Oral History Project Research Articles

When it “Feels Like We’re in This Together”: Toward a Trauma-Informed Public Health Pedagogy Drawing on Lived Experiences

Since 2020, graduate public health students have been living through the intersecting pandemics of COVID-19 and structural racism while simultaneously experiencing classroom lessons on these topics. In this paper, we analyze 14 oral history interviews exploring these experiences, and identify needed shifts in public health pedagogy that these interviews illuminate. Interviews were produced through a participatory oral history project called Public Health Education Now, which was led by a team of faculty and MPH students based at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. We analyzed the interviews using reflexive thematic analysis. In these interviews, students described lived experiences of trauma, isolation, and tensions in public health (Theme 1), as well as a desire for public health education anchored in their lived experiences that activates hope (Theme 2), and public health education that nourishes and sustains them (Theme 3). Our analysis advances a view of public health students of this era as survivor-learners whose lived experiences can be a rich resource for informing the future of public health education, provided appropriate supports are in place. We discuss the ways that trauma-informed teaching and learning responds to these findings. Finally, we suggest action steps toward incorporating trauma-informed public health pedagogy drawing on lived experiences into public health classrooms, programs, and schools.

Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Oral History Project Interview of Dr. Willie J. McFadden II, FS

Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Oral History Project Interview of Dr. Willie J. McFadden II, FS

Limited Choices: Mable Jones, a Black Children’s Nurse in a Northern White Household by Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson

Reviewed by: Limited Choices: Mable Jones, a Black Children’s Nurse in a Northern White Household by Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson Karen A. Johnson Limited Choices: Mable Jones, a Black Children’s Nurse in a Northern White Household. By Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 215. $24.95, ISBN 978-0-8139-4665-8.) In Jim Crow America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, employment options for African American women with a minimal level of education were limited to domestic labor and agricultural work, especially in the South. As Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson remind readers in Limited Choices: Mable Jones, a Black Children’s Nurse in a Northern White Household, Black women also constituted the vast majority of domestic servants in southern cities and, to some extent, northern cities during this period. Indeed, the intersections of race, gender, class oppression, and geographical location impacted Black women’s work experiences as domestic servants. This was the case of Mable Jones (1909–1995), the subject of Limited Choices. In 1922, at age thirteen, Jones began a long career in domestic service work that took her to Charlottesville, Virginia, and Larchmont, New York. She worked as a household servant until she was eighty-five, well into an era when many Black women gained entry to occupations beyond domestic labor. In Limited Choices, Abel, a historian, and Nelson, a sociologist, examine Jones’s lived experiences. Abel and Nelson, who are biological sisters, note that they wanted to document Jones’s life because they realized that “although she played a major role in shaping our lives, we knew little about hers” (p. 2). Jones began working for their family as a domestic servant in Washington, D.C., in 1944 and, after World War II, in suburban New York. As they explain, “until 1953, she lived with us for long periods of time doing the cleaning, some of the cooking, and a lot of the childcare” (p. 3). Abel and Nelson, who grew up in a Jewish, upper-middle-class family, note that their research gave them “an opportunity to study the impact of the relational dynamics of race, class, and gender not only in the South but also in an affluent northern suburb, during the 1940s and 1950s” (p. 5). They also argue that their personal stories intertwine [End Page 379] with Jones’s in that her domestic labor allowed them to enjoy a privileged lifestyle, while simultaneously disadvantaging her lifestyle, at the intersections of race, gender, and class. Abel and Nelson draw on primary and secondary sources in order to unpack Jones’s lived experiences as a domestic laborer. They have interviewed her pastor, family members, friends, and acquaintances, read a handful of letters she wrote, examined Black newspapers from Virginia, and watched a 1995 interview with her collected by the Ridge Street Oral History Project. Where appropriate, they also interweave their personal family narrative with Jones’s in an effort to portray her experiences as a domestic worker in the North. Additionally, Abel and Nelson draw from extensive historical and sociological literature on institutionalized racism, classism, and sexism in the United States as a way to reconstruct Jones’s biography in sociohistorical context, thereby revealing a broad and objective understanding of the life that she lived. Jones did not leave behind a diary, a compilation of letters, or other traditional primary sources. I argue that this fact puts major limitations on Abel and Nelson’s understanding of Jones’s own thoughts regarding her experiences with domestic labor and structural oppression. Instead, the reader gets only snippets of Jones’s voice. Despite this limitation, the premise of Limited Choices is unique, and the book makes an important contribution to fields including labor studies, gender studies, African American studies, and American studies, to name a few. Karen A. Johnson University of Utah Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association

