Living Black History – Regina Paige Garrettson

Living Black History” is an oral history radio program that presents African-American history as experienced by everyday people that you won’t find in textbooks and school curricula.

It is produced by students at Neumann University where it airs live on WNUW. This year, the Catholic Media Association gave it an award for Best Collegiate Radio Show.

Four students interviewed Regina Paige Garrettson, a member of the university’s dining hall staff, about her life experiences stretching back to the 1960s. Five other students produced the show from the studio control room.

Garrettson spoke about growing up in the projects of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, NY (with “a sense of community and togetherness”), moving to East Orange, NJ (where she first realized that her family was poor), her marriage and career, and the Civil Rights movement (she was “wowed” by the celebrity of Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers).