SOUTHERN ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM IN THE GULF
The SOHP has started documenting the Gulf South, which is in the early throes of of the worst environmental disaster in American history. The BP oil spill will have a profound, lasting impact for the many thousands of people whose communities face the Gulf. The SOHP’s interviews will record how people are making sense of this disaster in the context of their long — and now threatened — connections to life and work on the coast.
Andy Horowitz, who first came to the SOHP as a college intern in 2002 and later directed the SOHP’s post-Katrina project “Imagining New Orleans,” will serve as the lead interviewer. Andy spent last week touring Grand Bayou, where, as resident Rosina Philippe put it, locals have lived “forever.” Still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina, the people of Grand Bayou now fear that the oil spill will devastate their fishing grounds and livelihoods.