Oral History Program Research Articles

Joseph A. Labuta and His Life in Music Education: An Oral History

Oral history is a relatively new technique in historical research. Some of the first efforts in oral history (of former slaves and poor rural white populations in the southeastern United States) were sponsored by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. (1) Allen Nevins started the oral history program at Columbia University in 1948, (2) and in 1966, the Oral History Association was formed. (3) A primary purpose of oral history has been to document memories and reflections of past events as seen through the eyes of a particular person. Oral history differs from a traditional autobiography in that the interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee serves to draw out memories and clarify issues provided by the interviewee. (4) The result of this process is the creation of a primary source document that can be used by other historical researchers. Several oral history projects have been conducted in music and in music education. Musical figures such as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, and Charles Leonhard have been studied using these techniques. (5) One of Charles Leonhard's former students was Joseph Anthony Labuta, who followed his mentor's example and also became a leader in the music education profession. He is the focus of this oral history project. The purpose of this study was to create a preliminary biography on Dr. Joseph A. Labuta, one of the major figures in American music education during the second half of the twentieth century. Labuta's recalled memories were used to explore selected aspects of music education history during that period. Labuta, professor emeritus of music education at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, has written four well-known music education textbooks that are still currently in use, as well as influential articles and monographs. (6) He has been a leader in the field of music education in the United States, holding a number of offices at the state and national levels of MENC: The National Association for Music Education.(7) Over the course of his career, Labuta has left a legacy of more than 900 music education and conducting students who have benefited through his teaching. (8) Method Labuta was contacted by the study author and agreed to participate in the project. Dates for the face-to-face interviews were set, and Labuta provided the researcher with preliminary written material to assist in the preparation of the interviews. Oral history life techniques were used to create the materials for this project. (9) A series of autobiographical interviews were conducted with Labuta, focusing on a variety of topics related to his career. Bennett's 1992 oral history project on Charles Leonhard served as a model for the selection of interview topics. (10) The list of topics below was agreed upon by the researcher and Labuta. 1. General Life Overview 2. Public School Teaching 3. University of Illinois 4. Central Methodist College/Shepherd College 5. Leonhard and University of Illinois 6. Early Articles 7. Wayne State University, 1967-1977 8. Wayne State, 1977-1987 9. Wayne State, 1987-present (retirement) 10. Courses 11. Books: Teaching Musicianship in the High School Band 12. Books: Basic Conducting Techniques 13. Books: A Guide to Accountability in Music Instruction 14. Books: Music Education: Historical Contexts and Perspectives 15. Articles 16. Journal of Research in Music Education (JRME) Editorial Committee 17. Professional Activities (officer, clinician, conductor) 18. Student Accomplishments An open-ended format was used, based on the outline prepared for each interview session. (11) Neutral, open-ended questions were used to elicit responses from Labuta and were organized either by chronology or by general topic area. …

From Oral History to Leadership in the Aboriginal Community: A five year journey with the wagga wagga aboriginal elders group incorporated

This paper aims to identify the links that show how the establishment of an Aboriginal Elders Group in the Wagga Wagga community has contributed to the social capital of the Wagga Wagga Aboriginal Community. The paper will highlight the key educational episodes: oral history program; incorporation of the Elders group; self governance of the group, and confirmation of identities of community members that show how social capital has accrued and community capacity building has occurred. It will also highlight the leadership role and the accumulation of community civil capital that has developed for members of the Aboriginal Elders group over the time that they have been together.

Documenting Liberal Arts Education from a Faculty's Perspective

Academic archivists have an opportunity to document the lives of key members of the institution. An oral history interview is one way of effectively presenting and preserving institutional history from multiple perspectives. This article discusses a recent oral history program at Rollins College conducted by the College Archives as part of a student-faculty research project. These oral history interviews add human voices to the existing archival records and enhance the understanding of liberal arts education from a faculty's perspective. As a tool to survey and preserve institutional history, the Rollins oral history research program provided students with meaningful learning experiences, raised the awareness of the special collections, and promoted the value of the archival services in the academic community. The program had as a long-term objective the establishment of a new college tradition to interview each faculty member upon his or her retirement.

