Nazareth University History Podcast

This episode of the podcast explores the origin of Nazareth College ca. 1924-1930. We meet the incredible faculty who came together to open and run the college, the story of its various locations, and the incredible students who were the first class to graduate in 1928.

Storyteller, educator, historian, community organizer, and a follower of Marcus Garvey, David Anderson will be celebrating his 90th Birthday on Tuesday, April 28. Growing up in Cincinnati, David Anderson was influenced by his parents and Marcus Garvey. He moved to Rochester, New York in 1956 and struggled against the structural racism that segregated the black population into crowded, overpriced, and substandard housing. In the late 1960s, he launched a crusade against lead poisoning which was a scourge afflicted African American children living in substandard housing. Currently, David uses storytelling to evoke the past and to empower people who struggle against racism.

Nazareth College was eager to build a men's sports program under Bob Kidera and Rose Marie Beston. This is the story of how Nazareth went from no-lacrosse to the pinnacle of Division III lacrosse in just six years.

Georgia Conner Youngblood was an extraordinary person, intellectual, gracious, and loving. She was also the first African American woman to graduate from Nazareth College (class of 1948). This podcast includes interviews with her children and a classmate to provide listeners with her biography and her legacy.

Clarisse Martens Coggins was born in Port Byron, New York in 1922. In 1939 she entered Nazareth College where she met some of the most extraordinary faculty in the college's history. She made lifelong friends, found a career, and continued to give back to the college. In this podcast she reminiscences about her life, her experiences at Nazareth College, and World War II.

Magdalen LaRow (1928-1990) was a Nazareth College alum and Sister of Saint Joseph who returned to campus in 1955 to create the Art Department, oversee the campus Peace Corps program in the 1960s, influence the creation of the Arts Center in the 1960s, and who left a lasting impression on the campus and Nazareth community.

To learn about this extraordinary person we speak with Deborah Janetos, Nazareth College Archivist, and Ron Netsky, long-time chair of the Art Department and a close friend of Sister LaRow.

For two decades students from Nazareth College have traveled to Germany and Poland to experience the sites where the Holocaust was planned and carried out. This transformational experience leads students to encounter survivors, stories of resistance, and the contemporary attempt to render suitable memorials to these events. This episode features a discussion of the trip by Jamie Fazio one of the leaders of the trip, who explains the ultimate purpose of the trip is the have students aware of injustices in our own time.