Living through war: An oral history of civilians in Sudan

AbstractCivilians in Sudan have been devastated by wars for decades, including civil wars that occurred from 1956 to 1972 and from 1983 to 2005, and wars continuing to this day in certain regions. With this article, we offer the findings of an oral history project that showcases the testimony of 116 Sudanese from the following three regions: Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile state. We focused on their experiences of war and their vision of a just future for Sudan. After presenting summaries of the wars in these regions (Section 1), we identify the project's methodology (Section 2). The respondents' testimony is then analyzed thematically as follows: (a) life before war, (b) experiences of war, (c) becoming refugees, (d) war's impact, and (e) vision of justice in Sudan (Section 3). We then interpret the respondents' vision of justice as expressions of their agency in striving to overcome the systemic inequalities that have ravaged this war‐torn nation. Our analysis reveals the complexity of the respondents' notions of justice as inseparable from peace. Long‐term peace necessities the realization of justice that cannot be achieved without long‐term peace.

Women’s participation in the Central Superior Services of Pakistan 1973–2020

ABSTRACT Decentralization and efforts for inclusivity in Pakistan’s public sector from 1973 led to the recruitment and advancement of women as officers of the newly constituted Central Superior Services (CSS) of the federal government of Pakistan. Quotas for women made government more diverse and representative, and educational and length of service benchmarks for recruitment and promotion made advancement more attainable and transparent. The increasing participation of these new officers of state, outlined in this paper, can be seen as an outcome of the 1973 public sector reforms, but government policy alone is not sufficient to account for women’s entry into public life and policy making where they had been excluded from it over the previous century of the development of the bureaucracy. This paper presents professional life history narratives of 23 women officers of the CSS recorded in an oral history project in Lahore and describes the women who participated in this state project of decentralization and gender inclusivity and their motivations, complementing an historiography of administrative reform. I argue for attention to the role of families and academic institutions in enabling women in finding pathways into the CSS and advancing and succeeding in their roles, mediating between the state and Pakistani society.

A Participatory Archives Approach to Fostering Connectivity, Increasing Empathy, and Building Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper explores two pandemic-era projects conducted by the Museum and Archives of North Vancouver (MONOVA) using a participatory archives framework during the COVID-19 pandemic. #NorthVanStories, a rapid-respond social media collecting project, ran from May to September 2020 and received over 200 submissions. #NorthVanStories–Living Histories, a digital video oral history project, ran from summer 2020 to fall 2021 and produced five videos with seven storytellers from diverse and vulnerable communities. This paper discusses the power of collaborative documenting, storytelling, and memory-making to foster connectivity, increase empathy, and build resilience. It highlights the benefits of working collaboratively with organizations and communities; successful approaches to planning and outreach activities; the importance of flexibility and sustainability when working with communities in times of crisis; and how to ensure the future relevance of archives by being responsive to contemporary events and community interests.

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

“I Hope to be Part of South Phoenix History”: Community College Students Becoming Oral Historians

ABSTRACT This paper discusses community college students’ responses to an oral history project about their own community, based in South Phoenix, Arizona. The South Phoenix Oral History (SPOH) Project is a research initiative operated by students, the vast majority of whom call South Phoenix home. Students take part in recording, processing, and analyzing their hometown history, making coauthorship a built-in feature of the project. Research shows that oral history teaches students to do research and to do history, but can academy-based projects have a positive impact on community interests? What do students learn through oral history besides research skills? To conduct this study, I analyzed data from seventy-three student reflections dating from fall 2018 to spring 2021. The reflections illuminate how students become more aware of their role in creating historical narratives and deepen their bond with their own community and its history. I argue that oral history projects, such as the SPOH Project, which implement a shared authority method, can productively combine community interests with academic research. By giving their contribution to the collection, students deepened their connection and sense of responsibility to South Phoenix and its history.

