With over 35,000 pages of transcripts the Eisenhower Administration oral history project is one of the Oral History Archives at Columbia’s most researched oral history collections.
Transcripts and, when available, audio are now accessible in the Columbia University Libraries’ Digital Library Collection.
This project gathered first-hand testimony from those who played major roles in the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961), as well as the recollections of observers and of those knowledgeable about special aspects. In addition to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and members of his family, the list of participants below includes members of the White House staff, cabinet members, political advisers, members of Congress, administrators, scientists, journalists, ambassadors, military and civilian specialists, and others in a position to testify about trends and events of the period.
Among topics well documented are the Republican conventions and campaigns of 1952 and 1956, the functioning of White House advisers and staff, the President’s relations with his cabinet, the functioning of the Bureau of the Budget and various independent agencies, relations with the press, scientific developments, and other special aspects too numerous to mention, the whole interlaced with anecdotes about major and minor episodes in public life in the 1950s. A series of interviews done in Little Rock, Arkansas, on the school integration crisis there is of particular interest.