Remembering Julian Bond

Our staff members were saddened to learn about the passing of Julian Bond over the weekend. A founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, former chair of the NAACP, as well as a former member of both the Georgia House and Senate, Mr. Bond was a talented man who worked for equal rights throughout his life. In 2012, Mr. Bond sat down with our staff to record an oral history with interviewer Bob Short. In the post below oral historian Christian Lopez recalls his interactions with Bond during that trip in DC.   

A few years ago, I had the great privilege and honor of spending a whole day and evening with Julian Bond in DC. Bob Short and I traveled there to record an oral history interview for the Russell Library's Reflections on Georgia Politics program. We ended up having to shoot it in a stark, spare room at American University. It turned out pretty well, I think.

Afterwards, Julian and his wife Pam wanted to treat us to lunch at their favorite spot. Without a word from me, Julian also identified the immediate concern of what to do with all my expensive gear for the rest of the day and evening, and took care of it. He said he understood it was important to me.
After a great lunch filled with much humor, we returned to American and Bob taught Julian's class on civil rights history.

Later that evening, we were guests at Julian's table in the theater at Busboys and Poets, where he and John Lewis were the featured participants in a discussion on civil rights, then and now, moderated by congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. It was a moving experience to hear those two men, so different in their eloquence, each so revered and erudite. That night, as Julian introduced us to people there, it was like being with a rock star. I was asked by a reporter with the Washington Post who I was, and initially I was not allowed towards the front of the theater until Julian stepped forward and said, "It's alright-- Christian is my guest at my table."

Julian Bond was thoughtful, funny, gracious, humble, and so generous with us that day. It was a once in a lifetime experience. Julian's voice and presence will be missed greatly.

-- Christian Lopez

First Person Project Day - June 19th

Join the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies for the First Person Project, an oral history series documenting the experiences of everyday Georgians, on Friday, June 19, 2015 in the Richard B. Russell Building for Special Collections Libraries.

Six sets of partners will be accepted for this First Person Project session, scheduled for Friday, June 19th between 9:00am and 4:00pm. Each audio recording session takes one hour to complete. Photographs of interview pairs will also be taken for each session. The Russell Library will archive the interviews to add to its documentation of life in post 20th century Georgia and will provide participants with a free digital download of the recording and photographs. A $10 donation is suggested for each participant pair.

If you have a friend or family member with a story to tell, become a part of the First Person Project. Reservations are on a first come, first serve basis and can be made by calling 706-542-5782 or emailing clopez@uga.edu.

More About the First Person Project
Modeled roughly on StoryCorps, a national initiative partnered with National Public Radio and the Library of Congress, the First Person Project is smaller in scale but similar in concept, providing tools to would-be oral history interviewers and interviewees, including tips on how to create questions and conduct interviews. The project was inspired by the belief that everyone is an eyewitness to history, and that everyone, sometimes with a little encouragement, has a story to tell.

To learn more about the Richard B. Russell Library, visit:
http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell

Spotlight: Athens Oral History Project

This post was written by Alexander M. Stephens, a graduate student in UGA's Department of History and Russell Library Oral History Interviewer. He spotlights the Athens Oral History Project -- a new initiative of the Russell Library's Oral History and Media Unit led by Callie Holmes and Christian Lopez. This article also appears in the latest edition of Beyond the Pages, the newsletter of the UGA Libraries.  

About 500 yards from the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries, there is a place in downtown Athens that is unknown to the vast majority of UGA students and alumni. Its history is one of struggle and triumph, ingenuity and community, each renewed on a daily basis. This is Hot Corner, and for most people in Athens, it hides in plain sight.

For the better part of the twentieth century, Hot Corner was the center of commerce and culture for black communities in the Athens area. The Morton Theatre, which opened in 1910, was the crowning achievement of local entrepreneur Monroe Bowers “Pink” Morton. It became the creative center of the Hot Corner district and, thanks to Athenians who forged a partnership between the Morton Theatre Corporation and Athens-Clarke County, it remains vital to Athens civic life. But there always was, and still is, much more to Hot Corner than the Morton Theatre. As Homer Wilson puts it, there is a unique spirit that courses through this section of downtown. For him, the owner of Wilson’s Styling Shop on Hull Street, this spirit has never faded. The commitments of the Wilson family, the Browns, the Wades, and countless others have embedded this area deep within the beating heart of Athens history. For this reason, Hot Corner is one of the community spaces at the center of the Athens Oral History Project, an initiative of the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies designed to ensure that the history of our town reflects the people who call it home.

