Oberlin Oral History Project
Hear stories of Oberlin from the townspeople themselves: graduates, shopkeepers, residents, community leaders, and more. Over 100 interviews have been completed and represent town and gown, black and white, city and country, male and female. They include memories of downtown, college life, local industries, world events, politics, entertainment and daily life from the early 1900s to the present. You can listen to or read transcripts of the interviews in our Resource Center (copies are available for a fee). We hope to post transcripts and excerpts online in the future, so check back!
History of the Oberlin Oral History Project
The first series of the Oberlin Oral History Project lasted from 1982 until 1987 and included interviews with 84 Oberlin seniors. The Oberlin Oral History Project began as an offshoot of the City's Historic Preservation Commission. Although the Commission's first duty was and is to protect and preserve Oberlin's historic buildings, it was becoming apparent that the townspeople's history was going unrecorded, especially that of a small group of African-American citizens who were then reaching their 70s and 80s and who provided family links to the earliest pre-Civil War Oberlin African-American families.
It became increasingly important to preserve Oberlin's historic legacy as an interracial town hospitable to freedom seekers, a stopover point on the Underground Railroad, and a place for a substantial number of African-Americans to reside permanently.
In the 1990s, under the guidance of Pat Murphy, executive Director of the Oberlin Heritage Center, a new oral history committee formed to make this large oral history project available to historians, scholars and the general public and to add new interviews to the collection.
Phase 2 of the oral history project began in 2001 when a new list of prospective interviewees was generated. As of January 2009, 39 new transcripts have been added to the files.