Appalachian Heritage : The Life of a Magazine

FEATURED AUTHOR—ALBERT STEWART Appalachian Heritage: The Life of a Magazine ____________ Bill Weinberg Many people know that Al Stewart was the heart and soul of the Appalachian Heritage magazine. Only a few people know the events surrounding the birth and continued existence of the magazine over time in its earlier years before landing at Berea College. * * * InJuIy1971,1arrivedinPippaPasses, Kentucky, freshfromtwoyears atJohns Hopkins School ofAdvanced International Studies, comparing the problems of economic development in Central Appalachia to those of other lesser developed areas of industrialized countries such as the Massif Central in France. I had been hired by President Will Hayes to teach political science and be Director of the Appalachian Oral History Project at Alice Lloyd College. The College was in the midst of a financial crunch and shortly after my arrival, it was decided that I would write a grant for the National Endowment for the Humanities aimed at both supplementing the College's ongoing programs and at the same time establishing a new Appalachian emphasis for the College, building on the oral history program. The result was a three year grant from NEH that created an Appalachian emphasis program called the Appalachian Learning Laboratory. The grant provided funding for theAppalachianOral History Project, an extensive Appalachian collection in the College's library, Appalachian summer theatre and the Appalachian Heritage magazine. Appalachian Heritage had been a long-time dream of Al Stewart's, and he was happy to be its editor, althoughhe was far less enamored with the idea of a young whippersnapper like me being his supervisor. Of course, as all who knew him can attest, supervision was for Al an oxymoron. It was no coincidence that Al's initial editorial comments in the magazine appear under the heading: "From the Kingdom at Yellow Mountain." The first issue of Appalachian Heritage was published in 1973 and it has been published on a quarterly basis ever since. Al's Advisory and Contributing Editors would have made any editor proud: Harriet Arnow, 37 Dean Cadle, Billy C. Clark, David Madden, Jane Mayhall, Edward Morris, Jean Ritchie, Kiffin Rockwell, Bennie Lee Sinclair, James Still, Hollis Summers and Eliot Wigginton. (Al later persuaded Fred Chappell and Jim Wayne Miller to serve on his Advisory Board.) Soon after the magazine's publication, the Library Journal reviewed it: While concerned with the Appalachian region in terms of history, folklore, crafts, music, etc, [Appalachian Heritage] has broad appeal to be almost a general magazine in the category of Yankee or in the same area as Foxfire. It has an intrinsic honesty, unusual for regional magazines, which are understandably concerned with advertising the area rather than pointing up its defects....It is particularly valuable, entertaining, and highly informative, though, for recollections and local history, e.g., death and burial customs and sketches of the mountain people. This aspect makes it a worthy addition for any library. Al edited Appalachian Heritage faithfully for Alice Lloyd College for more than ten years, even after retiring from the Alice Lloyd faculty. He seldom departed from the magazine's quarterly schedule, and then only to publish a double or special issue. But the College had a new President, Jerry Davis, and, in Spring 1982, Davis decided to withdraw the College's financial support of the magazine. The last issue published by the College was a double issue—Winter/Spring 1982—printed in May 1982 and, if the College thought it would contain any mention of the changes ahead, it hadn't learned Al Stewart after all those years. In March 1982, Davis told reporter Lee Mueller that economics dictated his decision. "It was costing us several thousand dollars a year, and that was even with Al donating his time."(Al worked on the magazine for six years without being paid by the College.) Mueller's article, entitled "Deathwaits forAlice Lloyd magazine: Money shortage means the death of noted magazine," stirred up a groundswell of support for the continuation of Appalachian Heritage. A new corporation, Appalachian Heritage, Inc., was formed in May 1982, with a Board of concerned citizens including Al Perrin, Will Hayes, Ron Daley, Paul Allen, Gary Conley, Kathy Sloane, G.B. Johnson, Jr., Mayor Bill Gorman, Al, myself...

