What is Oral History?

Fatemeh Rezaei

What is Oral History?

Oral history captures and preserves personal memories pertaining to historical events through recorded interviews.

What is the purpose of conducting oral histories?

Oral history provides valuable insight into the lives of individuals, allowing us to understand important events and the way the events were experienced.

Here’s an example of an oral history interview:

Part 1

Part 2

Interview with Lee Labovitz Kramer. The interview was conducted in Baltimore, Maryland on August 22, 1979 by Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project^[1]

To learn more about the significance of oral history, read the following:

https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/66420.pdf

Lee Labovitz Kramer, (1979, August 22), Interview by Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project [Interview 136]. Baltimore Regional Studies Archives, The Maryland Historical Society and The University of Baltimore Special Collections and Archives, Baltimore, MD, United State. https://archivesspace.ubalt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/17995 Accessed April 07, 2021. ↵

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A Guide to Conducting Institutional Oral History Projects in Classrooms Copyright © by Fatemeh Rezaei is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.