Civil Rights Oral Histories Collected by SOHP
In the weeks before COVID-19 halted visits to university campuses, research libraries, and archives, the Library of Congress released the final batch of interviews in their Civil Rights History Project (CRHP). Collected by the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) at the Center for the Study of the American South, the final 145 videotaped interviews feature veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Fortunately for researchers, documentarians and other community members, the interviews are available online. Seth Kotch, incoming Director of SOHP explains why the Library of Congress selected the program at UNC to collect these testimonies for preservation and sharing in the nation’s archives.
“The leading cultural heritage institutions in the country chose the SOHP for this project, which reflects our decades of rigorous, ethical, and creative scholarship; our track record of completing ambitious projects; and our expertise,” says Kotch, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Oral testimonies collected by SOHP offer expanded analysis of Civil Rights history in their articulation of revolutionary demands for social and economic justice in black communities and the corresponding suppression of black and brown power movements. To complete this rich collection of voices, researchers at the Southern Oral History Program proposed interview subjects, conducted background research, planned interviews, conducted interviews, transcribed interviews, and conveyed everything to the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Initially with former Associate Director David Cline (now at San Diego State University), Kotch supervised researchers and oral historians collecting the interviews. “We worked with movement historians Cline, John Dittmer, Emilye Crosby, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and former SOHP Associate Director Joe Mosnier,” says Kotch. “The research team included UNC Department of History graduates Elizabeth Gritter and Willie J. Griffin. Our videographer was the wonderful John Bishop.”
“The administrative and logistical management of the interview team – a considerably complicated task – was ably accomplished thanks to the skills and efficiency of Seth Kotch and the Southern Oral History Program at UNC-Chapel Hill (my alma mater),” wrote Guha Shankar, Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Click here to learn more about the Civil Rights History Project and search the collection.