"We Know What the Problem Is": Using Oral History to Develop a Collaborative Analysis of Homelessness from the Bottom Up

Using audio, video, and radio interviews, the Cleveland HomelessOral History Project (CHOHP) has sought to foster the developmentof a collaborative analysis of homelessness from the bottomup. Designed to overcome problems with traditional academicresearch on homelessness, CHOHP explicitly seeks to share researchwith those living on the streets and in the shelters in Cleveland,Ohio and involve homeless people in the process of analysis.Rather than focusing on the personal pathologies of the homeless,the analysis that emerges from CHOHP suggests that trends indowntown and neighborhood real estate development, the criminalizationof the poor, the growth of the temporary labor industry, andthe retrenchment of the welfare system have led to the emergenceof powerful interests invested in perpetuating homelessness. Beyond analyzing these trends, CHOHP's formal research settinghas emboldened homeless people to act and become agents forsocial change.     

"I Didn't Do Anything Important": A Pragmatist Analysis of the Oral History Interview

In the course of gathering oral histories from women who servedin the Navy and Coast Guard during World War II, an unusualconversational pattern has emerged. The women almost invariablydiminish the importance of their wartime contributions; a commonrefrain is "I didn’t do anything important." Their individualexperiences, as revealed during the interviews, belie that assertion.In this paper, I will use the women's words to parse what ismeant by this rhetorical move. Do the women really believe theydid not do anything important? If so, why do they find it necessaryto participate in the very public process of oral history, placingtheir names and life stories within the historical record? Consideringboth the content and the context of the women's words from afeminist pragmatist philosophical base will help explain thisseemingly incongruent act. This article demonstrates that thewomen do not really mean to belittle their life experiences(and military service), but instead are using the phrase asa way to acknowledge society's expectations. The oral historyinterview, meanwhile, is used by the women to not only placetheir experience into the historical record but also to affirmthe importance of their wartime work.     

Method and Memory in the Midwestern "Lincoln Inquiry": Oral Testimony and Abraham Lincoln Studies, 1865 1938

This article narrates the role of oral testimony in the fieldof Abraham Lincoln studies from 1865 through the 1930s. Collectedin the form of letters, affidavits, and face-to-face interviews,this mounting body of "eyewitness evidence" dominated the discoursefor two generations and reflective, public practice culminatedin the organization of a "Lincoln Inquiry" in the Midwest duringthe 1920s and 1930s. For a time, practitioners successfullydefended themselves against increasing positivist assaults onthe credibility of oral testimony. Their interests and effortsresonate with later oral history practice and theory about method,authorship, performance, and memory, and their story highlightsthe contingency inherent in the development of oral historicalpractice in America.     

Recovering a "Lost" Story Using Oral History: The United States Supreme Court's Historic Green v. New Kent County, Virginia, Decision

Abstract In 1965, New Kent County, located just east of Richmond,Virginia, became the setting for the one of the most importantschool desegregation cases since Brown v. Board of Education.Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared "separate butequal" unconstitutional, both public schools in New Kent, theGeorge W. Watkins School for blacks and the New Kent Schoolfor whites, remained segregated. In 1965, however, local blacksand the Virginia State NAACP initiated a legal challenge tosegregated schools, hoping to initiate desegregation where theprocess had yet to begin and to accelerate the process in areaswhere token desegregation was the norm. In 1968, the U.S. SupremeCourt decision in Charles C. Green v. the School Board of NewKent County forced New Kent County and localities across thestate and nation to fulfill the promise of Brown. While thecase has been part of the court records since it was decidedin 1968, it has remained largely unknown to the general publicand many scholars of the era. This article is an attempt touse the tool of oral history to present the people and the storybehind Green v. New Kent County and to add another piece tothe puzzle that was school desegregation in this country.     

Past Contradictions,Contemporary Dilemmas: Egypt's 2013 Coup and Early Islamic History

To what extent is the present of Muslim societies influenced by their past? How do politics and historiography relate to each other in medieval and contemporary Islam? More specifically, can events from early Islamic history help us understand current events in Muslim countries? By discussing how some of these remote events have contributed to the emergence of certain political views, this article argues that they are still relevant to the present in Muslim countries (in our case here, Egypt) and can indeed help us understand an important part of the picture of a recent event that may have a long lasting influence on the present and future of both the country and the region where it occurred. This event was the removal of Egypt's first ever democratically elected president by a military coup on July 3, 2013, one year after he assumed office. By examining the various religious and political hermeneutic strategies used by some medieval and modern Sunni scholars to support or condemn certain acts of rebellion while opposing others, the article seeks to demonstrate — through the comparison of some of these strategies — the contradictory positions of medieval Sunni scholars regarding events from early Islam, and thus the dilemmas that their modern counterparts face when dealing with contemporary events.     

