Taking Their Place Among the Giants: Performing Oral Histories of Pennsylvania's Black Freedom Struggle

Oral history performance is an important tool for making history, but performing oral histories also raises important questions about what kind of history is being made, issues of particular relevance to the performed histories of underrepresented minority groups, such as African Americans. This art...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Oral history review 2014, Vol.41 (1), p.48-76
Main Authors: Ridner, Judith A., Clemens-Bruder, Susan W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
civil rights movement
Civil rights movements
Creativity
Freedoms
Minority & ethnic groups
Oral history
Pennsylvania black freedom struggle
urban renewal
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Oral history performance is an important tool for making history, but performing oral histories also raises important questions about what kind of history is being made, issues of particular relevance to the performed histories of underrepresented minority groups, such as African Americans. This article focuses on a case study of Another River Flows , an African American oral history performance staged in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in 2008. It examines the complex creative processes through which this performance came to fruition. More importantly, it analyzes how oral history performance was the creative vehicle through which three small, long-ignored, sometimes internally divided, and mostly quiet African American communities of the urban North came to assert a bold, collective history of struggle and resistance for themselves, one in keeping with heroic tales of the national black freedom struggle.
ISSN:0094-0798
1533-8592
DOI:10.1093/ohr/ohu003