Year Honored: 2002

Birth: 1947

Born in: Wilmington, DE

Biography

Dr. Jeanne D. Nutter is an oral historian, teacher, and speaker. She started her career in the 1980s when she worked for Phi Delta Kappa Sorority visiting elementary schools throughout Delaware during Black History Month to present African American Poetry. Nutter attended the University of Cincinnati for her B.A and M.A and earned her Ph.D. from Howard University.

She has collected more than 50 hours of oral histories, including interviews with Jane E. Mitchell, African American Nurse; Reverend Maurice J. Moyer, Civil Rights Activist; Dr. Eugene McGowan, African American School Psychologist and Community Leader; and Edward Loper, African American Painter.

Nutter’s interviews led to her producing three short documentary films. Her most notable was a film / exhibition for Hagley Museum titled ‘Separate Place: The Schools P.S DuPont Built,’ which told of Pierre S. DuPont and the 89 Delaware Schools he built for African Americans throughout the state. The documentary won an honorable mention at the 2003 Wilmington Film Festival, Best Documentary at the 2012 Black International Cinema Berlin Festival, and Award of Merit at Impact DOCS in 2016. She co-produced ‘Voices of the Elders: Stories of African Americans in Delaware,’ with the Delaware Historical Societies Center for African American Heritage, WITN22, and the city of Wilmington. Nutter also won a Forest Pogue Award from Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region for her work, saying “documenting African American Oral Histories on film has been my passion for nearly 20 years. I am honored to receive the Pogue Award.”

Nutter has also authored two books, ‘African American History in the Black American Series: Delaware’ and ‘Growing Up Black in New Castle County.’ Fellow oral historian, Dr. Roger Horowitz said of her, “I can attest to the significance and quality of her oral interviews; we have nothing that compares with this interview set documenting Jim Crow education in American – nothing nationwide. Moreover, the interview is of the highest quality… Jeanne Nutter has that rare ability to think big and to also watch every detail. Working with such a visionary has been one of my greatest professional pleasures at Hagley.”

In addition, Nutter has been featured in Redbook Magazine, selected as a Leadership in America Fellow, part of the Bishop Primo Lecture Series, was chair of the African American History and Tourism Group, and was President of the Delaware Chapter of the AARP. Since 2001, Nutter has worked at Bloomfield College in New Jersey as a broadcast journalism communication professor.

For her work, Nutter has been awarded the Wilmington NAACP Award in Education (2000), the Phi Delta Kappa Leadership Award, the Delaware State Education Association’s Humanities and Civil Rights Award, and the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League’s James H. Gilliam Jr. Humanitarian Award.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Sources and Additional Readings

Conversations on african american history. Hagley. (2019, January 9). Retrieved January 13, 2022, from https://www.hagley.org/research/programs/conversations-series-african-american-history

Dr. Jeanne Nutter wins lifetime achievement award for oral history work. Hagley. (2019, January 9). Retrieved January 13, 2022, from https://www.hagley.org/librarynews/dr-jeanne-nutter-wins-lifetime-achievement-award-oral-history-work

A separate place: The schools P.S. du pont built. Hagley. (2017, December 18). Retrieved January 13, 2022, from https://www.hagley.org/research/separate-place