The Warriors Project: Diversity and the Interpretation of American History in the U.S. National Park Service

The Warriors Project: Diversity and the Interpretation of American History in the U.S. National Park Service

From Afro-Cuban rhythms to Latin jazz

Fernandez, Raul A. From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz, Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2006. 199 pp. Much of research behind Raul A. Fernandez's From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz comes from author's participation as a consultant to Smithsonian Institution's Jazz Oral History Program from 1994 to 2000. While working in this capacity, Fernandez interviewed Afro-Cuban musicians in United States and throughout world. His access to these musicians-Celia Cruz, Mongo Santamaria, and Israel Cachao Lopez, to name just a few-is both greatest asset to his short book and, unfortunately, underscores its most significant weakness. While study tries to assess influence of Afro-Cuban over course of twentieth century, and Cuban son in particular, result is an unevenly divided introduction to Cuban dance music: one third historical and theoretical analysis, two thirds biographical sketches with rich anecdotal testimony. As Fernandez organizes book, chapters one, two, and three are devoted to roots of Cuban son, undeniably, and unquestionably, foundation of Cuban popular in twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Fernandez seems to feel it necessary to prove this point, along with others like importance of dancing in Cuban music, as if there were ever a debate over subject. Nonetheless, historical information provided is accurate, if not new, and does offer a concise overview of genealogy of Cuban dance from African drumming traditions through rumba, culminating in son of early 1900s. What is presented, however, has already been explored in greater detail in works by Cristobal Diaz Ayala, Helio Orovio, Natalio Galan, Leonardo Acosta, Peter Manuel and John Storm Roberts. This shortfall could be mitigated significantly if book were clearly geared toward a popular, that is, non-academic, audience. Unfortunately, Fernandez embraces terminology such as transculturation, and imagined communities without explanation or even acknowledgment of Fernando Ortiz or Benedict Anderson, a move that likely alienates popular reader. After historical background of son, remainder of first part focuses on what Fernandez calls, following lead of Willie Colon, the salsa concept. While there is room for such a discussion-one that distinguishes a unique attitude and point of view identifiable with salsa-the author never really gets there, instead referring vaguely to ethnic identity and Latino pan-ethnic music without coming any closer to a definition of salsa than his predecessors (17). Salsa has always been a slippery term, and for good reasons that at least initially were more political and economic than aesthetic. In fact, cornerstone of any attempt at a definition of salsa must begin with its development in United States in late 1960s and 1970s, a period after Cuban Revolution when this permutation of Cuban son, performed by Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican emigres, was distanced from its Cuban roots and guilt-by-association with Fidel Castro in order to sell records during Cold War. An argument can be made that two unique strands of dance based in Cuban son developed soon after 1959. One remained on island and is typified by Los Van Van, Irakere, and, recently, NG la Banda. Likewise, another strand developed in exile, mostly in United States, and is performed by Cubans and Cuban-Americans, as well as other Latin American immigrants and their children. This music, saka, is represented by Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamarfa, Willie Colon, Ruben Blades, Johnny Pacheco, and many others associated with Fania record label. Fernandez, however, elects not to address this important historical and cultural development. Except for a few cursory references, book barely mentions 1959 revolution and its impact on Cuban dance on and off island. …

