The WPA slave narratives weren't second-hand oral history reports, they were
first hand accounts by those who actually participated in the peculiar
institution.....much more valuable that a modern-day historian looking through
documents and interpreting them with his own biases and agenda.
In the law, it is the difference between eye witness testimony and
hearsay....the former admissible because it is considered reliable, the later
generally inadmissible and deemed of little probative value.
J South
In a message dated 10/6/2008 12:20:19 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
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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