"If I See Some of This in Writing, I'm Going to Shoot You": Reluctant Narrators, Taboo Topics, and the Ethical Dilemmas of the Oral Historian

This essay argues that in the co-creation of the historicaldocument that is the oral history narrative the oral historianmust balance sensitivity to the interviewee with the professionalresponsibility to preserve history, without abdicating the roleof trained interpreter of the past. During the course of a lifehistory interview with a lightskinned African American woman,Marguerite Davis Stewart, the authors confronted a variety ofethical concerns over the shared authority of the interviewwhen the narrator disagreed over the range of topics to be covered—specificallythe issue of racial identity—and the final product. Theauthors conclude that scholars who employ oral history in theirresearch must confront taboo but historically significant topicsthrough an open dialogue with their narrators, but that theyultimately control the interpretation of the resulting information.     

A People's History of Industrial Philadelphia: Reflections on Community Oral History Projects and the Uses of the Past

Abstract: In this article the author reflects on three community oralhistory projects he conducted in Philadelphia between 1978 and1984. Brief histories of these projects are used as an opportunityfor reflections on urban folk history, and some of the forcesand often unacknowledged "purposes" of the oral historian thatshape interviews and the history that emerges from them.     

Myths and the "Politics of Exceptionality": Interpreting Chicana/o Narratives of Achievement

Abstract: The author draws from select topical life histories conductedwith individuals who enrolled in doctoral programs at UC Berkeleyduring a ten-year period beginning with 1968. She examines themyths surrounding academic achievement for people of Mexicandescent and how these myths affected her initial interpretationof their childhood stories about their parents' relationshipto their achievements. She considers the interpretation of thesenarratives from the perspectives of various schools of thoughtand argues that the issue of educational achievement by minoritygroups is subject to a "politics of exceptionality." Hence,high academic achievement is not considered normative, and studentswho do achieve are treated as exceptions, not only to the presumedmeritocracy, but as exceptions to their racial/ethnic group.By individualizing their achievements and focusing on theircharacteristics as individuals, the focus of social policieswith respect to educational attainment remains focused on theindividual achiever and not on the institutional processes andstructural opportunities that maximize the possibilities forachievement.     

"That Food of the Memory which Gives the Clue to Profitable Research": Oral history as a source for local, regional, and family history in the nineteenth and early twentieth century

Numerous local, regional and family historians in the nineteenthand early twentieth century collected oral narrations and conductedinterviews as a form to document information that otherwisemight have never been preserved. Family historians, in particular,not only practiced interviewing relatives for family histories,but also encouraged the practice in how-to-do manuals amongtheir peers. While advocating the practice, family historiansalso reflected about the value of "traditionary evidence" collectedthrough interviews and other means. These reflections by familyhistorians mirrored the discussions about the value of traditionsand memories as historical sources among several professionalhistorians at the time. These reflections were shaped by a modernizedunderstanding of tradition, which combined a reverential approachto the authoritarian element of tradition with a critical approachquestioning the validity of tradition. In this context, oralhistory was both a tool to negotiate the value of traditionand a mirror to the contemporary understanding of tradition.     

"From Farm to Factory: Transitions in Work, Gender, and Leisure at Banning Mill, 1910 1930s"

Abstract This study explores new and traditional forms of leisureenjoyed by white southern rural millhands at Banning Mill between1910 and the 1930s. As they moved from farm to factory, millhandsexperienced unfamiliar working conditions, changes in genderroles in and outside the home, and an increase in leisure time.While both farmers and millhands had opportunities to socialize,this study will compare traditional forms of entertainment availableto farmers with similar and new recreations found in rural millvillages such as Banning Mill in Carroll County, Georgia. A comparison of leisure activities also reveals new ways inwhich rural cotton millhands separated themselves in socialsettings. Gender divisions in village recreation reflect changingroles at home as men and women coped with the transition fromfarm to factory in different ways. Specific or individual interestscreated an atmosphere in which wives, husbands, teenagers, andchildren typically socialized with members of their own sexand age. Juxtaposing the ways in which men and women chooseto spend their free time suggests husbands had a more difficulttime adjusting to work and life in mill villages than theirspouses or children.     

构建中国特色、中国风格和中国气派的中国口述史学--关于口述史料与口述史学的若干问题

口述史料主要指经过口传或为后人记录成为史料的民间传说、社会歌谣、历史人物讲话、录音录像以及访问调查的原始资料,对这些资料的发掘和整理被称作口述史学.在西方,现代意义上的口述史学建立于20世纪30～40年代前后,与这些国家相比我国至今仍充其量只有一些口述史的实践,其发展受到多方面的限制.建议成立有关组织,召开研讨会,构建相关规范,制定相关规划,形成和发展中国特色、中国风格和中国气派的口述史学.     

"It tears the heart right out of you": Memories of Striker Replacement at International Paper Company in De Pere, Wisconsin, 1987 88

In the summer of 1987, more than 370 workers at Nicolet PaperCompany in De Pere, Wisconsin, walked out on strike after refusingto agree to a wide range of concessions demanded by InternationalPaper Company (IP), Nicolet's parent company. Within a few weeks,however, IP had permanently replaced the strikers, a tacticthat became increasingly common in the 1980s. The author usesoral history interviews to provide a valuable, unique insightinto the effects of the permanent replacement tactic, whichbitterly divided the small community and left workers with psychologicalscars that were all too apparent more than a decade later. Asthe Nicolet workers were part of a broader showdown betweenIP and the United Paperworkers' International Union, the articlealso helps to illuminate the history of a major labor disputeof the 1980s.