Interview with Jennifer Early
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Interviewees
Early, Jennifer
Accessibility Note
Content is digitally accessible 2026.
Interviewer
Sunshine, Daniel
Producer
Sunshine, Daniel; Fazeli, Ramin
Description
This interview was conducted as part of the East Marshall Street Well Project. Daniel Sunshine, a VCU postdoctoral fellow and public historian, interviewed Dr. Jennifer Early, who serves on the Family Representative Council. In this interview, Dr. Early discussed how her career in nursing and community health led her to join the Family Representative Council. She discussed her role as the only white member of that body, leveraging her expertise on the research committee and deferring to her co-members on burial and memorialization. With her background in health administration and project management, Dr. Early reflected on the structural challenges of reparative community work and how to overcome them. She closed by outlining her hopes for the future of the East Marshall Street Well Project.
This interview begins with a discussion of Dr. Early’s career in nursing and as a community health case manager. These experiences motivated her to confront larger organizational challenges around community health and community-engaged research, which led her to earn a doctorate in health administration. During that time, she joined the Family Representative Council of the East Marshall Street Well Project. She reflected on her unique role as the only white “family member” of that body, and explained her strengths and the moments when she purposely defers to African American “family members.” She recalled her experience on the Research Committee considering the ethics of genetic testing on the ancestral remains, as well as her role in the 2019 return of Well remains from the Smithsonian. Dr. Early also voiced her disappointment in the City of Richmond for failing to create a unified public history landscape around the legacies of slavery. She concluded by discussing the organizational challenges faced by the project and potential remedies. Finally, she imagined what success would look like for the East Marshall Street Well Project.
Biographical Note
Dr. Daniel Sunshine is a public historian and scholar of slavery in the antebellum United States. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow with the East Marshall Street Well Project. He is tasked with realizing the vision of the Family Representative Council around research and memorialization. He also serves as Associate Director of the Health Humanities Lab at VCU, where he mentors students in their work for the East Marshall Street Well Project.
Dr. Jennifer Early is the Program Manager for Emergency Managment at VCU Health. She is a member of the Family Representative Council. She holds a doctorate in Health Administration. She began her career as a nurse and community health case manager.
Note
This interview description and biographical information was written by Daniel Sunshine.
Corporate Name Subject
Hampden-Sydney College. Medical Department--Corrupt practices; Virginia Commonwealth University--Corrupt practices
Topical Subject
Reparations for historical injustices; Human remains (Archaeology)--Repatriation; African American cemeteries--Desecration; Body snatching; History--Virginia--Richmond; Medical colleges--Corrupt practices; Universities and colleges--Corrupt practices; Racism in medicine; Racism against Black people; Public history; Community organization; Community health nurses; Nursing; Nurses; Health services administration
Place of Interview
Virginia Commonwealth University, The Workshop
City/Location
Richmond (Va.)
Genre
oral histories (literary genre)
Local Genre
oral history; sound recording; text
Type
Sound; Text
Digital Format
audio/mp3
Language
eng
Rights Statement URL
Rights
This material is protected by copyright, and copyright is held by Jennifer Early. You are permitted to use this material in any way that is permitted by copyright. In addition, this material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Acknowledgment of Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries as a source is required.
Collection
East Marshall Street Well Oral History Project
Contributors
Virginia Commonwealth University
Source
"Interview with Jennifer Early," East Marshall Street Well Oral History Project, M 573, Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University.
File Name
emswoh_earlyjennifer_interview.mp3
Disciplines
African American Studies | Digital Humanities | History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oral History | Social History | United States History