Traditionally, the adage “history is written by the winners” holds true.
The voices and perspectives of people with power have been privileged in the historical record, and finding the perspectives of anyone else from most eras of history is a challenge.
In modern history, that doesn’t have to be true. The era of mass information makes recording diverse perspectives much easier — and yet still, as in other fields, the voices of the elite are privileged in modern history.
This board gives the Southern Oral History Program credit for starting to change that.
Since its founding in 1973, the program has made great strides to include people from all backgrounds within the historical record and to make history accessible to everyone.
The program’s interviewees narrate Southern labor history, civil rights history and LGBTQ history, among other topics. They range from people with tremendous prominence to people who appear literally nowhere else in historical records.
Without SOHP, the stories of those in the latter group would have been entirely forgotten — outside, perhaps, their families — and how we remember regional history would look much different.
All of the SOHP interviews (all with audio and some with written transcripts) are freely available online to anyone.
Quoting SOHP interviews in academic work brings in primary sources with tremendous humanity, but visiting the project’s database is worthwhile outside of class.
