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Koot, Christian: Okay. Barry, Avaion: All right. So thank you again for connecting. So, you know, according to my previous emails, Unearthing Towson is a project that's been going on for a couple of years, and students and faculty here are kind of utilizing the archives to Barry, Avaion: shed light on some narratives from old staff members and students, and also strides towards diversity and inclusion at the university. Barry, Avaion: And this year with the cohort, we're centering women in leadership. So I specifically chose to focus on the African American Cultural Center and women leaders involved in that, especially considering the beginnings of the AACC being from the BSU and Students for Black Awareness, which had a lot of female representation in there as well.

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Barry, Avaion: So I can get started with the questions. So firstly, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your professional journey? Meredith Davis: Absolutely. So I am a native Baltimorean, born and raised. I'm also proud of my K through Doctorate public education. I went to St. Mary's College of Maryland for undergrad. I went to UMBC for graduate school, and I went to Rutgers for my PhD. Meredith Davis: Towson was one of my first directorships in higher education. I've been in higher ed for about a couple of decades, and Towson happened to be the first position I landed, and I was the director of the African American Cultural Center, and at that time it was called the Black Cultural Center. Barry, Avaion: Thank you. And then as the director of the Black Cultural Center, what were your primary responsibilities?

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Meredith Davis: The primary responsibilities in the beginning were pretty much, Meredith Davis: you know, highlighting and educating the community on issues around Black culture. My master's degree is in African American Studies, so needless to say, I was, you know, I have always been Meredith Davis: a student of Black culture, and a student of Black life politics, and all those various intersections. And so I advise student organizations, Meredith Davis: there was a coordinator who reported to me, and it was a very small office. It was just two or three of us. It might have been two or three of us. And it really was a programmatic office. It was more of a space that was supposed to be utilized to help students program and think about their programming.

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Barry, Avaion: And how did that really align with, like, what you saw for the AACC and like students' involvement there? Meredith Davis: Absolutely. I think the time and the era is important to think about as well. I think I was the director around '93, '94 maybe. I had just gotten out of undergrad. I spent a year with Baltimore City Schools. I taught and then I worked at the Board of Education. Meredith Davis: And I saw the job at Towson. I reported to Dr. Camille Clay, who was the Vice President of Student Affairs at that time, so if you get a chance, try and catch up with her. She was a psychologist by trade, therapist, and... Meredith Davis: Oh, I almost forgot what you asked me about.

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Barry, Avaion: Just your goals with the center, and how that aligned in terms of... Meredith Davis: Yes, yes. So I think I would like to say that I was a little avant-garde with my goals because I understood the various intersections of, like, politics, culture, history. Meredith Davis: I created a logo for the cultural center and our slogan was "knowledge is better than riches." Meredith Davis: There was a gentleman, Rod… I think his last name was Heritage, but he created this collection of t-shirts, and the most famous t-shirt is one that the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air used to wear, and it had this high top fade.

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Meredith Davis: And he was a Baltimorean, so I reached out to him, and he created a logo for me. We created t-shirts out of that logo. We also Meredith Davis: did, and we worked together with Dr. Clay's office to do, a retreat for Black students. We did that, and that was a weekend retreat in the woods. Meredith Davis: We also, and I'll say I also, and I'll take credit for this one, because a lot of times, you know, as black women, we don't take credit for what we do. You know what I'm saying? We sometimes will give it to somebody else, or we'll say somebody helped us. Let me be clear on this one. I started and I created a Black men's think tank in like the mid 90s. Meredith Davis: And I have always been studying Black masculinities. I've always been interested in it. My grandfather was a professional cricket player. My father, you know, took care of

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Meredith Davis: five girls with a LPN salary, so I've always been interested in how Black men navigate this world in a way that's not hyper-masculine, in a way that speaks to Meredith Davis: the real issues that Black men face, which are, you know, belonging, which are, you know, having to deal with racial profiling, because this is around the same time Rodney King, all these other things are happening. So I had a Black Meredith Davis: think tank. It was very successful. Meredith Davis: We had several… We had a couple hundred students actually attend. So what I did is I broke up the day, I had Black Men in Politics, and I invited Dr. Jamal Bryant, and he came, and he spoke. I invited,

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Meredith Davis: and I hate that I cannot remember his name. He was one of the first Black general managers for a major television station. He was the general manager for WJZ. Meredith Davis: Black guy. He came. C. Miles, who was, like, a political kind of activist figure. He had a famous, a very famous radio station on AM. He came as well. We had a luncheon. I think I invited Naeem Akbar, but if I didn't invite him then, I invited him another time. Meredith Davis: So those were the types of programs, and we spent two days just talking about Black men in politics, Black men in television, Black men in corporate, Black men in families, and it was a beautiful event. I also created a program called the Black Scholar in Residence. Meredith Davis: And I did that for two years. The first year, I brought in Sonia Sanchez, and that's because I met Sonia Sanchez in undergrad. I was one of Lucille Clifton's mentees.