Jean Renoir and the Allied War Effort: Saluting France in Two Languages1

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1. This essay was originally published in Cinegrafie (Bologna, Italy) no. 17 (July 2004). Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own. 2. To be clear, I studied prints of A Salute to France held by UCLA and by AMPAS, and I viewed the three surviving reels of Salut à la France at the Academy Film Archive. It is the French version that is truly rare. I have not attempted to find the locations of other prints of the English-language version because I believe there are many of them. Despite this, however, A Salute to France is almost never screened and, to my knowledge, it has not appeared on television or come out on VHS. A DVD edition that included both versions of the film would be welcome and useful. 3. Memo summarizing February 3 telephone call ‘Salient points made by Phil Dunne’ and letter to Renoir from Dunne, February 4, 1944, Jean Renoir Papers, Arts-Special Collections Library, UCLA. 4. See the Guide to Records of the OWI at http://www.archives.gov, under the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). 5. Take Two: a life in movies and politics by Philip Dunne (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1980), additional points were taken from ‘An Oral History with Philip Dunne’ by Douglas Bell, Oral History Program, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, 1991, from interviews conducted in 1989. 6. Burgess Meredith, So Far, So Good (Boston, Little, Brown & Co, 1994), pp. 62–63. 7. UCLA's Arts-Special Collections Library holds an exceptionally rich collection of Renoir's correspondence in the collection ‘Jean Renoir Papers’. Some letters now in the Renoir Papers from this period are contained in Lettres d’Amérique by Jean Renoir, with excellent annotations by Alexander Sesonske (Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1984) and some others are included in Jean Renoir, Letters, edited by David Thompson and Lorraine LoBianco (London, Faber and Faber, 1994). But important letters cited here are not included in either collection. 8. Renoir to Colonel Jason Joy, June 1942 and Renoir to Lt. Col. Charles Stodter, July 6, 1942, Jean Renoir Papers. 9. Letter from John L. McLaren, OWI, March 13, 1944. Jean Renoir Papers, UCLA. 10. Jean Renoir, Letters, p. 149. 11. William Gilcher, ‘Jean Renoir in America: a critical analysis of his major films from Swamp Water to The River’. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of Iowa, 1979), copy in Jean Renoir Papers, UCLA, p. 390. This section of Gilcher's dissertation is also cited by Alexander Sesonske in a useful unpublished essay ‘1944: Salute to France,’ based primarily on Renoir's correspondence. I thank Dr. Sesonske for sending me his essay. 12. Jean Renoir, Letters, p. 153. 13. Renoir to Robert Flaherty, April 9, 1944, Jean Renoir Papers. 14. Quoted by Alexander Sesonske in ‘1944: Salute to France’, ms. p. 114. 15. ‘ “Salute to France” Set: First of OWI Film Series for Exhibition in Liberated Lands Nears Completion,’ by Paul P. Kennedy, New York Times, May 14, 1944; Meredith, So Far, So Good, p. 63. 16. Renoir to Jean Benoît-Lévy, May 26, 1944, Lettres d’Amérique, pp. 150–151. 17. Schiffrin to Renoir, June 15, 1944, Jean Renoir Papers. 18. See Renoir to Schiffrin, June 30, 1944 and on the same day Renoir to Robert Valeur, French Press & Information, New York, Jean Renoir Papers. 19. Antik to Renoir, August 19, 1944, Jean Renoir Papers. 20. Paul Gilson, ‘Jean Renoir à Hollywood’, L’Ecran français, August 15, 1945. 21. Meredith to Margaretta Ackermark, Museum of Modern Art, New York, July 21, 1978, Jean Renoir Papers. 22. Gilcher, p. 390. 23. Dunne, Oral History, p. 254. 24. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles, the Academy distributed this film, among other OWI films, during the war and for some time afterwards. However, supporting documentation has not yet been located to allow for a better picture of what actually took place. The Academy library holds many OWI materials that are not indexed but that hold out the promise of more information in the future. 25. Dunne, Take Two, p. 177.

