Adapting Critical Oral History Methodology to Freedom Movement Studies

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 1980s and 1990s, scholars James Blight and janet Lang created a methodology, called critical oral history (COH), as part of their investigation of the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. This article explores how our team of freedom movement veterans and scholars adapted the COH methodology during six years of experimentation between 2015-2021, as we drove for a deeper understanding of the US civil rights/Black Power freedom movement. We examine what part of the COH worked, what did not, and what innovations emerged.