The student journalists participating in the "Black on Campus" program, a partnership between "The Nation" and The Anna Julia Cooper Center at Wake Forest University. Photo courtesy Dr. Sherri Williams

There is a new series currently running in the magazine The Nation. It’s called “Black on Campus,” and the stories are coming from ten students across the country, including one from Wake Forest University.

The idea behind the project is to not only document the black experience on college campuses, but it’s also a training ground for future journalists. WFDD’s Bethany Chafin spoke with Dr. Sherri Williams, one of the directors of the program, who says she hopes this will help create more diversity in the media landscape.

Interview Highlights

On the purpose of the "Black on Campus" program:

With this project we're not only just giving the students an opportunity to develop their skills, but we're also giving them an opportunity to be able to be in connection and in community with some of the top editors and journalists in the country...what we're doing is not just producing these stories but we're also trying to have this as a professional journalism experience and get students ready to be able to have the skills to tell solid stories about diversity and inclusion in this country.

On what this series means at this particular cultural moment:

So what I think is important at this particular moment is that we really take a look at these students' stories and experiences and see that some of the same things that black college students and generations before them experienced are some of the things that black students are experiencing now, like the levels of discrimination and prejudice and how that is manifesting itself still exists. But there are some differences, because we know that since people like Charlayne Hunter-Gault and James Meredith integrated the University of Alabama and the University of Mississippi in the 1960s, that there were, of course, some clashes and problems that they faced. And what these students [today] experience is not necessarily mirroring those experiences, but some of the same racism still exists...we think that as a country we have come so far, and there has definitely been a significant amount of racial progress. ...