Researching my first living history character
Gibbs, Anthony (2010-11-04)

>>SANDRA: Good afternoon.  I'm Sandra and you are?

>>ANTHONY GIBBS: Anthony Gibbs.

>>SANDRA: Anthony, thank you for agreeing to share your narrative with the rest of us.  What's your story going to be about?

>>ANTHONY: My story is going to be about history.  I love history and when I was taking a history course in college I was learning for the first time about black soldiers that fought during the civil war.  So I'm going to be talking about my own story with them and how I began to develop characters with them and those types of things.

>>SANDRA: That sounds exciting. Okay, I'm ready to hear your story.

>>ANTHONY: Oh good, good. So yeah, I'm already a person who loves African American history. And learning about the civil war, I heard the story of the black soldiers that served in the civil war and became interested in their story. Watching the movie Glory really got me excited about it. 

So one of the first places I worked for in the city was Ohio Historical Society. From there I did living history of the black African Americans who lived in Ohio during the 1860s. 

And so from there I started doing more research on the actual black soldiers that fought during the civil war and there were many of them that came out of Ohio. There were those who went to Massachusetts, the 54th, and there were those who served for Ohio. 

So that process, for me, was an exciting process, but I really had to do a lot of research. I mean I read my basic civil war books and learned their story, and then began to read more books about black soldiers that fought, not just during the civil war, but throughout all of American military history. 

But going into details, and going into archives and seeing the newspaper articles when they came together, especially the 127th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the 5th USCT in Delaware where they actually mustered in. 

And I started to read the lives of the individual soldiers who represented Ohio and reading their stories, where they came from, the background; it really got me excited. 

And it really was an introduction for me because once I read their stories and began to present their stories in high schools and teach other students, my inspiration was these were stories that I didn't learn in school. And so I wanted to share those with every student so they would become just as inspired as I was inspired by their stories. 

So I took their stories to school and people loved it, and so I thought why not look at even more stories out there. And as I began to read more history, I learned of so many more men and women and an African American story you just did not know anything about. 

And so there were other chapters that I developed, other stories that I developed by just reading, research, and studying, and then I began to develop characters based off of those stories. So that's my history story. I mean my literacy story.

>>SANDRA: You've talked about how you got started and what you want to do with that. Tell us about some of the other characters and tell us what you're doing with the characters now.

>>ANTHONY: Okay. Well I started again with the USCT, United States Colored Troops, that fought during the Civil War and just a general story about their entire story, the whole group. Then I began to do more individualized stories about specific soldiers from Ohio. 

Then one day I read the story of a man named John Parker and I had never read the story before. He was a man who lived in Ripley, Ohio and was an Underground Railroad conductor. He was a black man who was a former slave who bought his own freedom then came to live in Ohio and worked on the Underground Railroad. This story was awesome. Reading this story, all I thought was, "Oh I've got to do this. I've got to do this." 

So John Parker is one of my more popular characters that I do. But also do Paul Lawrence Dunbar and just a lot of famous Ohioans. Paul Lawrence Dunbar was a poet and a writer. He was probably the first African American writer to reach international acclaim, so he's a character that I do. 

And then I've done [inaudible name], another group of heroes that I had personally. So I wanted to tell their story, honor them, honor their legacy. So there's more stories I've picked up. 

My newest one lately is George Washington Williams, the first black legislator from Ohio. His story is amazing with all the amazing things he did. So I'm excited about the newest story.

>>SANDRA: Thank you for sharing your narrative story.

>>ANTHONY: It was my pleasure.