Oral History Overview

 

Oral history traditions
Throughout human history there has been a tradition of passing on historical and cultural heritage through storytelling. This informal communication has only recently been valued enough to have a more formal process of gathering recollections and documenting them. One of the earliest occurrences was shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s death in 1865. His secretary, John G. Nicolay, and law partner, William Herndon, gathered recollections of the sixteenth president, including some from interviews, from people who had known and worked with him. In the 1930s and early 1940s, the Federal Writers Project collected thousands of life histories in transcript form. These included slave narratives elicited from elderly former slaves living in the South. Using recording devices to document interviews began with the work of Allan Nevins at Columbia University in the 1940s. Nevins was the first to initiate a systematic and disciplined effort to record on tape, preserve, and make available for future research recollections deemed of historical significance. Other historians have expanded the concept to include not only persons of significance, but ordinary people – family members, co-workers, and other members of the community. These interviews are used to preserve the experiences of everyday life.