Christian Lopez, oral history archivist, gets the studio set
up for interviewee Rev. Archibald Killian, July 2014.

Wilson first began working as a barber in his father’s shop in the early 1960s. Wilson’s Styling Shop and neighboring Brown’s Barber Shop have kept local residents looking their best for fifty years. But more than that, these establishments are centers of social and political life. As Wilson told us in our first interview for the Athens Oral History Project, these barber shops have always been forums for community debates and regular stops for local politicians looking to hear people’s thoughts and make things happen. Whether Athenians go to Hot Corner to talk politics at Wilson’s, have a drink at Manhattan Cafe, or compete in world-class checkers matches at Brown’s, the intersection of Hull Street and Washington Street remains vital to the overall composition of our town. Some of the families with roots at Hot Corner joined together in 2000 to form the Hot Corner Association, an organization dedicated to honoring the district’s history and promoting minority entrepreneurship. The Russell Library’s goal is to support efforts like these by documenting the history of important community members and spaces—the ways things have changed and the ways they have remained the same.

But preservation is not our only goal. The Athens Oral History Project is also about learning to see what we normally don’t, the blocks that we may walk by every day without thinking about the people who live and work there. It’s these places, the ones perhaps least likely to end up in a brochure, that are most important to Lemuel LaRoche. Known around town as “Life,” LaRoche has been working in Athens communities for 15 years. As an undergraduate and later a master’s student in the UGA School of Social Work, LaRoche began looking for ways to bridge the gaps that he observed between local black communities and the university. He helped form the Dreaded Mindz Collective, a group of artists and activists who used spoken word poetry and hip hop to forge a closer bond between UGA and the town. LaRoche still uses poetry and music as a way to reach people in performances throughout the Southeast, but for a number of years his main method for connecting people around town has been the game of chess. LaRoche founded the Chess and Community Conference in 2012 to bring together youth from all over the Athens area. Chanting the mantra, “Think before you move,” he carries chess sets wherever he goes, inciting spontaneous play and honest conversations among people who otherwise might have never met. He has an uncanny ability to provoke introspection in both kids and adults while sitting at the chess board. And people are starting to notice. LaRoche received the 2015 President’s Fulfilling the Dream Award presented by UGA for his efforts to “build bridges of unity and understanding” in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

AOHP Interviewer Alexander Stephens talking with
Bennie McKinley, July 2014.

This building process, though exciting and often joyful, is also marked by pain. In our recent interview, LaRoche demonstrated that oral history is not only about recalling the past. This research method causes time to twist. In the act of remembering, past and present and future meld into fears and hopes and visions. This became clear when LaRoche spoke about his aspirations for Athens, the place where he and his wife will raise their son, now just 15 months old. Evoking the concerns that scholar W.E.B.

Du Bois expressed for his son in Atlanta in 1903 and echoing lessons that Homer Wilson’s father taught him in the 1950s, Laroche spoke of wanting to live in a community—and in a world—where his son can grow into a man and not have to fear for his life because of the color of his skin. After a year marked by the violent deaths of young black men around the country, our interview with LaRoche reminds us of the stakes history holds for the present.

Oral history has the potential to amplify voices that have been muted in the historical record. In some cases, interviewees offer new takes on familiar events, as Rev. Archibald Killian did when he spoke of hosting Hamilton Holmes in his house during Holmes’s years at UGA. In other instances, interviewees shed light on aspects of our past that might otherwise be forgotten, as Bennie McKinley demonstrated when she talked about the support that Hot Corner businesses offered her and other high school students who led local civil rights actions in the 1960s. The Russell Library’s Athens Oral History Project is about bringing together these voices—from political leaders like Gwen O’Looney, to business owners like Homer Wilson, to educators like Anne Brightwell—so that history will reflect not just the people who have made headlines, but the people who have made history happen every day.

