Research centers -- such as The King Center in Atlanta, Georgia (shown above) that commemorates the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- serve to promote a greater understanding of the African American experience. The links provided on this page focus on the role of oral history in promoting and preserving African American heritage in the United States. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, founded in 1915 and currently residing at Howard University in Washington, D.C., seeks "to promote, research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about Black life, history and culture to the global community." One of the first African Americans to make oral history recordings, novelist and researcher Zora Neale Hurston led others to recognize the importance of preserving vanishing voices. I am Zora celebrates Hurston's achievements as an artist and influential historian. The Hurston/Wright Foundation (named for Hurston and her contemporary, the novelist Richard Wright) is dedicated to furthering the artistry of African American writers. The American Library Association and the Association for College and Research Libraries have compiled an Index of Internet Resources, including oral history sites, for the study of African American history. The importance of the Gullah dialect and culture, spoken in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, continues to play an important role in African American history. The Beaufort County Public Library in South Carolina provides a guide to Gullah. The Digital History Project makes available, in encyclopedia format, a large number of resources on the enslavement of African Americans, including images, historical background, and narratives of former slaves. Current issues in Civil Rights are also represented. The Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago has compiled an extensive index of resources on oral history accounts by Jazz musicians, including the Chicago Jazz Archive and the Jazz Institute of Chicago. At the site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee -- now stands the National Civil Rights Museum. Dedicated to promoting the King legacy, the museum web site features online exhibits featuring the experiences of those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center also explores the movement's history, as well as the importance of the Underground Railroad for escaped salves in the American Civil War. The role of the Tuskegee airmen in the second World War, and their struggles for equal rights when the war was over, is explored in the National Park Foundation's web site for the Tuskegee National Historic Site. Audio files of the Tuskegee airmen themselves provide invaluable insights into this chapter of the Jim Crow era. A related site, We Were There, chronicles the role of African American soldiers in the U.S. military. To ensure that the complete story of the African American experience will be remembered, a number of organizations have created sites dedicated to the oral history of a specific region: African American Experiences in Durham, North Carolina First Black Women at Virginia Tech In Those Days: African American Life Near the Savannah River The Portsmouth, New Hampshire Black Elders Life Histories of African Americans in Hawaii These and related sites record the daily lives of people across the country as they lived through, endured, and challenged the injustices of racism.
Virginia Black History Archives | Special Collections and Archives __________________________________________________________
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http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/oralhist/centers.html