Border Tales: Against Cosmopolitan Pessimism

Border TalesAgainst Cosmopolitan Pessimism Stefano Evangelista (bio) Two writers. Two encounters on the border. Two tales of borders as zones of transformation and renewal. The first is Oscar Wilde, who landed on American soil in January 1882. After moving from Ireland to Britain, Wilde now seized the opportunity to extend his international reach: America was to launch his career as poet—something that, in the event, did not work out as well as he had hoped—but also as a cultural mediator and exporter of aestheticism across the Atlantic. It is at the custom check in New York that Wilde said one of the most famous things he might never have said: "I have nothing to declare except my genius."1 This aperçu set the tone for his use of America as a stage of literary and mediatic self-fashioning. Another writer who fully grasped the theatrical potential of the border was Christopher Isherwood. Many years later, speaking of his arrival in Germany in 1929, he claimed that, on being questioned about the purpose of his journey by the passport official, "he could have truthfully replied, 'I'm looking for my homeland and I've come to find out if this is it.'"2 Isherwood was fleeing the repressive atmosphere of 1920s Britain, where the Well of Loneliness (1928), and its author Radclyffe Hall, had just been put on trial. Crossing the German border marked the symbolic birth of the writer out of a repudiation of national identity. That both of these border tales involve a dose of fabrication seems only appropriate: borders are places where identities are tested and individual lives are slotted into official narratives. Here, officials are on [End Page 75] the lookout for untruths and illegal traffics. Subverting the questioning ritual, Wilde and Isherwood represent crossing the border as a decisive step towards the making of a new self—crucially, in their cases, of a literary self. In this respect, it is also significant that they are both queer writers: at this time of social and legal persecution of homosexuality, the marginalization of the queer subject sharpens the critical stance towards citizenship and normative categories of belonging. Wilde and Isherwood cast borders in an ironic light. But there is another side to their tales of privileged self-fashioning: borders are also sites of trauma, best represented by the enforced displacement of migrants and refugees. In the course of the nineteenth century, New York Harbor where Wilde docked in 1882 was the entry point into America for millions of immigrants, mostly from European countries including Wilde's Ireland—a phenomenon that the website of the Ellis Island Foundation describes as "the largest mass human migration in the history of the world."3 The same foundation now runs a large oral history project of what it terms the "immigrant experience" and invites visitors to search its passenger databases in an attempt to recover some of the stories of those that were funneled through this narrow space that marked for many the beginning of a new life. It hardly needs to be stated that the German border that Isherwood crossed buoyantly in 1929 would soon become a zone of conflict and fear, as Germany's aggressive contravention of the territorial boundaries established by the First World War settlement plunged Europe and large parts of the globe into another disastrous war. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), Isherwood later tells the story of trying to bring his German lover, "Heinz," into Britain in the years leading to the Second World War: he failed, as Heinz was turned down at the border in Harwich on suspicion of trying to enter the country as an illegal worker.4 Keeping Heinz outside of Germany meant saving him from conscription and from the brutalizing influence of Nazism, but also from the very concrete threat of the regime's vicious prosecution of homosexuals. These two tales that bookend the long fin de siècle illustrate the importance of the border as a vantage point on the complex dynamics that regulate the formation of literary identities in relation to international flows of people and ideas. Historians have long seen the decades [End Page 76...

Artists’ Lives: The first thirty years

An account of the first thirty years of National Life Stories oral history project, Artists’ Lives, covering its origins, context, aims, organisation, technology and dissemination. The project is housed in the British Library.

Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness ed. by Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest

Reviewed by: Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness ed. by Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest Victoria Harms (bio) Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness Edited by Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest*. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. 250. The contributions to this insightful and conceptually ambitious volume originated in a conference in Lund, Sweden, in 2018 and were completed before February 24, 2022, the date that Russia invaded Ukraine. The editors of Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe meticulously highlight the relevance "of civil defence history for current imaginaries of security for European civil societies in the face of a highly diverse range of real and perceived threats" (p. 16). They insist that the case studies would put us "in a better position to make sustainable, complex and mature decisions for our desirable futures" (p. 243), and one immediately sees how Russia's attack on Ukraine has made the case for them. The volume stands out with its unusual geographic focus (NATO generally, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) and approach to "sociotechnical imaginaries," a concept Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyuan Kim first developed in Dreamscapes of Modernity (2015). The case studies here discuss the ways in which civil defense during the Cold War served to guarantee a "desired future" (survival) and prevent the undesirable (nuclear annihilation and chaos). The contributors follow Jasanoff and Kim's lead to analyze the (de)stabilizing impact of science and technology on societies, the establishment of science-based imaginaries, their contestations, and evolution across time and space. The editors identify four phases of "sociotechnical imaginaries" (origins, embeddedness, resistance, and extension), but most of the contributors prioritize embeddedness and extension. Many expand Jasanoff's approach to better capture the history of civil defense. The case studies reveal several striking commonalities: the official scenarios under which authorities operated mostly resembled a conventional war and recalled experiences from World War II. Most programs suggested that a proper civil defense would make a nuclear—and any other—catastrophe manageable and survivable. Civil defense sought to strengthen loyalty and underscore the state's legitimacy as a competent caretaker. But the everyday [End Page 256] experience varied across cases, and interest in, let alone enthusiasm for, civil defense petered out in most cases by the 1980s. Officials, organizations, and participants mostly believed in their societies' "natural" patriarchal order, and programs, even the Dutch women's volunteer organizations (Dick van Lente), reinforced traditional gender roles. The development of the hydrogen bomb represented a caesura, reinforcing efforts toward emergency preparedness. But the H-bomb, more than détente, occasionally also heightened civilians' indifference. Overall, it was not the threat of nuclear annihilation but civilian apathy and combatting the anticipated panic following an attack that seemed to have posed the greatest challenges. The volume opens with Iben Bjørnsson's agenda-setting study of NATO in the 1950s and 1960s. Particularly insightful and enjoyable are Peter Bennesved and Casper Sylvest's comparative study of civil defense films in Sweden and Denmark, as well as Rosanna Farbøl's evaluation of "ruin towns," built for practice and demonstration of civil defense exercises in Denmark. West Germans, Jochen Molitor argues, proved curiously disinterested in the government's civil defense efforts, which he explains with their complicity in World War II. By contrast, that same war motivated especially British citizens and Dutch women to get involved: they considered preparedness their patriotic duty (Jonathan Hogg, Dick van Lente). Sibylle Marti studies physicians' resistance to the Swiss government's holistic defense strategy in the 1980s and their moralizing arguments against the so-called Coordinated Medical Services. Marie Cronqvist and Matthew Grant conclude the volume with an oral history project comparing individual memories of civil defense in the United Kingdom and Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s. They highlight the "fuzziness" of memory and everyday experiences, the power of collective images, and the differences between rural and urban environments. Although the authors do not articulate this observation, many of the programs seem to have obscured the science and technology behind (thermo) nuclear warfare. Science literacy among...

The William A. Wilson Digital Folklore Archives

The William A. Wilson Digital Folklore Archives

Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors: The Duvakin Interviews, 1967–1974 By Slav N.Gratchev, MargaritaMarinova, IrinaEvdokimova. Translated by Slav N. Gratchev and Margarita Marinova. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021, xii + 234 pp. $80.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4874‐2725‐9

Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors: The Duvakin Interviews, 1967–1974 By Slav N.Gratchev, MargaritaMarinova, IrinaEvdokimova. Translated by Slav N. Gratchev and Margarita Marinova. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021, xii + 234 pp. $80.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4874‐2725‐9

"They Kept Going for Answers": Knowledge, Capacity, and Environmental Health Literacy in Michigan's PBB Contamination.

