In “A Black Women’s Practice: Oral History from Fisk University’s Ex-slave Narratives and the Black Women Oral History Project” in the fall 2024 issue of OHR, historian Anna Kaplan questions the dichotomy that oral historians have developed in recent years regarding the field’s origins and genealogy that pit its academic roots against its radical ones. Here, she expands upon what led her to focus on Black American history and culture, how she came across an archival file at Howard University that read, “Ophelia Settle Egypt–oral history pioneer” and how that changed the course of her research and thinking, and how all oral historians can use the tools Black women working within academia developed over several decades. (“A Black Women’s Practice” is Open Access through November.)