Homer Wilson on Changes/Constants on Hot Corner

This post was written by Russell Library summer intern Alexander Stephens, an M.A. student in UGA's Department of History. Alex spent time indexing oral histories using software developed by the University of Kentucky's Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. With the help of their Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), audiovisual content can be indexed with headings and tags. By labeling content with related tags and breaking full interviews into smaller sections, OHMS allows researchers to discover specific stories within larger themes.

In addition to his other work for the Library's Oral History and Media Unit, Alex served as an interviewer for the Athens Oral History Project. Here, he reflects on his conversation with Homer Wilson for AOHP. To hear the full interview, use the links below to visit the OHMS site or Russell Library SoundCloud page. 

Athenians like to talk about our town being “different” from the rest of the state. A lot of us speak reverently about the unique character of this place. It’s not just different from the rest of Georgia--“it’s just different.”

But when I moved home to Athens after seven years away, I saw what looked to be a familiar pattern. For over half a century, the intersection of Hull Street and Washington Street was a thriving business, arts, and entertainment district owned, operated, and populated by black entrepreneurs and patrons. The area became known as Hot Corner. The Corner still attracts a bustling crowd on weekend nights, but now the scene is dominated by a mostly young and predominantly white crowd. I am generalizing, of course, about a pocket of downtown frequented by people representing a range of identities and communities. My description is probably consistent, however, with what passersby often see. After several years working with a North Carolina community facing rapid gentrification, I assumed I was witnessing the symptoms of a similar trend. I wanted to talk with someone who had seen Hot Corner change over time, and when I had the opportunity to conduct oral history interviews with the Richard B. Russell Library, I knew exactly where I wanted to start.

Walking into Wilson’s Styling Shop feels like walking into a family living room. Whether in for a haircut or not, people come together here to share information and renew friendships. According to Homer Wilson, who succeeded his father as the shop’s owner, it’s always been this way. There are decades-old relationships rooted here. This extraordinary continuity was my first clue to check the assumptions I made about what is happening on Hot Corner. It is true that the area has changed. Brown’s Barber Shop, two doors over from Wilson’s, is the only other business still operated by the same family who ran it when Wilson’s father began running his shop over fifty years ago. Surrounding these historic businesses are bars and restaurants that cater to people representative of the vanguard of gentrification in many urban settings around the country: a relatively young, relatively white crowd of artists, students, and service industry folks. While I fall firmly within no fewer than four of these categories, I saw these changes as net losses. I saw them as indications of displacement, evidence of the erasure of a history. In his gentle and good-natured way, Homer Wilson let me know that I was wrong.

Hear for yourself, by listening to the interview from Clip from 49:30-52:15 on our SoundCloud page (below) or by clicking HERE to visit OHMS. 



While the makeup of today’s Hot Corner strays from tradition, the spirit here--and the history undergirding it--is far from gone. It was easy for me to look at Hot Corner from the outside and lament a perceived loss. When I talked with Wilson, however, the picture became vastly more complex. To suggest that the significance of Hot Corner could simply be erased is to underestimate the power imbued in its people and its businesses and its barstools. It probably doesn't hurt that the Wilsons maintain ownership of the space they lease to The World Famous or that the Wade family still owns the Manhattan Cafe building. Across the street, the Morton Theater testifies to the vision, business acumen, and artistic clout of black Athenians from the early 20th century to the present. But equally important, as Wilson puts it, there is an enduring “vibe” on Hot Corner. The buzz of clippers from the Corner barber shops has left permanent aural imprints on the brick walls. The footsteps of the teenagers who led the local civil rights movement in the 1960s have etched courage into the pavement. Now, as Wilson sees it, “the spirit” has found its way into neighbors such as Joey Tatum, who has run the Manhattan Cafe for twenty years and Little Kings Shuffle Club for ten. Newcomers have made their own contributions. DJ Mahogany, for example, has spent the past decade at Little Kings supplementing the bass line beneath Hot Corner’s history.

None of this is to suggest that all change is welcome. There are people in Athens, and undoubtedly on Hot Corner, who would be justified in feeling that new trends and new arrivals are encroaching on the communities they have created in the face of discrimination and hardship. It’s important to be aware of the backstory beneath our feet in order to honor the aspirations of the people who laid the foundations on which we stand. It is for this reason that the Wilsons, the Browns, and others with historical ties to the business district founded the Hot Corner Association in 2000. Their aim is to ensure that people learn the history of this place. The Association also works to encourage minority entrepreneurship in downtown Athens, because the descendents of the people who turned Hot Corner into a regional center for black culture and commerce know the value of working for themselves and serving their community.

