Oral History in Ohio: Collecting and Preserving Modern History in the Buckeye State

SPRING 2012 65 Collection Essay Oral History in Ohio Collecting and Preserving Modern History in the Buckeye State Donna M. DeBlasio T he state of Ohio hosts a wide variety of institutions that collect and preserve the past through oral history interviews. Ranging in size from large university collections that cover diverse topics to smaller local historical societies, museums, churches, and other such institutions, oral history is alive and well in the Buckeye State. All of these agencies understand the importance of collecting the memories of people who witnessed or participated in events in modern American history. Scholars have long accepted that oral history primary sources can illuminate the past in a personal and compelling manner. Oral history, with its power to enrich how we interpret the past, offers an important instrument in the historian’s tool box. In particular, interviews have greatly enhanced scholars’ ability to document the life stories and experiences of groups left out of traditional history books. They give us a way to look at our past from many angles, not just from the “winner’s” perspective. Ohio’s diverse cultures, ethnic groups, economic systems, political viewpoints, and religious institutions provide a microcosm of American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The many oral history projects in the state reflect that diversity in their collections . While impossible to discuss every oral history project or program in Ohio, this essay will focus on several projects emblematic of the kind of work going on in the Buckeye State to document modern history. Among Ohio’s oldest oral history projects is Youngstown State University’s Oral History Program. In 1974, historian Hugh G. Earnhart inaugurated the program, which focuses on the history of northeastern Ohio. The project now houses over twenty-two hundred interviews on a variety of topics, including the history of Youngstown State University (YSU), World War II, the Vietnam War, the steel industry, General Motors’ Lordstown (Ohio) plant, Italian-Americans, African Americans, nursing, local high schools, and the Holocaust. These interviews , housed in the University Archives in YSU’s William F. Maag Jr. Library, provide an incredible resource for documenting the modern history of the region. Indeed, the YSU collection is now one of the largest regional oral history archives in the nation. Earnhart designed the oral history program around a graduate level ORAL HISTORY IN OHIO 66 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY course, History 6940—Oral History. Students in the class learn oral history techniques and methodology and also conduct a set number of interviews. When the program started, Earnhart took what he referred to as a “shotgun” approach in which students selected their topic, developed questions, contacted interviewees, and conducted the interviews. Consequently, the program collected interviews on a wide variety of local history topics rather than concentrating on one area. This resulted in the development of a broadly based collection, covering a variety of first person accounts of the recent past. From the beginning, Earnhart intended to create an oral history archive available for use by the general public, scholars, and others interested in these first-person accounts. To make the oral interviews accessible, transcribing is an integral part of the program. The Maag Library retains hard copies of the transcripts, and since the early twenty-first century the transcripts are in a digital format, enabling researchers to access them on-line through the library’s web site. To increase the value of the collections, the YSU archives is digitizing all of the old analog tapes; the mp3 files will soon be available on line. The collection continues to grow, though in the past few years the Oral History course has focused on one topic, usually selected by the instructor. YSU’s Oral History Program is an invaluable resource; many of the interviewees who shared their experiences in the Great Depression, the 1937 Little Steel Strike, or the two World Wars, to name a few highlights, have since passed away. The interviews remind us of the valuable resources that slip through our fingers every day when we fail to capture those memories for future generations.1 Group of students on the old stone bridge at Youngstown College, c. 1940s. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE...