Minority Archival Fellows 2016-2018

Afua Ferdnance received her Bachelor of Arts degree in History, focusing on American studies from Connecticut College in 2012. After graduation, she worked as a library assistant at Richmond Public Library before entering graduate school at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). At NCCU, Afua obtained an MLS with a focus on Archives and Records Management. Always one to combine her interest in African American history and culture with the archive profession, Afua volunteered, interned, and worked on African American collections at various special collection and archive institutions. While an undergraduate, she interned at Henrico Preservation and Museum services where she assisted curators with processing archive materials for the Virginia Randolph museum. Once in graduate school, she processed collections at the NCCU archives and worked on a city government funded project in order to collect and preserve archives found within Durham city public schools. At present, she is working as a Visiting Archivist for African American collections at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and is part of a committee called the “History keepers” whose aim is to expose undergraduate African American, and other students of color to various careers found in libraries, museums and other special collection institutions.

Charmaine Bonner attended Grambling State University, where she graduated with a B.S. degree in Early Childhood Education in 2013. She went on to earn her Masters of Library Science degree from North Carolina Central University in 2016, with a concentration in Archives and Records Management.  From 2014 to 2015, Bonner served as a graduate assistant in North Carolina Central University’s School of Library and Information Science library. Bonner then served as the 2015-2016 Franklin Research Center SNCC Collections intern in Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. She worked with the SNCC Digital Gateway Project, a three-year Mellon Foundation funded initiative charged with creating a permanent digital home for the legacy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Jehan Sinclair attended New College of Florida, where she graduated with a B.L.A. degree in Anthropology in 2013, concentrating in Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology. She went on to earn her Masters of Library and Information Science degree from Simmons College in 2016, with a concentration in Archives Management. Sinclair’s work experience includes serving as Cultural Resources and Park Planning intern for the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Elverson, Pennsylvania; Small Collections Processing intern for Emerson College Archives in Boston, Massachusetts; Discovery Services Graduate Worker for Simmons College’s Beatley Library; Acquisitions, Cataloging and Scanning Assistant at the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; and most recently as a Digital Exhibits intern for the Simmons College Archives.