2017 Cum Concilio Club Heritage Preservation Award
The Stone Fort Museum’s 2017 Cum Concilio Club Heritage Preservation Award honors the work of Dr. Bobby H. Johnson and the late Mrs. Birdie Wade
The award recognizes Mrs. Birdie Wade for her efforts in preserving stories, documents and buildings for the African-American community in East Texas. Wade’s African-American Heritage Project, 1904-2009, began around her kitchen table with friends and family members and documents more than 100 years of the African-American community in East Texas through the preservation of documents, newspaper articles, photographs, oral histories and more. Wade passed away in 2005, but her legacy lives on. SFA’s ETRC houses the catalogued African-American Heritage Project, which includes books, articles, photographs and video.
Likewise, the award recognizes Johnson for his work documenting oral histories in Nacogdoches that preserve East Texas’ stories. Professor Emeritus and former Regents Professor of History, Johnson conducted more than 1,000 interviews throughout his career with residents of East Texas on a range of topics, including the Great Depression, the oil boom in East Texas and World War I and II. In 2008, Johnson was awarded the Thomas L. Charlton Lifetime Achievement Award by the Texas Oral History Association for his significant contributions to the field, and the East Texas Research Center honored him by opening the Bobby H. Johnson Oral History Collection that same year.