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Coming Full Circle: Practices of Resilience, 2021

Somebody was burning this down and I wanted to find out.

Reverend Jim Fairbanks

The Bronx has collectively endured years of adversity and hardship. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, residents faced down the social impact of segregation, privation, and political marginalization. Despite the stagnation of top-down progress, The Bronx remains activated through its decades-long history of mutual aid. Coming Full Circle amplifies the stories of those who survived and built community networks to reverse these harms. Schools, religious institutions, and grassroots organizing joined in tandem to strengthen this resilience.

The Bronx Community College Archives teamed up with Photoville and the Friends Of Aqueduct Walk (FOAW) to support Coming Full Circle: Practices of Resilience, a public exhibition featuring Aqueduct Park located across the street from the Bronx Community College campus, to produce a public exhibition with historical and community photos of local Bronx residents who grew up in and around this park.

The exhibition was unveiled on December 4 and includes Cynthia’s oral history interview with Reverend Jim Fairbanks, a pastor of the United Church of Christ and long-term Bronx advocate who shared his memories of the neighborhood as well as efforts to preserve and maintain this vital yet overlooked neighborhood green public space for the community. Listen to the short audio clip here. The full-length interviews are processed and made available at the BCC Archives’ Spotify channel. Many thanks to Bronx Community College fellow alumni Jacqueline Johnson-Carmichael who served as the project’s curator and oral history contributor, Pilar Maschi from Partnership for Parks/FOAW, Jasmin Chang from Photoville, and our oral history narrators Renea Bush and Jim Fairbanks.

This interview was part of the collaborative exhibit, Coming Full Circle: Practices of Resilience, conducted in partnership with Photoville and Partnership for Parks.


Reverend Jim Fairbanks

…is a pastor of the United Church of Christ and long-term advocate of the South Bronx. In this interview, Fairbanks describes when he arrived to the Bronx, his activism fighting for affordable housing and how he participated in local social justice campaigns as part of several ecumenical coalitions alongside the community.

Link to the Full Transcript…

Renea Bush

…is a member of University Heights Presbyterian Church and Bronx Presbyterian Churches.   In this interview Renea describes her childhood experiences while growing up in Sedgwick Housing; and the historical surrounding areas of Aqueduct Walk, Morton Playground and Bronx Community College.  Renea shares how her life experiences shaped her role in ministry and how she has become a community advocate for youth and human rights in the Bronx.  Her activism allows her to work with Friends of Aqueduct Walk and other community coalitions.

Link to the Full Transcript…

These and other interviews are now available on our Spotify channel.

For more information or questions, please reach out to Prof. Cynthia Tobar.

American Icons SPCUNY

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Collections Digital Collections Oral Histories

“Community Care during COVID”: Oral Histories of Mutual Aid in the Bronx

Image courtesy of Bronx Mutual Aid Network, 2020-2021

Mutual aid is an act of solidarity and care between neighbors. It stands in opposition to charity and top-down giving, because it is planned and executed by a community, for a community to not just provide food and essential items but also to educate and organize. Together, Bronx Community College Archives and Mutual Aid NYC (MANYC) have formed a partnership to collect oral history interviews from community mutual aid organizers across the Bronx. In collaboration with BCC students, the Archives created this oral history archive to document these Bronx stories. Ultimately, our hope is that these stories collected during the COVID-19 crisis will be made available to organizers, while also preserving documentation of mutual aid work for scholars and activists.

Following in the footsteps of earlier archives initiatives that acknowledge the impact of COVID-19 on our campus and community in the Bronx, the BCC Archives has teamed up with Mutual Aid NYC to develop a digital library and archive of mutual aid organizing tools and oral histories-created for, by, and in collaboration with mutual aid organizers in NYC. The Archives is particularly interested in documenting how these efforts fit within the larger history of community organizing and how this leads to residents feeling safe and secure during these turbulent COVID times. Thanks to funding by the Equity in Action program at METRO Library Council, Prof. Cynthia Tobar trained several Bronx Community College students over the summer of 2021 to collect interviews from Bronx-based mutual aid organizers as a part of the project. 

Image courtesy of Bronx Mutual Aid Network, 2020-2021

These last few months, we’ve been collecting stories of mutual aid in the Bronx, documenting the amazing grassroots efforts and care networks that have emerged locally in response to COVID-19. The students have collected stories from South Bronx Mutual Aid, North Bronx Mutual Aid, Rap4Bronx and Friends of the Aqueduct/Devoe Park. We are now working on sharing these back with community members and the general public. 

We wish to thank Metro’s Equity in Action program for giving us the opportunity to collect and archive organizing materials and oral history interviews from mutual aid organizing members who have worked tirelessly to care for their neighbors in the Bronx during the Covid-19 pandemic.


Adriana Phillips

…is the founder of the south Bronx Mutual Aid. In this interview, we discuss her roles and some of the challenges she faced throughout the pandemic. Such as supply food for those one in need, house eviction, and some other issues that the communities faced before and during COVID19. Besides, we discuss the lack of information that is in the community as well as the roles that we should play in the community.

Link to the Full Transcript…

LoriKim Alexander

…is a founding member and organizer with the North Bronx Collective and organizes the Black Veg Fest. We talk about her roles and the challenges faced throughout the pandemic spanning from food disparity, gentrification, and some of the adversities the communities faced before COVID. We also discuss health and the lack of information in these communities as well as the roles everyone plays in having community.

