Oral history can be described simply as memories recorded. Just gathering names and dates on ancestry charts can be boring and not too informative. Genealogists often use birth records, death records, marriage records, divorce records, and census records, but these provide only skeletal biographical details about an ancestor or family. Sincere family historians strive to paint a more complete picture. They seek to portray their ancestors’ lives as completely as possible by placing them in the historical, social, and cultural settings of the times in which they lived.
This is one of the reasons why oral history plays such an important role in researching family history. It helps to fill the gaps that cannot be found by the usual research methods. More often for African Americans it is the only written record that can be found on the family—that is, it is written on the mind with indelible ink. Researchers and interviewers can do a better job locating records of the time period when they understand what transpired in the nation, state, county, and city for the particular time period being researched, and when they know the migration patterns, naming practices, settlement patterns, religious, benevolent, political, and other special organizations which might have existed.
However, relying entirely on oral history for family research would be reckless and uncaring because the outcome might not be accurate enough to pass down through generations. But, being sensitive enough to gather the oral traditions of the family and using them wisely complements the facts collected from official records. The result is a good family narrative as well as the family education that comes from the documented facts.
Oral history stories require documentation rather than simple acceptance of being accurate. In using oral history, we listen to people tell their social and personal histories. When recorded, these become their testimonies and are preserved. Memories are fragile; they die with us, therefore, it is important to preserve these precious historical documents stored in our memory while we can. Oral history can be particularly important in providing clues to the family’s origins, which is the basis for further research. If the origin of the family is not correct, then the proceeding research will yield nothing—in other words, the genealogist’s nightmare, the proverbial brick wall. If you have shied away from conducting oral interviews in doing your family history or you do not know how to go about collecting the family traditions, there are tools and other resources available to you. Seek out oral histories that have already been created to hear what an interview is like, what works well and what does not. Historical societies, museums, archives, or public libraries will have oral history collections for you to listen to along with a transcript if it exists. Reviewing oral history collections can also help in understanding the local community’s history.
What are the pitfalls of oral history? Below I have listed several to consider that were compiled by Nyoni Collins.[4]
Guidelines for an Oral History Interview
The following basic guidelines are helpful in conducting an oral history interview:
Before the Interview:
During the Interview:
After the Interview:
The oral history interview is used as a tool for collecting usable information for genealogical or historical purposes. Keep in the mind that factual information is not necessarily what you are seeking, but rather expressions, accounts, impressions, descriptions, attitudes and perceptions, and of course family traditions. These things make for a good family history book and enhance the facts collected from written data and official records that I have previously mentioned.
So we have seen that oral history interviews are an essential technique for fleshing out the sometimes dry facts of the official or written record. And we have seen some of the pitfalls to watch out for, as well as the steps to take before, during, and after an oral history interview to get the maximum benefit from it.
One of those important steps was to do some research beforehand to learn about the time period during which your interview subject lived. This helps you ask questions which will jog your interviewee’s memory and help them pin down family events to more specific years and dates.
Below, I have provided a selected list of important dates in Alabama African American history. This is the sort of background information you can prepare to help you and your interview subject connect events in history to events in the interviewee’s family narrative. This list of dates is by no means comprehensive, but it is a useful example for you to get started with.
In addition, I have provided a reading list of additional resources on the techniques of oral history, and a few examples of some oral history resources available on the Internet.
Resources
Fletcher, William. Recording Your Family History: A Guide to Preserving Oral History Video Tape, Audio Tape—Suggested Topics and Questions. New York: Dodd, Mead Co., 1986.
Lichtman, Allan J. Your Family History: How to Use Oral History, Personal Family Archives and Public Documents to Discover Your Heritage. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Montell, W. Lynwood and Barbara Allen. From Memory to History: Using History Sources in Local Historical Research. Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1981.
Neuenschwander, John. “Oral History and the Law: An Update.” Los Angeles: Oral History Association Newsletter. 31.1 (Winter, 1997): 4–6.
Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1994.
Helpful Internet Sources
Oral History Interview Questions: www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/quest.txt.
Archival Leaflet Series: www.gcah.org/oral.html.
Documenting Church Life Through Oral History: www.sbhla.org/art_oralhistory.htm.
Oral History Links: www.unc.edu/depts/phe/oralhistorylinks.htm.
