As memories of the civil rights movement begin to blur and tales of integration fade with time, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program is striving to bring these stories back into focus.
The program received a three-year, $150,000 grant to collect and share stories of local black residents who grew up during the civil rights movement.
The grant was awarded by the UF Office of the Provost, and the project was developed after conversations between Paul Ortiz, the program’s director, and UF President Bernie Machen, according to a press release.
Ortiz believes that as the number of living black people who remember integration begins to dwindle, it is essential to collect their stories before they are lost forever, leaving only the history offered in textbooks.
“History really matters to people as they get older, and it isn’t about facts and dates; it’s about feelings,” Ortiz said.
He said the project focuses on oral histories of black people who came of age around the time of Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954.
“We want to see what the transition was like in the everyday lives of blacks in Gainesville and across the county,” Ortiz said.
He said the project’s goal is to make the information collected in the interviews accessible to the public in the form of podcasts, Web sites and a book.
The podcasts can be accessed all over the world on iTunes, with one listener in Beijing, China, Ortiz said.
Transcripts from the interviews are on the UF Digital Library Center Web site and are already being used by students to write term papers and reports, Ortiz said.
UF students play a huge role in the interview process.
Of the 40 interviews already conducted, two-thirds of them were done by UF undergraduate students, Ortiz said.
“They often say things to me like, ‘This interview changed my life,’” he said. “They say, ‘I learned more about history in that 30-minute interview than I have in all the textbooks I’ve read.’”
Jason Horton, a sociology senior, was nervous when he sat down to conduct his first interview.
He spoke with the first black graduate of the UF College of Nursing.
Horton said his two-hour conversation with Evelyn Mickle helped him develop a new appreciation for the challenges faced by the pioneers of integration.
“Her strength and perseverance showed me how my own struggles are so small,” he said.