As painful as it can be, change is in the nature of cities. Wilson understands this fickleness. He watched as other shops moved to bigger spaces on major thoroughfares, creeping outward to malls and planned shopping centers. Heeding his father’s advice to stay downtown, he is now watching business owners eagerly seek out more central locations. Wilson seems unphased by these shifts. Perhaps this is because he knows that on Hot Corner, the spirit is strong enough to shape whatever form change takes.

The Power of Voice: Dean Rusk on the Atomic Bomb

In the spring of 2014, Russell Library student assistant Chelsea Harvey began indexing oral histories using software developed by the University of Kentucky's Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. With the help of their Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), Chelsea began listening to the personal tapes of former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and organizing audiovisual content by indexing headings and tags. By labeling content with related tags and breaking full interviews into smaller sections, OHMS allows researchers to discover specific stories within larger themes.

In the fall of 1984, former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk sat down with his son Richard and began recording the stories that had shaped his life and his political career. For the next five years, both father and son would together record over 170 tapes of interviews.

In these tapes, Rusk recalls growing up on a farm in Cherokee County, serving as part of the India Burma China Theater in World War I, and making some of the decisions as Secretary of State that would ultimately guide America into the era of the Vietnam War.

In an interview recorded some time in 1985, Rusk discusses the history of the Rockefeller Foundation, an organization for which he served as president from 1952 to 1960. Rusk explains that during the 1930s, the Foundation funded a number of private research projects concerning nuclear physics and other sciences, including a "cyclotron" at the University of Berkeley that would later be used to create the world's first atomic bomb.

Click HERE to listen to Clip 1: [Rusk A, 47:59 clip: "Role in funding of private projects"]

DEAN RUSK: "… among other things we had put some money into the cyclotron at Berkeley. Then along about 1941, the Foundation was called by the director of the laboratory at Berkeley and told that they needed something like a quarter of a million dollars urgently and that they could not tell us why. And the then-trustees of the Foundation decided to go ahead and give them that money. They were somewhat abashed a little bit later, after the war, to discover that what they had done had been an integral part of launching the Manhattan Project."

Rusk goes on to say that many of the projects funded by the Rockefeller Foundation during that time concerned research the American government did not have the budget to fund, creating a tension between the needs of government and those of bureaucracies like the Foundation.

Listening to the tape, it becomes difficult to focus on this clip; Rusk slows his speech, often taking pause before stringing together sentences. While the content is both interesting and relevant, its potency is lost in its clumsy delivery.

Compare this with a story told earlier on a tape in January of 1984, remembering the "flash" of news that the atomic bomb deploying in Hiroshima:

Click HERE to listen to Clip 2: [Rusk J, 43:05 clip: "Remembering the atomic bomb"]

DEAN RUSK:  "I was at my desk in the Operations Division of the General Staff and the flash from Hiroshima was the first I heard about it. I remember, when that flash came in an Air Force Colonel sitting at the next desk exclaimed, 'This means that war has turned upon itself and is devouring its own tail. From this time forward it will make no sense for governments to try to settle their disputes by war.' Well, we haven't fully brought that instinctive insight of his into reality but I have always remembered his remark."

The content itself is nothing new: a powerful, white American male reflects on the emotional impact of the first atomic bomb's physical destruction. But something in Rusk's voice, in his reflection, captivates. There is a quality to the audio content that extends beyond that of the transcript; his stoicism is haunting.

In the case of oral history, audio-visual content captures something missing from the same words transcribed on a page.

New Installation in Russell Gallery Connects Visitors to Cartoons, Oral Histories

The History Lives Showcase Gallery occupies the central portion of the Russell Library’s exhibit space inside the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. The gallery features materials drawn from the Russell Library’s collections and highlights six key collecting areas: Politics, Social Relations, Public Good, Environment, Economy, Peace and War. The contents of these cases rotate every six to twelve months and offer visitors a sample of the kind of documents and objects found in the archival collections.

A look at the last installation of the Politics of Peace
and War case in the History Lives Showcase Gallery.