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Meredith Davis: And so I got to meet her in undergrad, so I couldn't wait to bring her to campus. And she spent two days at Towson, and she also did a master class in the English department. Meredith Davis: So the next year I bought Haile Gerima, who is the filmmaker of Sankofa. I was clocking it early. Barry, Avaion: I met him. Meredith Davis: Yeah, I was clocking it early. And I brought him in for a two-day residence, and he did something, I think, with the film department, or with the communications department. He did a master class, and then he did a public lecture, and we also did a viewing of his film.

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Meredith Davis: I had a Black film festival where we created, where we actually showed films from, like, Meredith Davis: from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Meredith Davis: I was just always fascinated with the trifecta, the diaspora, the Americas, and Africa, so I always tried to program keeping that in mind. Meredith Davis: And I think we did move the barometer, and I know we definitely moved the barometer around conversations around African American history and culture that were broader than just what's happening contemporarily in society. But what does it mean to be Black? What does it mean to think as a Black person? What is Blackness?

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Meredith Davis: How do we advance and educate people on understanding Meredith Davis: our culture beyond just the Meredith Davis: typical stereotypical arts and sports. Barry, Avaion: Wow, that's, yeah, very extensive. I love all the programming and it's very interesting that you're able to connect with Haile. I met him with going to Howard. He had Sankofa, his cafe across the street from campus. So I've had a lot of opportunities to have conversation with him. He's very inspirational to a lot of people.

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Meredith Davis: Beautiful person, beautiful person. Barry, Avaion: So I also saw another program within the Archives for the Women's Symposium. I believe it was kind of like a add-on, because before there was a men's symposium on campus, and your name is involved in that, so I wanted to also hear a little bit more about that event, the week-long events that you had as well. Meredith Davis: Oh, I need to think. See, I don't even remember. Barry, Avaion: I have the document, I can read off, like, some of the events that were there.

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Meredith Davis: I mean, you know, we get a little seasoned, and sometimes we don't always remember things, and I pretty much have been following masculinity studies since my doctorate, so that's partly why all of that is in the forefront of my mind. Barry, Avaion: No, no worries, no worries. So are there any other, I would say groups or individuals on campus that were involved in the AACC, organizations that you felt are very prominent in your memory or had a very large impact or collaborated very well with you? Meredith Davis: Yes, I would actually want to shout out Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Incorporated. Meredith Davis: I am also a member, and they are the reason that I got inspired to join. At that particular time, there were several organizations on campus. There were a lot of Divine Nine. And a couple of them had been expelled for hazing.

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Meredith Davis: And I noticed a lot of the organizations were doing more of the parties, but the Zetas always came in my office trying to do a program on health, or, you know, women's health, or I think they did something around Meredith Davis: infant mortality. They were always involved in community-based programs, and I really respected that. Meredith Davis: And they were a great group of young women, and they really Meredith Davis: wanted to, like, do community service. They really were about the sisterhood and service, they really were. The BSU was also a strong organization on campus, highly politically charged, as you can imagine. And I worked with members of the BSU.

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Meredith Davis: And I stayed in touch, actually, with a couple of the students for a while. One student I connected with, one of my closest friends from undergrad, and she ended up working for Barbara Mikulski. Meredith Davis: I can't remember Keisha's last name. Meredith Davis: But she graduated from Towson. She ended up in politics big time, and she worked for Barbara Mikulski. She worked on the Hill. I think she may have worked in Congressional Black Caucus. And so, you know, being Baltimorean, I always try to find ways to kind of infuse the community Meredith Davis: with Towson. I was a member of a church at that time, so some of our students, we would pick them up in vans and take them to service

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Meredith Davis: on Sundays, because they, you know, some of them felt isolated because a lot of students were from, like, New York and New Jersey, and they weren't close, or Philly, and they weren't close to home. So we try to provide those kinds of opportunities for them. Barry, Avaion: Okay, thank you. And then another thing I came across where you were appointed to the Board of National Association of Black Cultural Centers at the time, how did that kind of influence your position as the director, and, like, what opportunities kind of came from that as well? Meredith Davis: Reminded me 'cause I sure didn't remember that, but I sure was. Meredith Davis: I mean, folks gotta be proud of themselves, because it's hard to find stuff that far back sometimes, because a lot of times, people just kind just did their own work and didn't really record anything, didn't keep anything, any records. But yes, I was

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Meredith Davis: on the national board and pretty much was a programmatic board, but it was also a board that kind of worked towards advocating for what was happening, especially on predominantly white campuses with racism, white supremacy. We had an annual conference every year and we would plan and program for that. That was really great. I got a chance to meet Meredith Davis: the head of Kent State, because Kent State has a Black Cultural Center, and the director was, I mean, a heavy hitter at that time. And so it was great to be a part of the Black Cultural Center group that was national. Meredith Davis: Because, you know, we had a chance… I think I saw Danny Glover, because, you know, Meredith Davis: was a protester at San Francisco State, and he was one of the major protesters or leaders who helped spearhead them creating a Black Studies program. So there were a lot at that time, there were a lot of programs in Black Studies academic as well as co-curricular programs in Black Studies. And so we had the opportunity to kind of merge that curricular and the co-curricular experience.