The Michigan PBB Oral History Project documented community residents' descriptions of a large-scale chemical contamination-the PBB contamination-that occurred in Michigan in 1973. These oral histories document residents' and others' experiences during and after the contamination. We conducted a grounded theory qualitative analysis of 31 oral histories to examine the experiences of community members, researchers, lawyers, and others who actively sought out and contributed essential information about the contamination and its impacts. Our findings highlight several challenges encountered in the development of this knowledge including four central themes-contested knowledge, community skills, inaction, and uncertainty. Integrating environmental health literacy, community capacity, and contested illness frameworks, we examine the contributions of community residents, scientists (from inside and outside the community), and others to the development of knowledge to inform decisions and sustain action regarding this large-scale contamination. We close with a discussion of lessons learned regarding efforts to build environmental health knowledge within uncertain and often contested contexts and for promoting environmental health and action related to large-scale chemical contaminations. Our findings suggest the importance of integrated frameworks for examining and promoting the critical role of community skills, leadership, participation, sense of community, and community power in promoting environmental health.

Anzenhoshō to bōeiryoku no sengoshi, 1971-2010: ‘Kibanteki bōeiryoku kōsō’ no jidai (Unintended Consensus: A History of Postwar Japan’s Defense Concept)

Studies of diplomatic history related to postwar Japanese security policy are flourishing. Historians have reconstructed the process of policy-making in detail, often challenging conventional wisdom. This scholarly movement is propelled by the expansion of accessible primary sources, thanks not only to the steady opening of government papers and hitherto inaccessible private documents in archival libraries, but also to a series of oral history projects conducted by various scholars including those of the National Institute for Defence Studies (NIDS), a research organization attached to the Ministry of Defence. This book is one recent addition to this rich and growing literature. The author fully utilizes a wide range of primary sources as well as personal interviews with former policymakers. These Japanese sources are supplemented by US archival documents and interviews. In short, the book represents a tour de force in the present diplomatic history scholarship on postwar Japanese security policy. The author is Senior Fellow at the NIDS Center for Military History. He occupies a unique position. As a civilian-historian with a PhD, on the one hand, he has participated in oral history projects and has actively published his research writings in academic outlets; this is his third solo-authored book. As a security-policy expert, on the other hand, he belongs to the government’s policy-making circle—he once served in the Cabinet Secretariat, for example.

Public archives determination of social memory in appraising local government records in South Africa

A hybrid version of macro-appraisal is used by South African public archivists when separating records of enduring value from ephemeral records. This appraisal function should occur immediately after the filing systems have been approved by the national and provincial archivists. However, in most cases, this function only occurs two years after the filing system has been approved. In the 1990s, the South African National Archives changed its traditional appraisal methodology from a Schellenberg approach to formulate a sound appraisal policy based on the macro-appraisal model. One of the key elements identified was the need to identify gaps in the written records that could be filled during the appraisal process. These gaps could be complemented by the collection of oral history. This study used qualitative data obtained through content analysis and literature to review the appraisal policy guidelines and approaches of the National Archives and the Gauteng Provincial Archives in relation to the process of appraisal, issuing of disposal authorities and capturing of oral history projects in relation to Gauteng local governments. This study used a case study design and specifically focused on the appraisal of Gauteng local government records. Interviews were held with officials of the National Archives and Gauteng Provincial Archives involved in the function of appraisal of public records. This study indicated that there were gaps in archival collections, which should be supplemented by the collection of oral history testimonies. The oral history testimonies collected from individuals and communities affected by socio-economic and socio-political events are not captured by the country’s public archivists. These narratives of post-apartheid South Africa are being lost and may not be captured by the national and provincial archives services. The key recommendation of this study is that there should be clear policy guidelines relating to the process of appraisal and transparency on how these processes are undertaken in South African public archives.

