Middle Tennessee State University’s continuing mission to preserve history as it happens was the topic of a recent “MTSU On the Record” radio program.

Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes

Host Gina Logue’s interview with Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes, director of the Albert Gore Research Center and a professor in the university’s Department of History, firest aired July 21 on WMOT-FM Roots Radio 89.5 and www.wmot.org.

You can listen to their conversation above.

In it, Kyriakoudes said the Gore Center is accepting donations of artifacts from recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations for preservation, including placards, T-shirts, audio, video, photos and documents.

“We are reaching out to the public and asking people to save any materials that might be part of their own experience of the protests,” Kyriakoudes said.

“Students and scholars in the future, and for that matter in the present, can study them, learn from them and help remember these important events.”

The Gore Center also is seeking similar paraphernalia relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The center, located in the Todd Building in the center of the MTSU campus, also houses the official papers of former U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Sr., state legislators’ papers and seven collections of Congressional papers.

Other Gore Center collections include items from the 2017 “Murfreesboro Loves” counterprotests against white supremacist activities in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro and the LGBTQ community’s civil rights movement on campus and beyond, along with multiple first-person accounts of MTSU, Murfreesboro, Rutherford County, state, regional and national history.

To hear previous “MTSU On the Record” programs, visit the searchable “Audio Clips” archives at http://mtsunews.com.

For more information about the radio program, contact Logue at 615-898-5081 or WMOT-FM at 615-898-2800.