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Agents of Change: Portraits of Activism in the History of Duke Health is a 2023-2024 oral history project documenting the work of activists and "change agents" throughout Duke's history. As Duke approaches its centennial and engages in a university-wide project to illuminate its past and set goals for the future, what voices are being silenced and what stories are being left out?

Institutional histories all too often limit their task to summarizing the accomplishments of past leaders and department chairs. Medicine, in particular, has a long history of celebrating "giants who roamed the halls" — larger-than-life physicians and scientists exemplifying nearly superhuman skills as clinicians, teachers and researchers. Less remembered are those figures whose voices challenged the status quo — individuals who (quietly or loudly) advocated on behalf of the excluded and marginalized.

From left to right: Lovest Alexander, Jr., Eleanor Easley, Bertram Walls, Rebecca Reyes, Donald Moore, Joanne Wilson, Kathryn Andolsek, Julia Giner

Duke Health has a rich legacy of such insider/outsider agents of change, many of whom came from underrepresented minority backgrounds. These stories, while often left out of “official” institutional histories, are the ones that need to be collected, preserved and made accessible.

Building off of work and connections already forged by the Trent Center, our team members identified a variety of potential “change agents” from Duke Health and the Schools of Medicine and Nursing during the second half of the twentieth century. Team members identified figures representing a variety of backgrounds and identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, religion) and a range of forms of activism, from radicals directly engaged in political and organizational work to reformers working within the constraints of the system.

From this, we created a digital collection of historical documents and oral histories highlighting the contributions of over 15 underappreciated activists in the history of Duke Health. All team members were trained in oral history best practices, including consent, interviewing, ethics and documentation, and all interviews have been transcribed and will be preserved in the Duke University Medical Center Archives.