John Gryder, a longtime chemistry professor at Hopkins, was a noted civil rights activist in Baltimore. He attended the California Institute of Technology for his undergraduate and some graduate work and received his Ph.D in chemistry from Columbia University in 1948 before coming to Hopkins to teach later that year. Gryder partnered with Rev. Dr. Chester Wickwire, the campus chaplain for many years, to help desegregate Baltimore and provide equal educational opportunities for African Americans during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. In this oral history, Gryder discusses being a professor and administrator on campus through various Hopkins presidencies and how Hopkins has changed as an institution from the 1950s forward, especially during the heyday of the student movement in the 1960s. This oral history is part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

Russell Baker, born August 14, 1925 in Morrisonville, Virginia, a small town across the state line from Harper's Ferry, West Virginia and not far from Frederick, Maryland, is a notable American author and Hopkins alumnus. An essayist and journalist for many years, Baker won his first of two Pulitzer Prizes in 1979 for his writing for The New York Times. He is notably one of the longest-running columnists in the history of the New York Times and The Baltimore Sun. Three years later, his first autobiography, Growing Up, won Baker his second Pulitzer. The primary subject of this first autobiography, his most well-known work, was his childhood in Virginia during the Great Depression, while the focus of his second autobiography, Good Times, was his extensive and varied half-century career in journalism, including a close look at his time with The Baltimore Sun. In this oral history, Russell Baker describes his childhood, World War II, and his student days at Hopkins (1942-1947), specifically his courses in English, his work with the News-Letter, and his general impressions of Hopkins. This oral history is a part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

Dr. Joyce Epstein, who earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Johns Hopkins (1974), is a research professor of education and sociology at the JHU School of Education and director of both the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the National Network of Partnership Schools. She discusses joining JHU's Center for Social Organization of Schools in 1974, working with James Coleman, a CSOS project with the Howard County School District, changing technologies and methods for performing quantitative research, challenges of conducting research and partnerships with school districts, and the impact of CSOS during its first 50 years. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral history series.