Oral history projects give voice to Katrina, Rita survivors

Charles

Oral history projects  have become an important resource for producing history and for accessing history. The Library of Congress , for instance, has dozens that are dedicated to African Americans, veterans and suffragettes —the list is extensive. Memories of ordinary people are captured in their stories and offer the balance—or the antidote, maybe—to the boring history of books and lectures and the shows that Dad watches.

Collecting oral history began as soon as Edison  invented the phonograph . You could say that all CDs and DVDs catch a historical moment that re-occurs when you play it. Anyway, the idea is to preserve the story as it happened to the person it happened to. Recent oral history projects include events of September 11, 2001,  and the space race of the 1960s .

Now, oral histories about experiences in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last summer are being put together. One is by the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness (NPACH)  and features people of Houston who rolled up their sleeves to help evacuees from the stricken areas. The Houston Chronicle reports  the beginning of another oral history project for people who lived through the devastation, put together by the University of Houston. (Contact the project here .)

The idea is to develop a voice for the thousands of people whose stories have been, for most of us, only pictures on the nightly news. Now, these individual stories can be heard, from the voices of the people who are continually rebuilding their lives.