Analysis Of Oral History

Traditionally, oral history has been described as the art and craft of collecting one’s stories and memories. From the data collected, we learn about events, activities of the past based upon the person telling the stories, and the collection of the memories. The collection of oral history is part of the tools historians have to collect and evidences for analysis of past history. It gives us new material to draw conclusions based on a variety of angles. According to Nigel A. Raab, author of Who is the Historian?, “Oral historians do not collect compile these sources to gather objective information about a past event, but they collect narrative stories from individuals to get a better sense of a community’s attitude and an individual’s place

Bless argues, “a central tension in the role of the oral historian, between responsibility to the interviewee and responsivity to society and history” (Perks 424). Either view, she continue to make the point that “oral histories are rooted in principles of progressive and feminist politics, particularly in a respect for the truth of each informant’s life experience and a quest to preserve the memory of ordinary people’s lives” (Blee 424). The chapters also address the importance of the evidence interviewers collect and the empathy and ethic when address the topic of Klanswomen and feminism as the backdrop to explore their activism and views on their movement and its impact on groups they call

For example, Blee’s writing allows the reader new insights regarding women in the movement. Standard documentary sources, assembled by contemporaries and historians who assumed that women were politically insignificant, focus entirely on the male Klan” (Blee 427). Klanswomen defined their role in the women’s right era of the first half of the twentieth century, and “participated in the women’s temperance movement and the extension of the right to vote to women.” Another takeaway from the reading was regardless of their view about “others,” they viewed themselves as everyday people. Klan families participated in “weddings, baby christenings, teenaged auxiliaries, family picnics, athletics contest, parades, spelling bees, beauty contest, rodeos, and circus, it is little wonder that the 1920s Klan is recalled by former members as normal white Protestants” (Blee 428). The oral interview project, allowed me to understand that their personal beliefs about African Americans, Jews and Catholics was the dominant definition of who they were 24/7. But the reading allows us to understand their mindset, and how they just view themselves as “ordinary