Dates in Alabama African American History, 1830–2002
Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History, www.archives.alabama.gov
1830 African American population was 119,121 (117,549 slaves; 1,572 free blacks).
1840 African American population was 255,571 (253,532 slaves ; 2,039 free blacks).
1850 African American population was 345,109 (342,844 slaves; 2,265 free blacks).
1860 African American population was 437,770 (435,080 slaves; 2,690 free blacks).
Lincoln Normal School founded as private institution for African Americans at Marion (relocated to Montgomery in 1887 and evolved into present-day Alabama State University).
1868 February: Reconstruction Constitution ratified, gaining Alabama readmission to the Union and allowing black suffrage for the first time.
1870 African American population was 475,510.
1873 Huntsville Normal and Industrial School chartered; evolves into present day Alabama A&M University.
1880 African American population was 600,103.
National Baptist Convention (African American Baptists) organized at Montgomery.
1881 February 10: The Alabama legislature established Tuskegee Institute as a “normal school for the education of colored teachers.” The law stipulated that no tuition would be charged and graduates must agree to teach for two years in Alabama schools. Booker T. Washington was chosen as the first superintendent and arrived in Alabama in June 1881.
1890 African American population was 678,489.
1895 Booker T. Washington Atlanta speech to the Cotton States International Exposition urged racial accommodation; suggesting blacks seek economic independence rather than political/social equality.
1900 African American population was 827,307.
1901 November: New state constitution disfranchised substantial numbers of black and white voters.
1910 African American population was 908,282.
1920 African American population was 900,652.
1930 African American population was 944,834.
1931 March 25: Nine black youths were arrested in Paint Rock and jailed in Scottsboro, the Jackson County seat. These youths, who became known as the Scottsboro Boys, were charged with raping two white women on a freight train from Chattanooga. Within a month, eight of the nine were sentenced to death. Based on questionable evidence, the convictions by an all-white jury generated international outrage.
1936 August 3: Lawrence County native Jesse Owens won his first gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Owens went on to win four golds, but German leader Adolf Hitler snubbed the star athlete because he was black. Today visitors can learn more about Owens at the Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum in Oakville (www.jesseowensmuseum.com).
1940 African American population was 983,290.
1941 Training of African American military pilots—the Tuskegee Airmen—got underway.
1950 African American population was 979,617.
1955 December 1: Rosa Parks was arrested, prompting the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1956 Autherine Lucy unsuccessfully attempts to desegregate the University of Alabama.
December 21: The Supreme Court ruling banning segregated seating on Montgomery’s buses went into effect, ending the historic year-long boycott.
1960 African American population was 980,271.
1961 May: Harper Lee of Monroeville won the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird. The gripping tale set in 1930s Alabama became an international bestseller and influenced discussion about race relations.
May 20: An integrated group attempted a bus ride from Washington D.C., to New Orleans to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation in bus and train terminal facilities. The riders were violently attacked in South Carolina, Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery but the campaign eventually caused the end of segregated facilities in interstate transportation.
1963 Birmingham bombings of civil rights-related targets, including the 16th Street Baptist Church where four children were killed focused national attention on racial violence in the state.
Governor George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” at the University of Alabama failed to keep Vivian Malone and James Hood from registering as the university’s first African American students.
1965 February 15: Singer and entertainer Nat King Cole died in Santa Monica, California. Born the son of a Baptist minister in Montgomery in 1919, Cole sold more than fifty million records and was the first African American male with a network television show.
March 7: Demonstrators protesting racial discrimination and violence attempt a symbolic march from Selma to Montgomery and are beaten by deputies and state troopers, sparking international condemnation.
March 21: Following legal maneuvering, the way was cleared for another march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King. Four days later, at the Alabama state capitol, King told 25,000 demonstrators that “we are on the move now . . . and no wave of racism can stop us.”
August 6, 1965: President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.
1970 African American population was 903,467.
1980 African American population was 996,000.
1990 African American population was 1,020,677.
2000 African American population was 1,138,726.
2002 Birmingham native Vonetta Flowers and teammate Jill Bakken won a gold medal in bobsledding at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Flowers is the first African American to win a gold medal in a winter Olympics.
May 22: Bobby Frank Cherry is convicted of murder for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church.
[4] Nyoni Collins lecture. Rosenwald School Conference at Fisk University. Nashville, TN. May 21–22, 2004.