Kevin
I think the problem becomes apparent when one is asked to define "oral
history." Your example is restricted to the narratives of those who lived
the experience of slavery. They are represented as first hand accounts. The
same is true for the vast data base of veterans of World War II. The
narrative may not be true because it is recollection and that is subject to
mistake and loss of clarity over time. But certainly, unless shown to be
inaccurate by other more verifiable sources, such narratives are taken for
true. They are interviews of participants, not different from witnesses in
a trial or onlookers to an event who are asked to describe it to the TV
camera. It is the collection of human memory. But what is it when it moves
from the memory of the interviewee to the memory of what someone told him.
In the case of the witness it becomes unreliable and inadmissible. In the
case of the TV interview, it is maybe used when there are no first hand
accounts available. In the case of one who was not a slave but heard from
those who were or the soldier who wasn't there but had buddies who were, it
moves into an area more likely to have errors of memory. If we move to the
next generation, it becomes the stuff of legend, family tales and outright
exaggeration. At this point, who knows what the truth may be and how can
this be termed "oral history"? It's oral but it's hardly history. But
that's not the end of the decline. Now, there is a new contrivance,
endlessly employed by Gordon-Reed in her new book. You decide that an event
should be true, but there is no evidence to support it. You then argue that
there should be evidence and its absence is proof of subterfuge,
destruction of documents and conspiracies of silence. The lack of evidence
is now evidence. 


Richard E. Dixon
Editor, Jefferson Notes
Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
4122 Leonard Drive
Fairfax, Va 22030
703-691-0770 fax 703-691-0978


> [Original Message]
> From: <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 10/6/2008 12:24:25 PM
> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] VA-HIST Digest - 3 Oct 2008 to 4 Oct 2008
(#2008-65)
>
> 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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