Over the course of its seventy-year history, oral history has gone through a few iterations — the Oral History Research Office, the Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia Center for Oral History Research, and, today, the Oral History Archives at Columbia. In each of its incarnations, in addition to conducting interviews for collections, oral historians […]
Category: Oral History
Event | LISTEN HERE: a virtual & interactive oral history encounter
Oral history is largely associated with telling stories. The Spring ’21 Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA) student exhibition is approaching the craft of oral history through these two questions: How do we know that we are listening? How do our narrators know they are being heard? Across more than a dozen live […]
Event | How We Listen to…the Kickstarter Union Oral History
What: How We Listen — like a book club, but for oral histories! When: Saturday, March 27th, 2pm Join OHAC for the first How We Listen session, a new event series focused on sharing oral history audio from our deep and wide archives. Let’s figure out what it means to really hear the […]
Newly Available Online | Lawyers Who Went South
Intricately bound with Black grassroots, religious and civic organizations were Americans in the legal profession. This newly available collection, Lawyers Who Went South, documents the experiences of lawyers who participated in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, with a particular focus on the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee. As a Columbia undergraduate Thomas Hilbink […]
A Frances Perkins anniversary gift to oral history…
It’s safe to say — by volume of patron requests — Frances Perkins‘ 5,500+ word oral history is one of the most requested interviews in the Oral History Archives at Columbia’s collections. Today, March 4th, marks the anniversary of Perkin’s appointment to the U.S. Cabinet as Secretary of Labor in 1933. In honor of […]