Voices of History Scranton: Stories of family

Welcome to Voices of History Scranton, a PA Humanities project inspired by the works of renowned playwright August Wilson and designed to showcase the voices of everyday Black Pennsylvanians. We launched the project in Pittsburgh in 2024 and expanded to Scranton in 2025, inviting community members to traditional story circles to share personal stories about their lives in the community. 

In the first two videos, we meet women whose lives were shaped by family, faith, loss, and identity. Both stories illuminate the strength found in belonging, both newly discovered and long-cherished, and the ways in which the women carry memories, build connections and find meaning in where they come from.

“The Phoenix”

Sonia Morgan’s story begins in June of 1993 with her mother’s death and the birth of her twins the very next day. Two months later, she discovered a family secret: she was adopted. It wasn’t until 2020, in the isolation of the pandemic, that she found an online community of fellow adoptees, people with whom she felt safe sharing her story and who offered help in searching for her biological family. Morgan shares her journey of loss, longing, identity and reconnection. 

“(My search angel) was able to find that my biological mom had siblings, and she was able to find one of her siblings living in Williamsport. She gave me her name and address, so I wrote her a letter. I remember it was a Tuesday, I mailed out the letter to my Aunt Margaret. I told her a little bit of my story and enclosed some photos. Thursday of that week, she called me.”

“Daughters of a Coal Miner” 

Sisters Nadine Simms and Norma Jeffries look back on their family’s move from a small West Virginia mining town to Scranton in the 1940s. They share vivid childhood memories of growing up in a big family, from crowded bedrooms and coal-heated winters to church life, hayrides and sock hops, and the lessons from teachers, mentors and their hardworking parents that continue to guide them decades later.

 “…church was a very big part of our upbringing… It wasn’t uncommon for us to go to Sunday school, church, and then night church. So we were in church the whole day. I can remember as I hit my teenage years and Elvis Presley and those people were on Ed Sullivan at night, but we couldn’t see that because we were back in church at night. Everybody would be talking about it at school the next day….” – Norma Jeffries

Voices of History Scranton is produced by Morgan Moody with creative direction by Terrell Robinson and created in partnership with the Black Scranton Project. The initiative was made possible by funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development’s PA Arts and Culture Recovery Program, the Pennsylvania Department of Education Job Training and Education Programs Grant, and the Scranton Area Community Foundation. Watch more stories at PAHumanities.org/voices-of-history.