Beginning in August 2014 the cases will showcase a selection of political cartoons drawn from the Clifford H. (Baldy) Baldowski Editorial Cartoon Collection. The cartoons have been matched with the library’s six collecting areas to spotlight stories connected to each of the "politics" areas.

In addition to selecting which cartoons to display, student curator Kaylynn Washnock also sorted through hours of the Russell Library's oral history recordings to find six audio clips that connect with the cartoons on display. The clips were selected from a variety of collections including the Reflections on Georgia Politics Series, The First Person Project, and The Georgia Environmental Oral History Project – all ongoing initiatives of the Russell Library’s Oral History and Media Unit. The clips have been compiled into a playlist on the Russell Library's SoundCloud page.

Signage in the gallery space provides a QR code which, when scanned, will connect a visitor directly to the SoundCloud playlist of audio clips. You blog readers can play these clips directly from the embedded link below! We hope visitors will enjoy this playlist either while they tour the gallery space or from the comfort of their personal computer. Our staff hopes this experiment in the gallery gives visitors a greater sense of the breadth of oral history collections at the library and a quick look into some of the most recent interviews conducted by the Oral History and Media Unit team, Callie Holmes and Christian Lopez.

The Russell Library Gallery is free and open to the public weekday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and on Saturdays from 1-5 p.m. For more information on the exhibit, email russlib@uga.edu or call (706) 542-5788.

Bringing Our Oral Histories Into the Digital Age with OHMS

In the Oral History and Media Unit, we've been working this year to implement an exciting new digital tool for our oral histories--the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer, or OHMS. Developed at the University of Kentucky's Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History under the direction of Doug Boyd, OHMS is an open-sourced, web-based system that allows archives to present digital audiovisual recordings of oral histories alongside transcripts for a more integrated user experience.

OHMS also takes us beyond the world of the transcript by allowing us to offer indexes for our oral history interviews. Traditionally, a researcher could access an oral history either by listening to the recording and/or by reading through the transcript (if a transcript existed…), but with OHMS we can create index headings (sort of like chapter titles) so that a user can quickly skim the contents to get an overview of what's discussed in a particular interview. If you see something that piques your interest, you can click on that index heading to jump directly to that portion of the interview.

We're one of the first institutions to get the OHMS system up and running, and we're excited to announce that we've just finished creating OHMS indexes for our first collection--the Georgia Environmental Oral History Project. With the help of our talented student assistant Chelsea Harvey, we now have fully searchable indexes for all eight interviews in this collection.

Want to try out the new OHMS system? Links to the OHMS indexes have been added to the finding aid for the Georgia Environmental Oral History Project, or you can click through to OHMS directly via one of these suggestions:

• Listen to James Holland discuss his career as a commercial crabber and Altamaha Riverkeeper
• Hear Nancy Thomason talk about the fight against beach renourishment on St. Simons Beach
• Listen to Jean Poleszak talk about her years of community activism as a concerned resident of Jekyll Island

Post by Callie Holmes, Oral History and Media Archivist, Russell Library 

Oral History on the Road

A couple of weeks ago Christian Lopez and I traveled down to Sumter County to record oral histories with local community members for the First Person Project. This trip grew from a collaboration with the UGA Archway Partnership, a program designed to expand the reach of the university and help address economic develop needs and community priorities by implanting UGA "Archway Professionals" in locations around the state.

We worked with Sumter County Archway Professional Maggie Potter and Americus Downtown Development Director Angie Singletary on this trip. From our perspective, we were thrilled to be able to record oral histories from south Georgia--an area that we'd love to have better represented in our collections. At the same time, we were able to share our resources with the folks down in Sumter County. We are providing the Archway Partnership and the Americus Development Authority with copies of the recordings that they can re-purpose for tourism and promotion down the line.

All in all, it was a very successful collecting trip. We recorded eight excellent interviews with citizens from across Sumter County. We also made a pilgrimage to one of the "holy sites" of Georgia politics--checking in at the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains and visiting the Carter Boyhood Farm nearby. And not only did we get to spend the night in the beautifully renovated Windsor Hotel in downtown Americus, but during the day we were lucky enough to be allowed to film in the Lee Council House, an amazing historic property owned by the Sumter Historic Trust that we were told was built as a wedding gift for the bride of a local businessman.