Los orígenes del zapatismo

Los orígenes del zapatismo

A Tribute Rick Harmon August 30, 1952 - May 20, 2004

A Mute Rid Harmon Aipst 1,1952-May 20,2KM Rick Harmon (left),Michael Munk, and Omar "Slug" Palmer (back to camera) at theOregon Historical Society's annual meeting in 1997, where Munk received the Joel Palmer Award. RickHarmon, editor of theOregon Historical Quarterly from 1987 to 1999,died on May 20,2004. We are grateful toSteveHallberg for allowing us toreprint part of theeulogy hewroteforRick and toRick's other colleagues for helping us remember hismany contributions to thejournal and theOregon Historical Society. I met Rick for the first time in 1983when he arrived at theOregon Historical Society to takeon theposition of oral historian. Naturally, his hiring raised a few eyebrows among us northwesterners, who were not quite surewhether we could safely entrustOregon history to a California!!. It took no time at all, however, to figure out thatRick was exactly the right person for the job. His intellect,work ethic, and integrity were evident right from the beginning, and theymade a strong impression on me and his other colleagues. Rick stepped into an oral history program with a strong foundation laid down by his two predecessors, Charles Digregorio and Linda Brody Dodds. His biggest innovation was amove toward longer,more in-depth interviews that explored all stages of a person's life;and over the next fewyears, Rick used this approach to conduct remarkable sessions with people as diverse as federal judge Gus Solomon, civil rights activist Kathryn Hall Bogle, and writer Clyde Rice. Excerpts from several of his oral histories, published in theOregon Historical 502 OHQ vol. 105, no. 3 ? 2004 Oregon Historical Society Quarterly, convey just how good an interviewer he was ? able to draw people out and get them to think and speak about their lives in revealingways. In 1986,Rick was chosen to succeed Priscilla Knuth as editor of theOregon Historical Quarterly, a post she had held for three decades. "PK" would have been a tough act for anyone to follow, and in some respects, the two of them could not have been more different. What they shared was a commitment to thework. Over the year thatRick spent working alongside Priscilla, the two formed a strong bond, and PK passed on stewardship of theQuarterly in 1987, confident that it was in good hands. When I think of Rick as editor, I picture him seated inhis office, shoes off, cross-legged with his feet tucked underneath him, his chair pushed farback fromhis desk, leaning across empty space with his red pen to edit copy at arm's length. I never figured out how he could work in that position, much less get in and out of it. Itmust have suited him, though, because he was remarkably productive. A quick browse through theQuarterly's table of contents for the years of his tenure reveals an astounding range of subjectmatter, from oil drill ing inHarney County to an episode ofMcCarthyism atReed College. In 1993, Rick added "The Journal ofRecord forOregon History" to the titlepage of the Quarterly. He set thebar high and lived up to the standard. In 1991,Rick added a feature that I used to look forward to almost asmuch as the articles themselves: the editor's introduction. It was typically a shortpiece intended to set the stage for the articles, but the thinkingwas original and the writing was pithy. It was thefirst indication some ofus had thatRick was as good awriter as he was an editor. I think the experience of producing the editor's in troductionwhetted his appetite to spendmore time on his own writing. Between 1995 and 1998,while attending to themillion and one details involved inputting out a quarterly journal, Rick published two fine articles of his own inOHQ, one on the history of the Bull Run Watershed and another on Oregon geologist Thomas Condon. Eventually, the desire tomake writing a full-time occupation won out, and in 1999Rick resigned his position as editor. By a fortunate circumstance, a project ideally suited to Rick's talents and interestscame along a short time later when theFriends ofCrater Lake National Park asked him towrite the park's centennial history.He had been waiting for just thiskind of opportunity?the chance todeal with complex environmental policy issues...

"I Played by the Rules, and I Lost": The Fight for Racial Equality in the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service

EDITED BY KIERAN TAYLOR For the better part of twenty years, county extension agent P. E. Bazemore spearheaded a lawsuit charging the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service with discriminating against its African American county agents in hiring, pay, and promotions for years after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bazemore received a favorable ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986, but the state of North Carolina resisted settling the case for another four years before making amends to the surviving plaintiffs. Now retired from the extension service and a city council member in Monroe, the eighty-two year old Bazemore is ambivalent about the ordeal Nine of the original fifty-one plaintiffs died before the settlement, and the financial and human costs of sustaining the case from its beginning in 1971 were enormous. In this edited excerpt of an interview conducted by the University of North Carolina's Southern Oral History Program in March 2002, Bazemore remembers the day in 1986 that he heard his case argued before the Supreme Court and the phone call he received two months later informing him of the Court's decision. Bazemore also reflects on the suffering inflicted on him and other African American agents and wonders whether a pretest campaign might have been more effective than the legal process. You're sitting there [in the courtroom]; you're calm. There are others that are coming forward. It's not excitable, but when they said Bazemore versus Friday, really believe my heart quit right then and there. don't know why, but for a few seconds nothing about me was normal, couldn't breathe, There was nothing, A few seconds and it came back. It felt like a long time, but it had to be just a few seconds. It was a frightening experience. It's something that still haven't been able to adequately describe. were there at the U.S. Supreme Court. They've already heard a couple of cases, and you're sitting there while that's going on, and then this comes up. Your name is called in that body of people. It was just frightening. That's one experience that nobody forgets. Don't let anybody kid you. Nobody forgets was home one day, and one of the attorneys who is in Washington called me, and he said, Mr. Bazemore. said, Yeah. He said, You standing? said, Yeah. He said, Well, you mind sitting down? sat down. He said, Are you sitting now? said, Yeah. He said, I thought you might--this was minutes after the announcement was made. He said, He said, Three out of the four issues won. We lost the fourth one on a five to four vote. told him, glad I'm sitting because if were not, I'm not sure that wouldn't go beyond that. Nothing happened to me in association with the cooperative extension service that measured up to that one time. Of course was out of the service, retired at that time, but if there is a highlight of anything that did at the cooperative extension service it was to stay with that suit until we got to the Supreme Court and then with that victory because that helped a lot of black agents to be more focused. We kept stressing the idea that you have to perform. don't lose sight of think some of them were better agents, better employees as a result of As the leader of the African American agents, Bazemore spent the better part of two decades traveling the state collecting evidence from his colleagues and organizing support for the case. His memories of his last visit with D. O. Ivey are not likely to fade soon. D. O. Ivey in Iredell County, about a month before he died, one had to put his head close to him to hear, and he said, Bazemore, don't let those guys get away with it. Make certain they pay. Don't let them get away with anything. That bothered me. Here's a man dying. hope there were other times he thought of the niceties of the world, but his thoughts then on his dying bed was the injustice that had been inflicted on black people. …

