Follow our weekly series, Throwback Thursday, designed to help celebrate 50 years of OHA. We’ll profile a year in the life of the organization each week with photos, logos, and highlights taken from the Oral History Association Newsletter. We welcome your memories, photos, and comments at oha@gsu.edu.
OHA in 1987…
New logo adopted in 1987…
President: Donald A. Ritchie, U.S. Senate Historical Office
Site of the Annual Meeting: St. Paul, Minnesota
Newsletter: Jaclyn Jeffrey, editor; Thomas L. Charlton, Lois Myers, M. Rebecca Sharpless, David Stricklin, associates
Editorial office: Baylor University, Waco, Texas
Annual individual membership: $20
Highlights of the year from the OHA Newsletters:
- “Federal Judge Grants FBI Access to Sealed Papers” is the title of an article in the Spring issue that describes the recent decision of a federal district judge in the case of Wilkinson et al. v. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Author John Neuenschwander discusses how the decision may impact the practice of programs offering restricted access to tapes and/or transcripts and advised that materials may not be protected from a subpoena.
- The National Archives and Record Administration announced that basic policy toward federal agency oral histories had been formulated and details were being worked out. According to John Vernon, NARA archivist, “everyone stands to profit from the joint effort to clear up federal oral history’s murky status.”
- The National Oral History Association of New Zealand was established and held its first conference in May of 1987. The Maori Oral History Unit was a pilot project of the New Zealand Oral History Archive in which the Maori themselves identify individuals to be interviewed.
- OHA adopted a new logo in ’87! After considering this move for several years, Council adopted the new logo described as “a little more eighties” than the previous logo in service since 1969.
Who were we interviewing in 1987?
- The Marriott Corporation — interviewing employees to help celebrate its 60th anniversary and for use in recruiting, training, and public relations.
- Brigham Young University — children of polygamous marriages on living arrangements, relations between family members, and feelings about the practice of polygamy.
- USS Arizona Memorial Museum — interviewed 45 survivors who were in Hawaii for a reunion of the 45th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack
Check back next week for 1988…