We'll be adding all eight of the oral histories from this trip to the First Person Project finding aid soon, but in the meantime, here are a couple of excerpts from our interviews with Willie Green Cutts and Charles Crisp.

 

Post by Callie Holmes, Oral History and Media Archivist, Russell Library

Farewell to Bill Hardman, Tourism Pioneer

The Russell Library staff was sad to learn of the passing of Bill Hardman, interviewed for our Reflections on Georgia Politics oral history series just a few month ago. The following text is adapted from his obituary.

Hardman was Georgia’s first tourism director, the first president of the Southern Travel Directors’ Council (now Travel South USA), chairman of the Travel Industry Association of America (now U.S. Travel Association), a key player in development of the Georgia World Congress Center and the architect of the Southeast Tourism Society (STS).

Born June 5, 1926, in Colbert, Ga., he served in the U.S. Merchant Marines in World War II and attended Piedmont College and Mercer University. In 1959, Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver appointed him as the state's first tourism director.

When Hardman took on the position Georgia was largely a pass-through state for Florida-bound vacationers then. During his tenure as state tourism director, he built the state’s first eight welcome centers, launched a tourism advertising program, conducted the nation’s first Governor’s Conference on Tourism and promoted Georgia throughout the U.S. and in Canada and Europe. He left state government in 1970 and founded Hardman Productions, which conducted travel and RV trade shows and other events.

Hardman was hired in the early 1970s to lobby the Georgia legislature to appropriate $30 million to build the Georgia World Congress Center and to place it in Atlanta. Many legislators wanted the facility in other cities. Hardman’s service on the national stage included being chairman of the Travel Association of America, now U.S. Travel Association, and having the longest tenure on that association’s board of any member, more than 40 years. In 1983, Hardman was at the center of creation of the Southeast Tourism Society, which started with seven states and has grown to 12.

Our thoughts go out to members of Bill Hardman's family and friends. The Russell Library staff feels lucky to have met Mr. Hardman and learn about his career in Georgia tourism.

Dispatches from the Field

Last week, Christian and I traveled to Glynn County, on the coast of Georgia, to collect interviews for a new oral history project we’ve started: The Georgia Environmental Oral History Project. Based on a partnership with Betsy Bean (a native of Glynn County), the goal of the project is to document the forces that have shaped and are currently shaping the Georgia landscape, including such topics as:

-          environmental activism (with a focus on grassroots activism)
-          the development of legislation related to environmental issues
-          the environmental history of the Georgia coast
-          the interplay between conservation, industry, and tourism
-          the politics of "sustainability"
-          the relationship between environmental issues and public safety

While ultimately we’d like to collect interviews from across the state, we decided to start in Glynn County. With numerous Superfund sites, the development issues surrounding St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island, and the challenges of protecting coastal marshlands, Glynn County is an example of the variety of environmental issues Georgia has and continues to face.

We returned to Athens after a two-day recording spree with eight fantastic oral histories to inaugurate the project. Our hosts in Brunswick, the College of Coastal Georgia, couldn’t have been more helpful and accommodating (Thanks, Cary!). Our goal is to collect a variety of viewpoints on environmental topics, and we feel we got off to a great start with these first interviews. We have a long list of names of people we’d still like to talk to, and we’re hoping to be able to plan another trip to Brunswick, perhaps in early 2014, to do some more collecting. While we’re still in the midst of processing these recordings to make them available online and write a finding aid for the collection, here are a few brief clips to introduce you to our first round of interviewees.

https://soundcloud.com/russelllibraryoralhistory/lydia-thompson-on-filming

https://soundcloud.com/russelllibraryoralhistory/nancy-thomason-on-getting

https://soundcloud.com/russelllibraryoralhistory/ben-slade-on-the-coastal

https://soundcloud.com/russelllibraryoralhistory/james-holland-on-identifying

Post by Callie Holmes, Oral History and Media Archivist, Russell Library

Reflections on the March on Washington

One of our oral history initiatives here at the Russell Library is our First Person Project, where we invite members of the community to come to our oral history studio and record a 40-minute interview to be archived at the library. Interviews in the First Person Project usually focus on personal stories and memories—but they also often touch on larger national issues and events.