Link to the Full Transcript…

Chef Geneva Wilson

…is a community chef working with schools, hospitals, clinics, and senior centers. She used this experience to help her community during COVID. She talked about some of the challenges she faced and how she and others were able to develop plans to navigate those challenges. Chef Wilson also spoke on how the government can do better in providing resources to people during difficult times.

Link to the Full Transcript…

Community Care during COVID Oral History team, including BCC student interviewers with their paired narrators

  • Cynthia Tobar, Head of Archives
  • Ariadna Phillips (South Bronx Mutual Aid), interviewed by Jorge Guzman
  • LoriKim Alexander (North Bronx Collective), interviewed by Andrew Roland
  • Chef Geneva Wilson (Friends of the Aqueduct Walk/Devoe Park), interviewed by Elizabeth Asemota

These and other interviews are now available on our Spotify channel.

For more information or questions, please reach out to Prof. Cynthia Tobar.

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Collections Digital Collections Oral Histories

American Icons Oral History Collection

American Icons is a collaborative project centering music and oral histories by Americans who live in the shadows cast by our national myths and monuments.

Whose stories are told, whose erased?

American Icons addresses the mythology behind the National Anthem and other outdated commemorative art. We create new, local musical monuments based on oral histories of NYC residents.

Student and community residents from Bronx Community College (BCC), the home of the “Hall of Fame of Great Americans,” will share their own experiences learning and working among monuments that fail to reflect America’s diversity. This project addresses the mythology behind the National Anthem and other outdated commemorative art. Questioning and deconstructing nationalistic artifacts from the past, we can create space to spotlight and honor stories of America’s present. We hope this will paint a more representative picture of the community we envision and celebrate in the Bronx.

We are grateful to our community partners at the University Height Presbyterian Church for hosting our May 2022 performance.

This project is made possible by a 2021 Social Practice CUNY Faculty Fellowship award.


Jazmin Ramirez

Jazmin Ramirez is a student and former SGA president from Bronx Community College, where she is majoring in Business Administration with a focus on management. Jazmin is a first-generation American whose family is from the Dominican Republic and settled in the Bronx. She is currently a Baruch student studying Operation Management and Consulting, minoring in Communication Studies.

Link to the Full Transcript…

Renea Bush

Renea Bush is an Elder member of University Heights Presbyterian Church, an affiliate of Bronx Presbyterian Church, where she is active in the community and actively engaged in the Friends of Aqueduct Walk, a group that collaborates with Partnership for Parks that seeks to protect, conserve, and engage the community in this public space, located across the street from the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, which is located on the Bronx Community College campus.

Link to the Full Transcript…


Flier for the In-Person May Event.
This past event at University Heights Presbyterian Church, saw the collected oral histories of BCC student and local Bronx community residents. Composers Shawn Chang and Jorell Williams, led by Nathaniel LaNasa and Gregory Feldmann, interweaved them with musical context from America’s past and present. It all culminated in an evening of music that questioned and deconstructed nationalistic artifacts from the past, while creating space that honors stories of America’s present. We hope this will paint a more representative picture of the community we envision and celebrate in the Bronx.

by Cynthia Tobar, Nathaniel LaNasa and Gregory Feldmann

In collaboration with our narrators Renea Bush and Jazmin Ramirez

Music composed by Jorell Williams and Shawn Chang
Oral histories/Storytelling by Cynthia Tobar
Performed by Nathaniel LaNasa and Gregory Feldmann

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Collections Digital Collections Oral Histories

Raising Ourselves Up: Oral Histories from First Generation College Students at BCC

“Raising Ourselves Up”: Oral Histories from First-Generation College Students at BCC is a Collaborative Experiential Learning Pilot Project to build a video oral history archive to document the stories of first-generation college students on our campus. Each student’s time at BCC is unique, yet all students are bound to each other by the shared sense of struggle towards achieving a college education. Using video oral history interviews, students will examine the challenges faced by low-income, working-class groups of peer students from various ethnic, racial, and immigrant backgrounds, groups that BCC is dedicated to serving and who have been historically underrepresented in higher education. Our project will be a team effort, combining resources provided by the Archives (Prof. Cynthia Tobar) and Student Support Services/General Counseling Department (Dr. Nelson Reynoso). Beginning with interview collection in Fall 2016, this project will help inspire resiliency among BCC students by showing positive examples of overcoming adversity to attain a college education. 

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Collections Digital Collections Oral Histories

A Place Among the Greats: BCC Oral History Project

The Archives’ purpose for this oral history project is to collect the vivid and provocative memories of BCC from students, faculty, staff and alumni. This collective effort will include several voices: from the student who struggled against all odds to get their degree, to the instructor who recognized the potential of teaching nontraditional students, and alumni on their college experience and how it helped shape them into the people they are. The focus of our oral history work will be to document the era of 1970s when BCC moved into the University Heights campus to the present day. We will capture the history of political and cultural ferment, progressive and retrogressive changes, the antiwar movement, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the feminist and gay liberation movements, immigration and the Dream Act, and diverse challenges and success to these moments as experienced by members of the BCC community. We are also interested in collecting stories from student groups and clubs, department chairs, retired faculty, and past and current administrators.

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