Oral History and Issues of Collective Memory

            This week’s readings included two short pieces, Leon Fink’s “When Community Comes Home to Roost: The Southern Milltown as Lost Cause” and the introduction to Michael Frisch’s A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History. These pieces help put the third reading, The Oral History Manual by Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan into context by using specific examples of recent oral and public history projects.

            The Oral History Manual is just that: an informative manual that breaks down the process of oral history projects into easily digestible sections, from the beginning stages of project planning through processing and care of the final product. Though I have never personally participated in an oral history project, the idea has always appealed to me and I had long assumed that oral history was as straightforward as an interview and transcription. And, boy, was I wrong. The legal and ethical concerns involved with public history stood out to me, especially the question: who will own the materials? A larger, but related question: who owns history? When involved in an oral history project, it is important to remember that the point is to learn how the storyteller or narrator understood a particular experience. The interviewer must remain neutral, even after researching extensively in preparation for the interview. I found many of the authors’ tips to the interviewers helpful, especially that an interviewer should be silent, using body language such as eye contact and nodding to reassure the narrator, rather than verbal cues. The manual did get repetitive and sometimes felt frustratingly simple, but was generally useful and helpful as we prepare to participate in an oral history project.

            The introduction to A Shared Authority similarly focused on how much can be learned from studying the process of oral and public history. Frisch argues that focusing on the process can point to political, cultural, and communicative issues that surface as progress is made. Frisch also mentions the problem of collective memory, how it is manipulated in both direct and indirect ways through time. The issue of collective memory continued in Fink’s “When Community Comes Home to Roost.” Fink’s article described the Cooleeme Historical Association and showed how the activities of the CHA raised ethical questions in public history. In connection with Kitch’s book last week, Fink points out the tension between heritage and history and asserts that heritage tends to accentuate the positive aspects of history and often overlooks the realities. Fink also highlighted issues with community history. First, individual memories are often reshaped to fit into a single mold to cooperate with specific existing interpretations. Second, that the act of creating a single community can also create borders, as was the case with the African-American population of Cooleeme, often left out of the narrative of the town’s history. These readings raised many issues common to public history projects, which should be considered as we prepare our class oral history project.