“Прийшли рускі”: пам’ять про радянську владу 1939-1941 років у біографічних наративах найстаршого покоління жителів Західної України

The oral history of Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s is an important independent body of sources for the study of this period. An encumbered story about one’s life or specific historical events best conveys experience, the world of ideas and perceptions, and the individual vision of direct eyewitnesses of past events. Pre-planned methods of the interview process, experienced interviewers, a selection of narrators, a sufficient number of recordings with the “saturation effect” are the keys to the success of the oral history project. The article analyzes the oral biographical narratives of the oldest generation of Western Ukraine residents about the Soviet government in 1939‒1941, highlights the main content lines of stories and dominant images of the first Soviet occupation, the transformation of moods. The empirical basis of the research are interviews recorded as part of the project “Social Anthropology of Filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II” and processed by the author for their publication by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv. The interviews were recorded by an interdisciplinary group of Polish-Ukrainian female researchers in 2017‒2019 with residents of villages and towns of Ternopil, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts born in the 1920s‒1930s. The stories are biographical and pertain to the whole life interviewees, with a special focus made on the 1930s‒1940s and World War II. The oldest participants were born in 1923 and the youngest were born in the late 1930s. Their stories are biographies of average native Halychyna residents, who shared their life experience for the first time and, consequently, shared what in their opinion was important to remember, as no recorded memory will be left when they pass away. The narration of the “big” story is made of a palette of “small” reactions to events, it is the inner world of a person – their worries and experiences, successes, hopes, and expectations. The images of Soviet authorities and the Soviet people in the memories of children are not holistic and meaningful, but are connected with the outer world – home and parents, close family and friends, the street and acquaintancies, neighbors, school, religious traditions and the church. Children’s memories recorded not so much everyday routine, but crucial and traumatic, strong emotional experience, which was filled with the years of the first Soviet regime in the region; their stories are replete with numerous unique case stories that may not have reached or come into view of adults. After having met the Red Army in September 1939, the hopes placed on the Soviet government by the adult population vanished almost immediately. People, then children, explained the first disappointments with the brutality of the Red Army: accidental or deliberate executions of innocent people, repressions in autumn 1939. For Galician peasants and small-town residents the image of the Soviets in 1939‒1941 is a radically changed world of their childhood with a fairy-tale palace and a local landowner with his family; depending on the social status of the family, the allotted land and the joy of harvesting their own field; inhuman deportations of Polish neighbors in the frosty winter of 1940. The primary “own” grief was the emotional culmination of life stories from the period of the first Soviet occupation: mostly in June 1941 they lost their loved ones due to the last, fourth, wave of deportations or executions in prisons during the retreat of the Soviets. In the memoirs of Galician villagers, unlike to the memoirs of the inhabitants of the cities, there are almost no mentions of the reaction of Poles and Jews to the arrival of the Red Army in September 1939.

Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas ed. by Max Krochmal and J. Todd Moye

