LibGuides: African American Oral Histories: Collections of African American Oral Histories

Research Databases at Duke Libraries

HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
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.
African American Communities This link opens in a new window
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.
Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement This link opens in a new window
Search for primary sources and interview transcripts from people involved in the American Civil Rights movement
Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle This link opens in a new window
Search for primary source materials on the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th century. Includes NAACP Papers, federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Search for books, essays, articles, speeches, letters and interviews of leading African Americans

Duke Oral History Projects

Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South
"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."
Duke University Oral History Program Collection, 1973-1978, 1992
"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."
African American Oral Histories in Rubenstein Library
This list is from the guide to African American Manuscript Collections in the Rubenstein Library.
SNCC Digital Gateway (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)
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.

Southern Oral History Program
"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."
Black Women Oral History Project Interviews
Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories
"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)

African American Oral Histories

Research Databases at Duke Libraries

Duke Oral History Projects

Collections Outside Duke

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