Documenting Cultural and Historical Memory: Oral History in the National Park Service

"Documenting Cultural and Historical Memory: Oral History in the National Park Service" provides an overview and assessment of the current state of oral history projects and programs within the National Park Service. Oral history has long been a particularly valuable resource and tool for the Park Service in preserving cultural and historical memory. Its rangers, interpreters, historians, archaeologists, ethnographers, and cultural landscape specialists use oral history to document the history of individual parks, as well as the events and people the parks commemorate. They use oral history to create interpretive exhibits, movies, and videos and to record perspectives on major events, figures, and movements. The Service initiates and manages a large number of unique and significant oral history projects and programs.However, too often the value of its oral history projects and collections has been diminished because of funding shortages, poor equipment, insufficient training, inadequate preservation measures, or other problems.

The Status of Oral History in the Army: Expanding a Tradition

The U.S. Army has a long record of utilizing oral history in both internal studies and official histories to supplement the available official records and documents. In this article the author briefly surveys the origins of the modern Army oral history program, emphasizing developments in the 1980s and 1990s. The author notes the relative organizational acceptance of oral history as a practice with benefit to the Army and then offers descriptions of three representative oral history efforts—coverage of U.S. Army operations in Bosnia, the exit interview program, coverage of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon—to illustrate the goals and practices of the Army program today.

Southern Jewish History

What began eight years ago as modest oral history program at the College of Charleston has blossomed into major traveling exhibit with the ambition of revolutionizing how American Jews think about their history. A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life chronicles the long, eventful saga of Jews in the American South—anticipating the 350th anniversary of Jews in America in 2004. The exhibit title comes from letter written in 1816 by Charleston born Isaac Harby, journalist, playwright, and leader of the Reformed Society of Israelites, to Secretary of State James Monroe. Protesting the removal of the American consul to Tunis, Mordecai Manual Noah, because he was Jew, Harby reminded the future president, They [the Jews] are by no means to be considered as Religious sect, tolerated by the government; they constitute portion of the People. In the context of the show, a portion of the people has an ironic twist. The acceptance Jews enjoyed in South Carolina and the ease with which they integrated into society came at price. For while Carolina was the first political entity to treat Jews as equals, it also was the only colony on the American mainland whose charter sanctioned racial slavery. Jews were equal—to other white people. Along with Huguenots and diverse groups of Christian dissenters, they bolstered the number of whites in colony and state with black majority. Subscribing to the dominant morality, Jews accepted slavery, as well as other distinctively southern institutions such as states' rights and dueling. Becoming a portion of the people also meant that southern Jews might assimilate into the mainstream and marry out of Judaism alto gether. Indeed, few descendants of Carolina's first families are still Jewish, though most are proud of their Jewish lineage. The drama of the exhibit lies in the simultaneous efforts Jews have made to become part of southern society and to sustain their Jewish identity. A Portion of the People has come long way—from the tidal flats and foothills of South Carolina to the bright lights of New York City, where the exhibit, co-sponsored by Yeshiva University Museum and the

Oral History and the Professor: An Academic Epiphany

The events precipitating me into the then unknown realm of oral history include a happy pair of intellectual coincidences occurring in 1986. At that time I was completing studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Colocated with the War College is the U.S. Army Military History Institute, which hosts the Senior Army Oral History Program. Through initial contact as a student, followed by a series of brief tours of duty with the institute, I came to appreciate and value the ongoing work of the oral historians connected with the project. Soon after returning to civilian service as a professor at Virginia Tech, I came in contact with a well-known Harvard professor, Roland Barth, who suggested during a formal presentation to a local Phi Delta Kappa chapter the need for more in-depth and less superficial research in professional education generally, and on the public school principalship in particular. The question then raised in my mind concerned how to go about gathering in-depth information on the principalship. In a flash the answer came-through the use of oral history techniques. This idea appealed to me, since I'd become disenchanted with traditional quantitative data-gathering techniques and was casting about for alternative, and potentially more useful, approaches to the act of research.

