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Project to record black families' oral histories

WASHINGTON -- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced a project Wednesday that hopes to record at least 1,500 oral histories from black families over the next year.

The recordings are to be placed at the Library of Congress and in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution's future National Museum of African American History and Culture...

The CPB is funding the $1.4 million StoryCorps Griot project. Part of the project's name, "griot," is derived from the West African tradition of storytelling where a respected tribe member, a "griot," is a living repository of the community's history.

The first recording sessions are planned for Feb. 15 in Atlanta through a mobile recording studio that will stop in nine cities over the next year. The mobile recording units also will travel to Chicago; Clarksdale, Miss.; Detroit; Memphis, Tenn.; Montgomery, Ala.; Newark, N.J.; Oakland, Calif.; and Selma, Ala.
Read entire article at AP