The Survivors exhibition which caught the imagination of people in Wellington and Dubbo, is now in Carcoar. More than 18,000 people have attended the exhibition. This is a photographic and recorded oral history of 18 Elders and Elders-in-waiting who reflect on their lives, growing up and living on Nanima Mission at Wellington – the oldest continually run mission in Australia. For full story click here.
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East Garfield Park, Chicago Project
One major touchstone for Chicagoans when they talk about the history of East Garfield Park is the riots that took place there following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In some ways, the riots seem to have overshadowed other, brighter moments in the neighborhood’s past. For full story including an audio radio interview click here.
Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947
When Guneeta Singh Bhalla was 19 years old, her paternal grandmother Harbhajan Kaur sat her down at her home in New Jersey to relay a harrowing migration story. The date was August 1947. The place, Lahore, a city in the northern state of Punjab, in what was once India, but what was now the new Muslim majority country of Pakistan. Almost overnight, Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims who'd lived in Lahore for generations in peace turned on one another. Kaur, a Sikh, was forced to abandon her family estate and board a train with her three young children — ages four, three, and one — to Amritsar, a small city just inside the new border of India. For six months, she was separated from her husband. The dead bodies, the horrific violence she witnessed haunted her for the rest of her life. Read full story with videos and links here.
“The Silences”
'The Silences' tells the story of a disenchanted mother forced to abandon ambitions of becoming a performer to raise a young family alongside an abusive husband. Jason Di Rosso spoke to veteran filmmaker Margot Nash about the process of making this personal memoir. See full story here.
Forgotten Australians Demand Justice
The Alliance of Forgotten Australians has appealed to state and federal governments, demanding prioritised access to long-awaited services and support. Speaking on behalf of the Alliance, chairperson Caroline Carroll said that with many Forgotten Australians now aged somewhere between their 50s and mid-80s, the time to act is now. Read full story with links here.
Boston College Tapes Story Continues
Why Love Oral History?
Today we return to our ongoing series in which we ask a variety of oral history professionals and practitioners how they ended up in the audio world and why they love oral history. Today Adrienne Cain discusses how she went from future astronaut to oral historian, and the value she sees in preserving the spoken word. For full article click here.
Fiji Oral History Map
Bula! Welcome to the Fiji Oral History Map. The Map is a user-generated database of video, audio and written testimonials of Fijians worldwide. Whether you currently live in Fiji or come from there and now live in Australia, the United States, or elsewhere, whether you are Native Fijian, Indo-Fijian, other Pacific Islander, White, Chinese, or mixed-race, whether you are young or old or somewhere in between, we want to hear your story. The goal of the Fiji Oral History Map is to reflect the diversity and expansiveness of the Fijian community worldwide and to provide a forum for members of the community to share their stories and connect globally. See website here.
Seattle’s Working Women of World War II
After Pearl Harbor, the United States went to war, and Seattle became a total blackout town – no lights anywhere at night. Spotters scanned the skies and scoured the waters of Puget Sound, looking for Japanese war planes and submarines. People of Japanese descent were sent to internment camps inland. Soon, everything became scarce, from butter to sugar to cloth. And Seattle’s industries mobilized to produce the machines of war, with women leading the charge to build them. For full story click here.
Kevlar Research & Development
Wilmington, Delaware — March 2016 — How a novel polymer in the laboratory became a socially transformative product in the marketplace is the topic of a new oral history prepared by Hagley Museum and Library. “Kevlar R&D: An Oral History” features 13 hours of reminiscences that form a rich study in the business and technology of innovation, going back to chemist Stephanie L. Kwolek’s 1965 discovery of Kevlar. Through many surprising twists, the six subjects talk about how they helped make Kevlar serve the complicated and occasionally contradictory interests of the DuPont Company, scientific inquiry, the marketplace, and the general public. The order of the interviews follows the development of Kevlar from a laboratory oddity to the production line. The six are chemists Herbert Blades and Wesley Memeger, Jr.; engineers Donald Sturgeon, Bob Wolffe, and Ted Merriman; and executive Irénée du Pont, Jr. For full story click here and video oral histories click here.