African American Oral History

Aunt Sally, old midwife, the only doctor or nurse ever heard of in Gees Bend before project was started. Gees Bend, Alabama photo by Marion Post Wolcott

I'm going to try to make a list here of the major African American Oral history sites. I'm studying oral history projects so I can start my own and I didn't see any collection list like this. So here goes. If I'm missing one please comment or email me. These are projects that are only about African Americans.

1. The History Makers -  "We have more than 2,000 videotaped interviews. 310 have been digitized, comprising about 8,000 hours of videotaped interviews; 60 special event recordings; more than 2,000 online biographies, and over 30,000 photographic images."
2. Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 - contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
3. Getting Word - African American Families of Monticello - 100 Interviews so far
4. Behind the Veil - Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South - 310 interviews--all from North Carolina--from the Durham, Charlotte, Wilmington, Enfield, New Bern, and James City areas.
5. The Oral History Center at the University of Louisville
6. Black Oral History Interviews, 1972-1974 - Quintard Taylor, with associates Charles Ramsay and John Dawkins, interview black pioneers and their descendents throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

Some video documentary interviews

1. Counter Histories  documenting the struggle to desegregate Southern restaurants