A Black Women’s Practice: Oral History from Fisk University’s Ex-slave Narratives and the Black Women Oral History Project

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building on recent works that question a simplistic, White narrative of the history of academic oral history, this article focuses on the labors of Black women related to the field. It spans the fifty years during which the first oral history programs began and the Oral History Association came to prominence by highlighting two twentieth-century bookends: Ophelia Settle Egypt collecting ex-slave narratives at Fisk University in the 1920s and the Black Women Oral History Project at Radcliffe College’s Schlesinger Library in the 1970s. 1 Spotlighting Black women’s oral history work—from project design, advising, and funding, to interviewing, transcribing, project management, and archiving—demonstrates how they developed ethos and practices that reflected themselves and their communities as part of the larger field and best practices. Their approaches are precursors to many of today’s innovations in oral history methods and theories.