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Meredith Davis: And I also think it helped the programming that we also, you know, increased, probably, visibility when it came to coursework and classes that were in African American Studies. Barry, Avaion: And that kind of leads into… I wanted to know a little bit more about the relationship between the center and, like, the university. I know, like, working within an institution, it has its own standards and kind of what they expect the center to look like. Barry, Avaion: So I kind of wanted to hear a little bit more about how you balanced that in terms of university expectations, and then what your goals or personal goals of students within the center were. Meredith Davis: Yeah. I don't

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Meredith Davis: remember a lot of controversy with the university and the Black Cultural Center at that time, and I think part of that was because at that time, it was more of a programmatic advising student groups. Meredith Davis: And I think it's important to mention that when multiculturalism hit, first it was black studies, and then it was black cultural centers, and then it was black student organizations. We were the ones that spearheaded all of the ethnic groups. We're the ones that inspired women's studies. We're the ones that inspired Chicano studies on the West Coast. Meredith Davis: And so it was more programmatic, so it wasn't as political. Meredith Davis: as some of the other cultural centers later on. So, what you find in the early part of the 21st century, you find it's more politicized because it's tied to academic programs. It's politicized because they have donors. It's politicized because students are starting to really get activated around certain issues that are happening on campus. And so, we didn't really have that.

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Meredith Davis: I mean, Meredith Davis: I don't mean to sound... I think they expected me to be a babysitter, you know? When I first started doing this kind of work, and it was around multicultural affairs, it felt like Meredith Davis: people just wanted you to watch Black students, make sure they were happy. Just, you know, keep them happy, keep them out of our offices. That was kind of, like, the unspoken, is, like, as long as they're happy, as long as they're not banging on people's doors, you know, Meredith Davis: let them do what they want to do. That didn't stop me. I had my autonomy. I did what I wanted to do. I mean, my supervisor, she appreciated and let me just

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Meredith Davis: had free reign, so I didn't really have a lot of issues with Meredith Davis: the administration. But what I did is broker a lot of relationships within the administration. So we had Black professors more than ever coming to our events and co-sponsoring things, showing up to student banquets and dinners and award ceremonies and all those kinds of things. I just wanted us all to get together collectively and think about what it means to have this kind of a center. Meredith Davis: And so, whenever I had a chance to co-sponsor an event with faculty or another student organization, we definitely tried to do that. Barry, Avaion: Okay. And then, what kind of guaranteed, or what kind of garnered success in this role for you? Like, what kind of… Meeting your goals, of course, but

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Barry, Avaion: how did you kind of, I guess, in a way, quantify success for you and the organizations that were involved within the cultural center? Meredith Davis: Yeah, I don't think metrics were in place back then. It was… I mean, I'm sure there was… Meredith Davis: There weren't any assessment tools. Let me put it this way. We would do surveys for events to see if they were successful. But the way in which we quantify now is nothing close to how, you know, we quantify. It was more quality, more qualitative. So it was more anecdotal. It was more seeing the increase of students being involved in organizations, Meredith Davis: seeing the increase of students utilizing the Cultural Center, because we also wanted to make that a space where students felt comfortable to just come in and study, to, you know, do smaller programs in it. And they came to us with not just

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Meredith Davis: issues about being a Black student on campus, but just all kinds of questions around academics, you know, career choices, those kinds of things. So we didn't really have a lot of quantitative Meredith Davis: data. And also, we were… Our operational budget wasn't coming from, like, donors, and there wasn't a lot of philanthropy at that time. And where there's philanthropy, there's assessment and metrics. Meredith Davis: But I had an operational budget, a state, you know, state line operational budget. So as long as I stayed to that budget, as long as I was able to spend the way it needs to be spent, nobody really Meredith Davis: did end-of-year reports to that extent. Like, we had numbers of people that attended events, numbers of students that actually came to the center.