Reviewed by: Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas ed. by Max Krochmal and J. Todd Moye Steven Rosales Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas. Edited by Max Krochmal and J. Todd Moye. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021. Pp. xiv, 469. Paper, $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4773-2379-3; cloth, $105.00, ISBN 978-1-4773-2378-1.) Coalitional politics is a complicated and sometimes messy undertaking laden with varying degrees of rivalry, defensiveness, and hierarchy. Such complications have arguably assumed a new level of significance in the partisan politics of the modern day and in the efforts to interrogate the nation's past more critically. This anthology steps into this turmoil, and this Chicano historian of Chicanx history is impressed. The state of Texas, with its dual southern and southwestern identities, is a logical place to demonstrate the overlapping nature of "everyday acts of resistance" and institutionalized racism (p. 61). An overarching subdivision does exist in this volume, with African Americans in the spotlight for Part 1, followed by Chicanx struggles in Part 2. Coalitions in metropolitan areas become the focal point in Part 3. A fourth and final installment highlights the statewide Civil Rights in Black and Brown Oral History Project (CRBB), from which this work stems. Indeed, the power of oral history and its ability to capture moments often unseen and unheard through documentary evidence are clearly on display. Over five hundred video narrations were collected over two summers, with interviewers and other logistical support provided by multiple institutions throughout the state. The result is a "people's history" of statewide civil rights activism digitized using clever and modern methods on a website accessible to a wider general audience (p. 306). The CRBB and this anthology are a veritable dream for anyone involved in public history, oral history, and the digital humanities. A quick overview of the first two sections offers powerful examples of variance (rural versus urban, "leaders" versus everyday folk, and so on), with individual chapters tackling a variety of topics including segregation, student movements, and racialized violence within both communities. An additional [End Page 806] significant point for me is the willingness to tackle the legacy of Dr. Hector P. García and his off and on leadership of the American GI Forum, a post–World War II civil rights organization largely composed of Mexican American veterans. The literature surrounding both García and the organization is vast and hagiographic, and the determination to confront the long shadow of García and his many complexities is long overdue and refreshing. It is the third section where the theme of coalitional politics and behavior is confronted most vigorously, with the cities of San Antonio and Austin offering the most compelling examples. Young Black and Brown radicals in San Antonio forged ties of solidarity that included biracial support for Angela Davis, César Chávez and the United Farm Workers' grape boycott, as well as electoral cooperation to promote a mixed platform of Black and Brown candidates for city offices. Biracial efforts in Austin also included young radicals as well as formal legal efforts by more mainstream organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to sue for local redistricting to promote better electoral representation. My fear, however, is that the few examples of intersectionality found within the third section are structurally overwhelmed by the first two sections, which clearly illustrate separate trajectories of civil rights activism that seldom overlapped. Moreover, obvious sources of tension, such as the embrace of whiteness by some in the Mexican American community, a powerful point of debate within Chicanx historiography, need a fuller examination than what is offered here. Furthermore, the present-day context of these struggles in the wake of George Floyd's murder, including vocal elements of the Black Lives Matter movement that posit Black emancipation as the source of emancipation for all marginalized communities, could have been addressed. All of this is to say that on a case-by-case basis Black and Brown intersectionality did (and does) exist...

Going Back to Get the Stories

In the United States, children’s book publishing experienced significant shifts throughout the 20th century, starting with the establishment of dedicated children’s books departments in the 1920’s through to late century changes in printing technology leading to the cost-effective publication of full color non-fiction for youth. Each generation experienced children’s books differently.
 One constant was the sparse availability of books representing any child who was not white. As in Rudine Sims Bishop’s analogy, these youth easily found windows and sliding glass doors in their books but rarely found the self-affirming mirror. Conversely, white children had many mirrors but far fewer opportunities to view unfamiliar experiences nor enter new worlds to discover empathy for others.
 Today’s children are growing up with increasingly diverse representation in the available literature. To fully understand the significance of this moment, we must “go back and get” the experiences of the children who grew up in the 20th century. In this oral history project, we collect individual’s memories of reading and stories from their youngest years through adolescence. Participants are drawn from diverse backgrounds, with an emphasis on people who identify as Black, Latinx, Asian, and/or Indigenous. Findings illuminate the overlooked literacy experiences of people of color and the impact of childhood reading. This project provides insight into the historical impact of library services and the importance of contemporary libraries providing children with diverse literature.

Y-Performance, Care and Intergenerational Response

How can performance enact care for bodies rendered vulnerable, ungrievable, and unknowable to a certain extent, particularly in political climates that challenge the emergence of institutional histories? This essay offers a critical reflection on how ‘care’ manifest through the processes of performance in a recent devised university production, Nochtaithe (Unveiled), created as an artistic response to testimonies from survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Institution in the west of Ireland, made with the support of survivor-advocacy group the Tuam Home Alliance. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theorisation of ‘grievable’ bodies (Frames of War), this analysis will critically examine the expression of collective grief by students and survivors in rehearsal, performance, and post-performance as an expression of care for lives lost, for the intergenerational relations underpinning the Tuam Oral History Project (TOHP), and for each other as they confront a deeply contentious shared history that is violent, fractured, and intensely local.