Graduate student Bria Felician first developed her love and passion for history when her mother pushed her and her sister to do historical projects in school.
“She would always require us to do some Black history thing when I was in elementary school,” recalled Felician. “I remember my sister did an entire project on the history of hip hop.
“It was definitely my mom” who greatly influenced her love of history, especially Black women’s history, added Felician, who is finishing up her master’s degree work at Georgia State this spring. “What really always stuck with me is the idea of people being forgotten.”
I was a subscriber of Felician’s “The Black Sportswoman” newsletter that she published weekly until she took a break while working on other projects. Last month, she and I chatted about her time away and going forward after she posted her “100 Years of Black women in sports + a catch up” on Substack.
The Masters of Heritage Prevention she is enrolled in requires participating in an internship, explained Felician. “I really want to focus on basketball,” as she did in her internship at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA last summer.
“I did end up working on the Black basketball exhibit,” she pointed out. “My main side or intention was to add more women’s basketball stories, because the only one they had in the Black basketball exhibit was Ora Washington.”
Washington (1898-1971) was a pioneer in basketball as winner of a 1931 national title for a local YWCA team in Germantown, Pa., then playing with a Black female basketball team that won 11 straight national championships. She was inducted into the HOF in 2018.
“I ended up adding people who were well known if you know who these people are,” continued Felician. “But if you don’t, you may not know them.”
Her biggest project she is most proud of is being published in “Essence Magazine.” Her article, “100 Years of Black Women in Sports,” included interviews with a coach, an athlete, and Dr. Amira Rose Davis, a nationally renowned Black professor.
“It is so surreal,” admitted Felician. “To be in ‘Essence’ is like a dream.”
She also did a 37-minute audio piece based on a three-hours-plus oral history interview with her grandmother. “Versie Jean: A Love Story” served as her final project for her Oral History class.
On stepping away from her original newsletter, Felician said it was at first a concern: “I was worried that I wouldn’t achieve because I took a break from the newsletter,” she said. But looking back now, Felician noted that it just reaffirmed her love and passion for history.
“I’m in my last semester of grad school.” She’s currently working on her capstone project, which is due in April, and she continues to be available for other projects such as speaking and writing on Black women athletes and sports history, along with her newly named “Bria + History” newsletter.
“There’s so much history,” noted Felician. “There’s so many people that are overlooked. There’s still a lot of people who are extremely important parts of the story and are very, very important to the narrative and the idea that Black women have been playing sports forever.”
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.