An Interview With Ronald Talley '69
Interview Transcript and Audio
This interview with Ron Talley '69 covers his life from his birth in 1948 to the present day (2021). It discusses his time living in New York City, after his parents moved there from South Carolina during the Great Migration. He was part of one of New York City's trial runs in public school desegregation. Ron's high school math teacher encouraged him to apply to Dartmouth, and Ron began his undergraduate education in 1965 at sixteen years old. As an undergraduate, he was the director of the Sociology Department's computer lab, and did computational sociology research with Project IMPRESS (Interdisciplinary Machine Process Research and Experimentation in the Social Sciences). He tutored younger students at Dartmouth, and spent a term as a residential tutor in Andover, MA with Project ABC (A Better Chance). After graduating, Ron stayed at Dartmouth for two years, first as a counselor and then as a professor in the newly formed Black Studies program. He speaks about the sacrifices he made to improve conditions for Black students at Dartmouth, and how he has interacted with Dartmouth since leaving Hanover. Now, Ron resides in South Carolina and recently retired as a professor and administrator at Tri-County Technical College, where he worked for forty years.