we were doing this again

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today I think the way in which we

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conceived it would be slightly different

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because technology offers so much more

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so many more options and I think some of

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the students who've worked on this both

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the road students as well as some of the

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high school students really speak to

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that that it's become technology has

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democratized the ability to participate

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in archiving type activities which is

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pretty interesting we couldn't have

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imagined that we'd hoped I think we had

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the hope that that was one of the things

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that would happen as a result the

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crossroads but you know technology made

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it possible in a way that I don't think

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we could have predicted really or at

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least we weren't thinking about maybe we

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could have predicted it but we hadn't

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even considered it absolutely yeah and I

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think I'm most like

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working with the students in crossroads

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because I no longer had two great papers

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I didn't have to evaluate everything

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that they were working in the summer

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they had grants to work they were

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motivated we we had lots of fun sharing

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ideas learning for some of them about

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Memphis and about the civil rights

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movement but it was great to be with

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students and sharing ideas and out of

96
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the classroom summers were fun and very

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intense very intense very intense

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students did a lot of a lot of good work

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did a lot of writing and interviewing

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can tell me one specific story from each

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of you about a time at crossroads that

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really impacted you in any way there are

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a lot of little ones the details of

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which are difficult to come up with I

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remember we went to interview an older

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black woman in her home whom we thought

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had been working at at the motel where

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dr. King was killed or in a nearby

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cafeteria there

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I think was at the Lorraine and it turns

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out that wasn't quite the case she

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wasn't at work that day but she had such

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interesting experience because she lived

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in the neighborhood and was not herself

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involved in the movement but in terms of

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what she saw and understood that story

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so closer so for me one of the things

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that was I think and still is one of the

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most valuable things that the archive

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that's been able to digitize a record

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and make usable is the newspapers so

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much of that material has been

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unavailable anywhere it had sort of been

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set aside and forgotten and so to me

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that was useful I still even today send

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students to look at it because it this

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is the only place that you can get it so

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um I was very proud of when that ended

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up being digitized I'm gonna come on

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thank you guys so yeah sure okay