Hooked on Oral History

Abstract

afternoon sun shone through the branches of the tree next to the bay window, dappling the tabletop and our lined paper notebooks with leafy shadows that wavered with the wind. It was Fall Semester 1973, and I had signed up for History X105.5, Documenting the Twentieth Century: An Oral History Approach, offered by the University of California, Berkeley Extension. We were a small group, two or three students, as I recall. Our instructor, Ms. Mimi Feingold, shared with us both her living space and the oral history know-how she had gained working with the Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Office. As required texts, she assigned Willa Baum's Oral History for the Local Historical Society and Oral History in the U.S., A Directory by The Oral History Association. She also provided supplemental material in the form of handouts that still fill a thick binder on my bookshelf. My memory has faded after almost thirty years, so I'm not sure exactly why I signed up for this class. I do recall coming upon Studs Terkel during this period of my life. I was captivated by his collections of interviews with everyday people telling their stories in their own voices. I may have been prompted to take the class after reading Terkel's Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. Several years earlier, I had graduated from U.C. Berkeley in English with a minor in history. Now, in 1973, I was working as a bookkeeper and travel consultant for L'Ente Nazionale Italiano per il Turismo, the Italian Government Travel Office in