Oral History

I guess there are all kinds of oral history: The music of Robert Johnson, the speeches of Winston Churchill, MLK or JFK, radio commentary of Liston vs. Clay…it’s a broad church.

The area that tends to draw me in more than most is that of everyday people witnessing or being a part of historic occasions. Or just detailing their everyday pre-WW2 lives in, for example, the slums of Glasgow or rural Louisiana or anywhere.

There are lots of resources on the net where you can pick up snippets. This one comes up near the top of google on a search for ‘oral history’:

http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/history.html - look down the page for the links to other sites around the world.

And these are two parts of the BBC sound archive:

Link one

Link Three

I thought it might be nice if we compiled links to some great oral history moments and/or stories.

This very brief clip is of Florence Nightingale from 1890

Forced feeding in prison as told by Suffragettes

A lovely story of how a wife came to convince her husband that three-wheels was all she needed

Whatchagot ?