UNT library houses second-largest oral history program in the U.S.

by Mary Pharris of North Texas Daily

Graduate library assistant Edgar Lopez looks through the letters of Captain Edward P. Jaeger from the Vietnam conflict.

There's a well-kept secret in the Willis Library, and it's not the answers to your 8 a.m. organic chemistry exam.

Located in a medium-sized office on the third floor of the library, UNT boasts the largest oral history program at a public university in Texas - second only to Baylor University in Waco.

"The most important thing that it [oral history] can do is record the perspective of people who might otherwise be left out of the historic record," said Todd Moye, director of the program.

Oral history, Moye said, is a recorded interview with a person who witnessed something historical, ranging from war veterans to civil rights activists to immigrants.

UNT's program originated in the 1960s. The myth goes that in the 1930s Sam McAllister of the political science faculty had a late night conversation with Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson, the first woman elected governor of Texas, Moye said. A colleague of McAllister's found out about the conversation years later, and was disappointed to find out it had not been recorded, he said.

While Moye said he isn't sure if this myth is exactly how the program came to life, nevertheless, in 1964 H.W. Kamp established the program, according the program's Web site.

History graduate student Lisa Fox said she wasn't fully aware of what oral history was before taking a graduate class on it from Moye, who is also with the history faculty.

"I like the aspect of it being social history as well as academic history," she said. "You get to know an individual and learn somebody's story, putting a personal touch to it."

The stories obtained for oral history come from recorded and transcribed interviews. Moye said interviews typically last anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes, and the interviewers act as facilitators in telling a person's life story.

Fox's most memorable interview was her first, she said. As a project for Moye's class, she interviewed Lolita Alexander Gibson, one of the first black students to integrate at UNT.

"Learning about oral history, and then conducting an interview is two very different things," she said. "I came out of that interview feeling like it had been horrible, and it turned out, once I was transcribing it, being face-to-face with the words and the dialogue, I discovered that it was actually a pretty good interview, especially for a first one."

In addition to interviews with the first generation of black students at UNT, the program houses a wide variety of interviews including those with Texas politicians and an extensive collection with World War II veterans, Moye said.

The collection has more than 1,600 interviews, said Fox, the full-time administrative assistant for the program.

Current interviews have been focusing more on civil rights and documenting "the changing face of the Metroplex," Moye said. While the collection is one of the largest and oldest in the country, its operations are small with about two to three staff members at a time, Fox said. However, she said the program hopes to expand.

All of the interviews are located in the university's archives on the fourth floor. The collection is open and free of charge to anyone, Moye said. However, to makes copies of transcripts, the university charges a small fee, he said.

"It's one thing to read about history in a regular text book," Fox said, "and it's another to read somebody's personal involvement in an event like the bombing of Pearl Harbor … it can make it come a little bit more alive."