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 1982…
Foxfire cast members Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, and Keith Carradine
President: John A. Neuenschwander, Carthage College
Site of the Annual Colloquium: San Antonio, Texas
Newsletter: Tom Charlton, editor; L. Katherine Cook, Adelaide S. Darling, Rebecca S. Jiménez, Margaret L. S. Miller, associates
Editorial office: Baylor University, Waco, Texas
Annual individual membership: $15
Highlights of the year from the OHA newsletter:
- The Former Members of Congress Oral History Program presented transcripts of 85 interviews with former members of the Senate and House. The project entitled “The Modern Congress in American History” was directed by Charles Morrisey and coordinated by Fern Ingersoll with grants from the NEH, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other supporters.
- The Imperial War Museum in London reported that it had collected an extensive number of oral histories that were available for research. Topics range from War Work and Military and Naval Aviation to the Anti-War Movement and British Service Cameramen.
- The play Foxfire, based on Eliot Wigginton’s books, opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Nov 10. Starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, the story line drew heavily upon oral history. The newsletter reported that Martha Ross and a group of OHMAR members attended the play in Baltimore and had a positive review.
Who were we interviewing in 1982?
- Indiana Extension Homemakers Association — homemakers on the changing societal roles of women. Each county in the state was asked to contribute five interviews for a total of 460.
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — Mormon pioneers in southeastern Idaho, the Mormon experience in the West, and life in a Mormon polygamous family.
- New Jersey Black Oral History Workshop — private lives of New Jersey blacks between the World Wars, including the great migration from the South, the Depression, and common experiences such as lack of jobs, poor housing conditions, and the threat of entrapment within emerging black ghettos.
Check back next week for 1983…
