Oral History and Objectivity

This comes from Historical Methods student Jim C.:

My biggest concern regarding history is how to evaluate resources for research especially oral history. Throughout the semester we read articles and learned about how to analyze and evaluate resources. Also, we learned about the type of analytical questions to ask. However, I discovered recently that learning how to analyze resources is a very small part in learning to do history, especially oral history. When looking at oral histories, we know to look at who is maintaining the oral histories? Are there transcripts and how and who maintains them, the copyright date and last date maintained? Also how does it stand up when the credibility of the oral history is checked with other resources? Who is doing the interview and when was the interview?

I am convinced more than ever that doing history can easily be subjective and the researcher's objectivity and the interpretation and analysis of the historical evidence (the oral history) can be compromised by the historian's conscious or subconscious biases. For example, I was reluctant to read the transcript and listen to the University of Southern Mississippi library's Oral History Project interview of a man who was a member of the Klu Klux Klan in Mississippi during the sixties. Was I being Bias? Was I being open-minded and objective? I finally did read the transcript and dismissed the transcript as credible historical evidence immediately. Again, was I being open-mined and objective? The weird thing is when I listened to parts of the interview, my opinion changed. I was willing to consider this interview as credible evidence. Was I now being objective? Was I being persuaded by emotional appeal of an auditory medium? Did my learning style interfere and compromise my objectivity? Learning style is the way a person learns. For example, some need to see it, others need to hear it and others need to interact with material in order to learn.

Also, from USM library's Oral History Project, I read the transcript of Aaron Henry, one of the delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964. At first I was put off by some of the profanity he used in the interview. Does the use of profanity discredit historical evidence? Am I being objective? Can the interview be credible even if profanity is used? Does the profanity he used indicate his lack of intelligence and communication skills or does it indicate his anger toward an injustice? Perhaps neither one is true. Also, to be honest I dismissed some oral histories because they were boring. Was I being objective? Other times the audio was difficult to listen to because of the lack quality of the audio. If the quality of the audio is that good quality, does that discredit it a reliable historical evidence?

It seems to me doing history and being objective is not easy. I have not linked to an article to support my statements. Instead you can all judge for yourself. I have linked to a couple several oral history websites and the Oral History Association so you can listen to and/or read the transcripts of various oral histories especially ones with opposing viewpoints or are "boring" in order to practice and see how objective you are? The main link is USM library's oral histories which I used in my research.

The Oral history Association website

Oral History Association Evaluation Site

An ongoing website of oral histories of people close to Harry S. Truman and Bess Truman Some may see it as boring. This was not part of my research.

This website I copied and pasted of USM Civil Rights Oral history. There are interviews of various points of views: Klan people, civil rights leaders,locals volunteers etc.

This is the website I copied and pasted from Lyndon B. Johnson Library oral history collection

This website or oral history at university of Hawaii. It had nothing to do with my research I found some of them difficult to listen to

I threw this is because it asks the question, "Are blogs replacing oral history?"

Let me just throw in one other site -- the WPA Slave Narratives that were collected in the 1930s and are now online at the Library of Congress American Memory Site. For a discussion of some of the issues Jim raises, check out the thoughtful essay An Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives, by Norman R. Yetman