View oral history video interviews with thousands of historically significant African Americans in the arts, business, education,entertainment, law, the military, politics, sports, religion, science, and medicine.
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories.
Search for primary source materials on the freedom movement from governmental, organizational and personal perspectives. Note: Check the boxes for Black Freedom Struggle modules on the Advanced Search screen.
"The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University's Lyndhurst Center for Documentary Studies in 1990. It seeks to record and preserve the living memory of African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950."
"238 oral history interviews conducted by project participants in the years 1973-1978 and 1992. The majority of the oral history interviews deal with the civil rights movement in North Carolina, especially Durham, Chapel Hill, and Greensboro. Additionally, thirteen interviews deal with the Tulsa Race Riots, and fourteen interviews cover miscellaneous North Carolina topics."
The "Our Voices" section features SNCC activists narrating the prominent themes of the organization's history.
Collections Outside Duke
Explore these examples of African American oral history collections available outside Duke. Use the Search Tips on this guide to identify additional collections.
"The Southern Oral History Program Interview Database provides detailed descriptions of interviews in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (04007). The interviews in this collection were conducted or collected under the auspices of the Southern Oral History Program in the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill."
"The recordings of former slaves in Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine states. Twenty-three interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom." (Library of Congress)