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Barry, Avaion: And then another thing that I've kind of been questioning is, like, Barry, Avaion: how did you guys coordinate the use of the space? Because there were so many organizations that were involved, you know, hosting programs. I'm just curious, because you also said it's a small space that you guys were kind of working with. Barry, Avaion: So how did that go in terms of coordinating availability so that these programs could happen? Did you guys coordinate with any other organizations or spaces on campus? I know the Women's Center was probably prevalent around that time as well, so… Meredith Davis: We actually, I believe we just had a calendar. So, the coordinator for Multicultural… Well, he was the coordinator for

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Meredith Davis: Black Student Association. Meredith Davis: And, well, I don't know if it was a Black cultural center or if he was multicultural. Anyway, Meredith Davis: there was a calendar so students could just register an event. If the space was available, they could use it. So it wasn't that difficult, and because it was a small space a lot of times it wasn't used for major things. It was often used for like BSA meetings or smaller group meetings and gatherings, because it wasn't the kind of space that you could set up, you know, 40 chairs and have an event. So Meredith Davis: I also want to mention I did start to collect artwork, and so I started purchasing artwork as well.

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Meredith Davis: And so, I think, and I had resources, books and stuff, so students could access books and other types of resources. So that was one of the ways in which it was utilized, but the space was way too small to do any kind of major programming. Barry, Avaion: Okay. And then, lastly, I wanted to know in terms of transitioning out of the role and passing on the role to... After you was Yvonne Hardy Phillips. Kind of just what things you left in place in the Cultural Center or things that you wanted to keep going even after you weren't the director anymore. Meredith Davis: Yeah. So I was Meredith Davis: probably… I wasn't even 26 at this point, so I was still very young and unseasoned, so I kind of exited stage left.

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Meredith Davis: And I don't really know what happened. I know that I kept all my records for all the major programs I did. I don't know if the retreat still happened after that. I'm not sure if the scholar in res… Well, it was the Black Scholars Program. I don't know if that's still in place. Meredith Davis: Were any of those things, do you know if any of those things were still in place? Barry, Avaion: Yeah, I did see some evidence of there being a retreat afterwards. There were some scholars in Barry, Avaion: residence that came in to the university. I feel like Ms. Hardy Phillips did kind of continue that. She was also very big on, like, art and community as well, within the Cultural Center, so it did kind of… I feel like your

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Barry, Avaion: goals did continue throughout her work as well. Meredith Davis: That's beautiful. That's so nice. That's so good to know. Yeah, I just kind of left Towson. I didn't kind of look back. I was very young. I mean, like I said, I was maybe 26 or 27 when I left. Meredith Davis: So I wasn't in the same framework or mindset of an executive like I am now. You know, if you were to ask me about another place where I worked, I probably could give you more information, but I was just young trying to figure it out, and just excited to do the work. Barry, Avaion: Yeah, no, that's understandable. So is there anything else about your time at the AACC that we haven't discussed that you would like to include?

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Meredith Davis: I don't know. Meredith Davis: Let me think. Meredith Davis: One thing I will say Meredith Davis: is that I stood on business about being unapologetically Black.

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Meredith Davis: I stood on that business. I wasn't playing with people with that, and I still don't play with that. Meredith Davis: I've seen and witnessed how Black cultural centers and Black student spaces get co-opted by other people. Meredith Davis: And the next thing you know, they become multicultural. And then the next thing you know, you know, Black students aren't at the table, or as many at the table, there are other people at the table. And the anti-Blackness is real. Meredith Davis: And so, for me, I wanted students to think of the fullness of Blackness, the aesthetic, the politics, the literature, the culture, the history, the good, the bad, the ugly, because, I mean,

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Meredith Davis: when I was an undergrad, I did an anthropology report on NWA. So, I don't run. There's nothing I'm ashamed of that Black people have done that I should have ashamed to. We are who we are, and we are a multi-dimension of people from various ethnicities and backgrounds. And so, I wanted that to be what the Black Cultural Center was. It wasn't just necessarily about African American culture. It was about Meredith Davis: Black people in the United States understanding our connection with the diaspora and with Africa. Barry, Avaion: Okay, thank you. So that was my last question. Do you have any other questions, concerns, or anything? Meredith Davis: No. Would this be available for me to cite or notate as, you know, an interview or something? Or is it considered just the property of Towson?

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Barry, Avaion: No, so we do have the Unearthing Towson website, and under the archives, we do keep all of the oral interviews on video format on the website. So at some point, you will be able to view this back. Meredith Davis: Thank you. Well congratulations on your, you know, your academic pursuits. I'm always happy to hear about students wanting to learn more about our history and culture. Barry, Avaion: Thank you. Koot, Christian: Thank you so much. That was fascinating. It's always great to hear the sort of personal side of, as you suggested, little fragments that we have of some of these initiatives and sort of give flesh to what those spaces and things were like. So thank you so much for participating.

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Barry, Avaion: Thank you. Meredith Davis: Appreciate being invited. Koot, Christian: We will send you...