Speaking History Oral Histories of the American Past, 1865-Present

by Armitage, Sue; Mercier, Laurie

• ISBN13: 9781403977823
• ISBN10: 1403977828
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This volume of selected oral histories features the voices of Americans who lived through some of the most critical events shaping the nation's history since the Civil War. This first-of-a-kind compilation allows students, scholars, and other readers to explore the connections and disconnections between individual stories and broader historical themes by understanding how history plays out in individual lives. Comprised of oral history interviews drawn from some of the country's major collections,Speaking Historypresents a remarkable array of diverse American voices. Included here are fascinating, often moving accounts of everything from slavery to protest movements, world wars to work and leisure, forming a detailed mosaic of American life in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Supplemented with valuable historical context, this book demonstrates how oral history interviews can bring the past to life by linking individual experiences to larger historical narratives.

Author Biography

Sue Armitage is Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Emerita, Washington State University, Pullman. She is the coeditor (with Elizabeth Jameson) of The Women’s West (1987), Writing the Range: Race, Class and Culture in the Women’s West (1997), and editor of Women’s Oral History: The Frontiers Reader (2002).

Laurie Mercier is Professor of History, Washington State University, Vancouver. She is the author of Anaconda: Labor, Community and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City (2001) and The 1970s Social History of the United States (2008), and coeditor (with Jaclyn Gier) of Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670-2005 (2006). She is a former president of the Oral History Association and coauthor (with Madeline Buckendorf) of Using Oral History in Community History Projects (2007).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Series Editors' Foreword	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
1865-1900	p. 7
Race Relations	p. 8
The End of Slavery	p. 9
Sharecropping and Violence	p. 13
A California Remembers the War	p. 14
A Wounded Knee Survivor Remembers	p. 18
Work on the Western Agricultural Frontier	p. 20
A Homesteader's Account	p. 21
A Cowboy's Story	p. 23
Immigration	p. 25
A Greek Peddler: Anonymous	p. 27
A Chinese Businessman	p. 29
Industrial War	p. 32
The Homestead Strike	p. 34
1900-1920	p. 39
Reform Movements	p. 40
Women's Reform	p. 40
Race and Work in the South	p. 46
Child Labor	p. 46
Growing Up with Segregation	p. 50
Migrations	p. 52
From Russia to Chicago and Montana	p. 53
Beginning the Great Migration	p. 57
World War I	p. 59
At the Front	p. 60
On the Homefront	p. 65
The Influenza Epidemic	p. 69
1920-1945	p. 71
Migrations	p. 72
North to the United States for ôa Steady Jobö	p. 72
From Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California	p. 76
Involuntary Migration to Mexico	p. 79
Leisure and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s	p. 82
Drinking and Leisure during Prohibition	p. 82
American Renaissance	p. 84
Turn Your Radio On	p. 88
Work and Labor during the Great Depression	p. 90
The New CIO and the 1937 Steel Strike	p. 92
Working for the Civilian Conservation Corps	p. 95
Discrimination and the Depression	p. 98
World War II: Opportunities and Tragedies	p. 101
Women at Work	p. 101
Women at War	p. 105
Negotiating Internment	p. 109
1945-1965	p. 115
The Cold War at Home	p. 116
The Left during the Cold War	p. 117
The Cold War and Labor	p. 120
Migrations	p. 123
Opportunities in the Industrial North	p. 125
Urban Indians	p. 128
Race and Civil Rights	p. 131
Desegregating the Nation's Capital	p. 132
Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi	p. 136
Postwar Work, Family, and Community	p. 140
Negotiating Career and Family in Arizona	p. 142
Life in the D.C. Suburbs	p. 146
1965-2000	p. 151
Protest and Social Change	p. 152
Rock ænÆ Roll and Cultural Protest	p. 153
Radical Protest-SDS and the Weatherman	p. 156
The Gender Revolution and its Backlash	p. 160
The Dawning of the Gay Rights Movement	p. 161
The Conservative Women's Movement	p. 165
Cold War Warriors	p. 169
Vietnam War Soldiers	p. 170
The Nuclear Cold War and Its Environmental Consequences	p. 174
Cold War Migrations	p. 178
ôBorn a Hmong Daughterö	p. 179
Sanctuary for Central American Refugees	p. 183
Economic Change and New Domestic Challenges	p. 187
Shrinking Jobs in the Industrial Economy	p. 187
Domestic Terrorism and the Oklahoma City Bombing	p. 191
Appendix
How to Conduct an Oral History Interview: A Quick Guide	p. 197
Select Bibliography	p. 199
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