With the spring semester concluded, Duke University rising junior Christina Barrow is home with family while continuing to train in anticipation of returning to campus and preparing for the upcoming season. Volleyball is a fall sport and intercollegiate competition begins before the fall semester even starts.
This summer and for the 2024-25 school year, Barrow will also be serving as a Digital Archive Student Ambassador for The HistoryMakers, an archive of over 3,500 oral histories with prominent African Americans. Student ambassadors work to make their campuses more aware of HistoryMakers and its remarkable archive, which includes lengthy, detailed interviews with politicians, movie stars, musicians, athletes, style icons and more.
“African American history will try to be rewritten and taken away, and this is one way we’re trying to preserve it,” said Barrow, who is studying political science, psychology and African and African American Studies at Duke. “Honestly, the application process was really cool because in one of the essays you had to write how you found yourself when using HistoryMakers.”
So far, Barrow has not watched videos for some of the more famous names, preferring to explore the lesser known stories. “[I] appreciate all the pieces of history,” she said. “One of the things I wrote about was integration in New York. My parents were from New York. It was nice to be able to hear stories from politicians, teachers and business owners in New York.”
She anticipates using material from The HistoryMakers in her research papers going forward and enlightening fellow students how to do so as well. “Being able to learn from everyone’s experiences is something I am inspired by,” Barrow said. “I want to pursue politics and law, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to look at other spheres of life, such as entertainment and medicine. Being able to soak in and be a sponge.”
In addition to watching videos in the HistoryMakers archives and being a resource for people who may also find the material useful in research, she is in training. “I’m incredibly blessed for the people around me and for my coaches to give me a chance to play at Duke,” said Barrow, who has played volleyball since middle school and is a defensive specialist and setter. “Them telling me their expectations and giving me any kind of feedback I ask for really helped me in my confidence and how I go about pursuing anything that I want at Duke.”