Asking Personal Questions

You might say I was grandmothered into the Regional Oral History Office at UC Berkeley as an interviewer-editor in 1970. In those days, there were few courses in oral history methods. The idea of a graduate oral history program was just a glimmer on the horizon. It seemed as if university archival programs looked for a reasonable match of skills and trusted on-the-job training eventually to produce a competent oral historian. When I began work, ROHO had recently begun a project on Earl Warren's California career, with the goal of documenting how he had evolved from a solemn law-and-order district attorney into the charismatic chief justice who would find a consensus for integrating the nation's schools and protecting individual civil liberties. The office was looking for interviewers who understood the state's politics and had some knowledge of the issues that had made Warren's reputation as a crusader and innovator in public administration. I shudder to remember some of my bloopers during the first few recording sessions. But I was saved by some serendipitous earlier experiences. Most fortunate, I think, was the tough political science professor at Connecticut College who suggested firmly that all social science majors sit for the U.S. Civil Service Junior Professional Assistant exam in the spring of our senior year. What on earth for, we wondered. You never know, said Miss Dilley. The exam turned out to be very similar to the PSAT of high school days and a boring way to spend a Saturday morning. Eventually, I received an official paper that said I qualified as a GS-5, whatever that meant. Subsequently, letters arrived at

University of Aberdeen Oral History Archive

The Oral History Archive (MS 3620) is a collection of tape interviews recorded with graduates and former staff of the University of Aberdeen. Material for the Archive was originally recorded and collected as part of the University's Quincentenary History Project which began in 1985. The interviews were intended to enhance, and to place in a more human context, the written and printed data and statistics relating to the history of the University in the twentieth century, and thereby to aid those involved in the writing of the series of monographs: Quincentennial Studies in the History of the University of Aberdeen. However, building an oral database of the University beyond that which would be of use to that particular project was always an aim and interviewing has continued, albeit on a more intermittent basis. Until now, however, the collection of one hundred and eight separate interviews recorded with ninety-three individuals' had not been sorted or catalogued and could not be made available for use by researchers and historians. There are several reasons for retaining and continuing the programme of interviews. There is already a wealth of material in the University Archives, both manuscript and printed, for researchers of the recent history of the University. Oral records, blending memory and facts which are coloured by personal opinion, can add a totally new dimension to the history. Personal papers or memoirs of individuals can, of course, offer a similar view of history, but only a very few of these exist and they often present too institutionalised a view of University life. The oral histories contain personal experiences and memories which would never have been expressed but for this project. They give an account of what it was actually like to attend Aberdeen University during the last century. The collection, taken as a whole, can be used to help interpret events or to validate arguments, but many interviews stand alone as significant individual life stories, in some cases giving a voice to minorities (women, homosexuals) not heard at the time. The programme of interviews was organised by the then University Archivist, Colin McLaren, with assistance from the editors of the Quincentenary History Project, Dr Jennifer Carter and Professor John Hargreaves. Together they drew up a list of possible interviewees who formed three basic groups: former students; longserving members of staff (in particular those who had also been students at the University) and eminent individuals connected with the University. A small panel of interviewers was given initial training by Colin McLaren, who drew on his experience of working with the BBC and of what he had learnt of the Oral History Programme run by the Church of the Latter-day Saints in the United States.

The UCLA Oral History Program: catalog of the collection

The UCLA Oral History Program: catalog of the collection

Rabbit Boss

Book Review| January 01 2000 Rabbit Boss Rabbit Boss, University of Nevada Oral History Program. Christine Tobar-Dupres Christine Tobar-Dupres Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Folklore (2000) 113 (447): 102–103. https://doi.org/10.2307/541275 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Christine Tobar-Dupres; Rabbit Boss. Journal of American Folklore 1 January 2000; 113 (447): 102–103. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/541275 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Folklore Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 1999 The American Folklore Society1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Film Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

An Interview With James V. Mink

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsDale TrelevenJames V. Mink is emeritus University Archivist and Head, Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1966, Jim—then director of the UCLA Oral History Program—with program head Elizabeth I. Dixon and two parttime staff planned and staged the first National Colloquium on Oral History at the University of California's Lake Arrowhead Conference Center. An outcome of the Arrowhead colloquium, less than a year later, was incorporation of the Oral History Association. This interview with Jim Mink was conducted on 20 April 1999 by Dale E. Treleven, a past OHA president and director of the UCLA Oral History Program since early 1983.

