A properly recorded oral history is most authoritative for what it has to say about the world at the time at which it is recorded.  It *may* be useful for shedding insight on earlier times as well--which is the way most participants on this list seem to wish to consider their utility.  

Thus, for example, the WPA slave narratives--oral histories recorded in the 1930s--are *most* useful for what they have to say about the condition of African Americans in the 1930s.  

Used with great care, they *may* also shed light on earlier events.  But part of the "great care" that must be exercised to allow them to speak to earlier times is to account for the experiences that intervene between the historical moment the researcher is concerned with (usually life prior to 1865), and the moment in which the oral historian collected and archived the interview.  

It matters, in other words, that the elderly people who provided the source interviews for the WPA research on slavery had lived through 70 odd years of Reconstruction, New South, and Jim Crow life.  Those later experiences colored and shaped the way the WPA subjects remembered their child hood in slavery.  Any methodologically sound attempt to use these sources, then, will of necessity have to consider and analyze the period between 1865 and 1935-37.  

I have not read the research that uses the Hemings family oral histories.  So I am not in a position to say one way or the other whether or not the historians who use that material do so in a methodologically sound fashion, or not.  I can say, from personal and unfortunate experience, that it is easy enough to use material from oral histories in an uncritical fashion.

All best,
Kevin

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 10:09:31 -0400
>From: "Peter J. Lysy" <[log in to unmask]>  
>Subject: Re: VA-HIST Digest - 3 Oct 2008 to 4 Oct 2008 (#2008-65)  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>A distinction needs to be made between the way academics use the specific 
>term oral history (a recorded interview with someone who participated in or 
>witnessed something in his or her past) and more general terms like oral 
>tradition, family history, or folklore (information passed verbally from 
>generation to generation). Oral history is first hand information, oral 
>tradition is second hand information. Someone being interviewed for an oral 
>history might include oral tradition in what he or she says, but that does 
>nothing to elevate the second hand information to eye-witness evidence.
>
>Peter Lysy
>Senior Archivist
>University of Notre Dame
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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