Last October, Dawn Bennett-Alexander and her daughter Jenniffer Jones recorded an interview in which Dr. Bennett-Alexander discussed her childhood in Washington, D.C.—including participating in the March on Washington in 1963. Fifty years later, as we look back on this historic moment in the Civil Rights Movement, Bennett-Alexander’s story of attending the march as a twelve year-old child, and her memories of discrimination and segregated facilities in Washington, D.C., gives us a personal view of this historic event.

Today, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this historic event, the Russell Library invites you to take a listen to this personal recollection of a major moment, and movement, in American history.

To hear the full interview visit: http://podcaster.gcsu.edu/podcastdata/UGA/Channel_44612786/podcast_8424243/8424243.mp3

More About the First Person Project
Modeled roughly on StoryCorps, a national initiative partnered with National Public Radio and the Library of Congress, the First Person Project is smaller in scale but similar in concept, providing tools to would-be oral history interviewers and interviewees, including tips on how to create questions and conduct interviews. The project was inspired by the belief that everyone is an eyewitness to history, and that everyone, sometimes with a little encouragement, has a story to tell.

Our next First Person Project interview day is scheduled for Friday, September 13th. For more information on this event, please email russlib@uga.edu or call (706) 542-5788.

Post by Callie Holmes, Media and Oral History Archivist, Russell Library

First Person Project Hosts Theme Day for Big Year Series

This September the First Person Project, an oral history series documenting the experiences of everyday Georgians, invites participants to tell stories around the theme “It was a Big Year" on Friday, September 13th in room 268 of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries.

Was there a year that changed things moving forward for you or your family? Or maybe there was a year when national or international events made you rethink ideas about politics, religion, or social relations? The First Person Project is looking for stories about years of change, time periods that reshaped the lives of individuals, and we want to hear from you. 

Six sets of partners will be accepted for this First Person Project session, scheduled for Friday, September 13th between 9:00am and 4:00pm. Each audio recording session takes one hour to complete. Photographs will also be taken for each session. The Russell Library will archive the interviews to add to its documentation of life in post 20th century Georgia and will provide participants with a free digital download of the recording and photographs. A $10 donation is suggested for each participant pair.

This day of oral history is part of It Was a Big Year, a program series inspired by the exhibit Now and Then: 1973, currently on display in the Russell Library Gallery at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. For more information on other programs in the series, visit: http://rbrl.blogspot.com/search/label/BigYear 

If you have a friend or family member with a story to tell, become a part of the First Person Project. Reservations are on a first come first serve basis and can be made by calling 706-542-5788 or registering online at http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/fpp/fpp_register.html.

For more information on this event and other upcoming First Person Project days, please email russlib@uga.edu or call (706) 542-5788.

More About the First Person Project
Modeled roughly on StoryCorps, a national initiative partnered with National Public Radio and the Library of Congress, the First Person Project is smaller in scale but similar in concept, providing tools to would-be oral history interviewers and interviewees, including tips on how to create questions and conduct interviews. The project was inspired by the belief that everyone is an eyewitness to history, and that everyone, sometimes with a little encouragement, has a story to tell.

In Tribute: Remembering Ray Moore

Ray Moore, an Atlanta newsman for twenty-three years, passed away this morning—one week shy of his 91st birthday.  In 1951, he joined WSB Radio and then WSB-TV the following year. Moore resigned as news director of WSB, in 1969, and joined WAGA-TV (Channel 5) until he retired from broadcasting entirely in 1974. He was the face of local news for many Georgians during the tumultuous period of the 1950s and 60s, and during his tenure he produced a number of documentaries on penal reform, school desegregation, hunger, religion, and urban development.

Earlier this year, Moore was interviewed by Bob Short as part of the Russell Library's Reflections on Georgia Politics oral history series. He talked about the early days of television broadcasting—including the potential pitfalls of live commercial advertisements that were the norm during these years. In this clip, he describes the "Great Hotdog Incident."

 
Moore covered many pivotal moments in U.S. and Georgia history—and he was often a part of that history. Moore remembers interviewing Martin Luther King, Jr., after Kennedy's assassination. Later, after King's own assassination, Moore provided the tip that located James Earl Ray's abandoned white Mustang. Moore also covered the desegregation of UGA in 1961. In this clip, Moore describes being surrounded by an angry mob that developed around Charlayne Hunter's residence at Myers Hall.

Post by Callie Holmes, Media and Oral History Archivist, Russell Library