Julian Valdivia is a History Student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, but he’s from Fort Myers, and over the course of this summer he’s been working with the Lee County Black History Society and the Southwest Florida Historical Society to collect oral histories from community elders, mostly in the Fort Myers Dunbar community. Julian works for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at UF...he’s using this research for his senior thesis which will be about desegregation and integration in Lee County. At the end of the summer all of his work will be available to the public at the local historical societies and at UF’s oral history archive in Gainesville. As summer begins to wind down, we thought it was time to bring Julian in and see how the process has gone.
UF Student Collects Oral Histories From Community Elders in Fort Myers
