Voices

An extensive outreach effort has allowed Alabama State University to amass this collection of oral histories. As a result of a series of public history programs, background research on behalf of fellows and library faculty, and a natural network due to Alabama State University being at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, we compiled a list of potential interviewees.

Interviewees were selected based on nuanced and unique connections to events of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Such as individuals, like Valda Harris-Montgomery, that were “just a neighbor” of figures like Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. “Dean” Bertram Phillips, who moved to Tuskegee from New York and became a dean of students at the illustrious Tuskegee University during a turbulent time of the Civil Rights Movement. Or Mukasa Dada, who was a organizer traveling throughout the South during the Civil Rights Movement, and was a catalyst behind the Black Power Movement.

Over the course of the project we travelled through Alabama, and surrounding areas conducting oral histories, following in the steps of Civil Rights foot soldiers. For background research we relied on resources from site visits, archival documents and objects, documentaries, newspapers, and an extensive bibliography of second hand sources. Being based in Montgomery, we are surrounded by a rich and historic environment that naturally guided our project.

Through each interview, a new perspective was gained that contextualized, but also Invoked more questioning of, what occurred during the movement.Mutual eagerness for this project from inspires us to persist in capturing their voices, which are important and vital for generations to come.

This section of the website features the different “voices” that we interviewed over the course of the project. In the “Meet the Voices” page, you can find brief biographical sketches of each interviewee, accompanied by their full oral history interview, detailed index, and transcript.

In the “Themes of the Voices” page, you can find thematic pages of topics that were common among the “voices.” For example, if you desire to learn specifically about the relation of religion in the Civil Rights Movement, on the religion page you will find clips and index entries linked to specific interviews.