The Rape of Greek Democracy: The American Factor, 1947-1967 (review)

Reviewed by: James Edward Miller Alexis Papachelas. , 1947–1967. 2nd edition. Athens: Estia, 1997. Pp. 439. 5500 drachmas. Thirty years after 21 April 1967, assessment of responsibility for the military coup in Athens has taken a giant stride out of politically motivated polemic and into the realm of historical analysis. Alexis Papachelas’s The Rape of Greek Democracy: The American Factor, 1947–1967is a splendidly researched, soundly reasoned, and tightly written investigation of the roots of the crisis in Greece’s hybrid “crown democracy,” of the plot that led to its overthrow, and of American involvement in what Margaret Papandreou aptly called the “Nightmare in Athens.” In writing his history of Greece in the 1960s, Papachelas’s primary sources are the records created by extremely interested foreign observers: the diplomats of the United States Foreign Service. Since few Greek primary sources are available (outside of the voluminous record of the colonels’ trial), the author has supplemented his American archival treasure trove with a judicious use of the press and also of interviews with many of the participants, including some of the coup makers and their acolytes. The author’s choice of American diplomats’ dispatches is not without its dangers, even in a book that deals with the “American Factor” in Greek politics, but it takes advantage of the one undoubted virtue of the U. S. Foreign Service: its carefully honed reporting skills. Those skills were particularly acute in the Greek case because the State Department’s Office of Greek-Turkish and Iranian Affairs (GTI) was a sort of state within State, manned by diplomats who spent [End Page 162]decades shuttling between assignments in the Aegean and Washington and frequently developed exceptional language skills and cultural-political insights. American documentation on the overthrow of Greek democracy and the U. S. role in that tragedy has been growing for years. Within weeks of the coup, a copy of the policy-making 303 Committee’s February 1967 discussion of a possible secret operation in Greece was leaked to the Washington Post. The following year, Elizabeth Drew, who had access to the same document, was able to piece together an accurate appraisal of events in Athens based on discussions with U. S. officials. The desire of embarrassed philhellenes within the State Department and CIA to talk about the coup and its origins (and to justify their role in the disaster) reached its height in the mid-1970s when the CIA’s ex-station chief, Jack Maury, went public. Maury had already joined a plethora of officials who talked to the Washington Post’s Laurence Stern. Stern’s The Wrong Horse: The Politics of Intervention and the Failure of American Diplomacy(New York: Times Books, 1977) is a goldmine of information on both the 1967 coup and the subsequent 1974 Cyprus disaster, although the analysis is marred by the author’s too evident biases. The Association for Diplomatic Studies’ oral history program, run by another Athens veteran, Stu Kennedy, has interviewed most of the living American participants in the events of 1965–1974. The papers of the State Department’s Greece analyst Charilaos Lagoudakis have been available at Boston University for some years. In addition to these sources, Papachelas’s work profited from the landmark 1991 legislation and the 1995 executive order that the Clinton administration laboriously extracted in the teeth of determined bureaucratic opposition. The CIA, steadfastly refusing to cooperate with the intent of either Congress or the White House, has succeeded in holding up the publication of the Foreign Relationsvolume on Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey, 1964–1968, for five years. However, this rear-guard action is largely irrelevant since it has not impeded the opening of State Department archives. The picture that emerges from Papachelas’s reconstruction is one of a rapidly declining American ability to control Greek affairs. With the end of Marshall Plan assistance in 1952–1953 and the subsequent decline in military aid, the U. S. simply had fewer tools available to influence Greek behavior. Moreover, thoughtful American officials realized that the United States needed to develop a more normal and mature relationship with Greece. Henry Labouisse, President Kennedy’s ambassadorial appointee (1962–1965), engaged in a...