STAFF BIOS

Allison Sutton, Program Manager

Allison Sutton joined the BMRC in May 2020. In this role, she serves as the primary lead for the educational programming and initiatives, primarily the Archie Motley Archival Internship Program and the Summer Short-term Fellowship Program. She also works with Northwestern University's Office of Civic Engagement as a partner for the Black Metropolis Graduate Assistantship program, now in its second year. During the summer of 2022, Allison helped to pilot "Tools for Exploration & Sharing Chicago’s African American Archival Gems" a program bringing together history scholars and archivists with Chicago Public School history teachers looking to help their students understand the importance of archival collections to historical research. The program is on pause this year but will resume in the summer of 2024. Additionally, Allison is also responsible for the BMRC's principal communication tools, the monthly e-newsletter, and all social media activity and manages the daily operations of the consortium.

Before joining the BMRC, Allison enjoyed working in a diversity of roles within higher education. Most recently, as a member of the Student Success Center team at Loyola University New Orleans. Previously, Allison earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Spelman College and, after working for many years, a Master’s in Library and Information Science from Louisiana State University. Allison was awarded a Spectrum Scholarship from the American Library Association and was one of the first graduate students selected to receive a diversity scholarship (currently titled Kaleidoscope Scholarship Program) through the Association of Research Libraries (ARL.) Later, Allison was selected for the ARL's Leadership & Career Development Program and continued to volunteer with both ARL and the ALA in presenting diversity & recruitment programming.

While matriculating at LSU, Allison worked at the Camille Stivers Shade Black Heritage Collection at Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA. There she compiled metadata for a collection of slave narratives collected by John B. Cade, a former history professor at the university, and his students. Upon completion of her MLIS degree, Allison joined the Education & Social Science Library (now known as the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library ) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was the Psychology & Social Work Subject Specialist Librarian. Collection development, instruction, and outreach were key responsibilities in this role. Also actively engaged in research, Allison focused on African American library education history. The centerpiece of her work was a journal article about the Negro Teacher-Librarian Training Program, a little-known library training program in the early 20th century that had a significant impact on the diversification of the field of library education. In her last two years at the University of Illinois, Allison worked on the early phase of a newly added manuscript collection, the Shōzō Satō papers, and a digitization project to preserve the highly sought-after "Project 500" archival records, a late 1960s program created to recruit Black students to the university. During this period, Allison was also selected as the 2008-2009 Donald C. Gallop Fellow in American Literature by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Deep diving in the archives became a passion. Linking it with her lifelong interest in African American history and culture was to Allison, a perfect combination. When not working Allison enjoys cooking, walking, reading, watching documentaries, listening to jazz, blues, classic R&B, yacht rock, Louisiana zydeco and connecting with family and friends.