GEORGIA
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION ANNUAL MEETING
Times of Crisis, Times of Change:
Human Stories on the Edge of
Transformation2010 OHA Annual Meeting
October 27-31, 2010
Sheraton
Hotel Downtown
Atlanta, Georgia
CONTACT: Al Stein, Chair Oral History Association Education Committee @ asteinca@gmail.com
WEDNESDAY EVENING WELCOME EVENT: October 27, 2010 7-9pm, Auditorium of the Auburn Ave. Research Library, Atlanta, Georgia Dessert and coffee
TIMES OF CRISIS, TIMES OF CHANGE: VOICES FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION
an evening of film, discussion, and live musical performance
featuring:
SOUL OF A PEOPLE: WRITING AMERICA’S HISTORY:
Clips from the recently completed documentary on the Federal Writers’
Project (full screening on Friday evening).
PANEL DISCUSSION with Federal Writers’ Project folklorist and legendary social activist, STETSON KENNEDY, and filmmakers Andrea Kalin and David Taylor, moderated by past OHA President, Charles Hardy III.
“I’D RATHER NOT BE ON THE ROLLS OF RELIEF:” IMAGES AND SONGS FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND NEW DEAL - performed by The 198 String Band, including OHA President, Mike Frisch!
Times of great crisis may offer the prospect and promise of great change. Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story is the story of the most chaotic and influential cultural experiment in American history.
The film connects the economic, political and environmental tensions of the present moment with a country caught in the grip of the Great Depression, when unemployed men and women looked to the government for a life raft, and many found relief through the Works Progress Administration. The WPA Federal Writers’ Project recruited a diverse crew of out-of-work writers, old newspaper hands, former schoolteachers, typists, high-school dropouts and drunks, and assigned them to fan out across America to learn its history, interview its citizens and produce the first-ever portrait of America from the ground up in a series of state travel guides. Men and women like Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Jim Thompson, Vardis Fisher, Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever and Studs Terkel, were assembling guides and interviews, but they were also knitting together the cultural fabric torn apart by the national crisis of the Great Depression. While it existed, the Writers’ Project uncovered an America that no one knew existed and the legacy of their discoveries is still felt today. Soul of a People offers a fresh look at the WPA guides and the Project’s long-hidden interviews, and reveals a rich legacy that speaks to us anew.
Photo by Edith Ogden Kennedy Hart. Courtesy of Stetson Kennedy Archives/Stetson Kennedy Foundation.
As a bonus, filmmakers Andrea Kalin and David Taylor are joined by folklorist and legendary social activist, Stetson Kennedy, who learned how to document folklore from Zora Neale Hurston, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, testifying against its leaders, and ran a write-in campaign for Senate in 1950 on a progressive platform.
Kennedy is the only living subject of a Woody Guthrie song.
The 198 String Band combines large-screen sequences of Depression-era photographs with live performance of largely unknown songs from the 1930s. The photographs are drawn from lesser-known images in the archives of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Library of
Congress. The songs are from long-unavailable period records and FSA
migrant camp field recordings; some have never been publically performed or commercially recorded .
The 198 String Band is from Buffalo, NY. Tom Naples (guitar, banjo,
autoharp) has researched the music of the Great Depression in archives and travelled the route of the Dust Bowl migrations, including oral histories with former camp residents. Peggy Milliron (guitar, vocals) is a music educator and avid photographer who did the photo research for this presentation and partnered in the editing process. Mike Frisch (fiddle, guitar, vocals) is Professor of American Studies and History at the University at Buffalo, and the current President of the Oral History Association.
{Alabama} {Alaska} {Arizona} {Arkansas} {California} {Colorado} {Connecticut} {Delaware} {Florida} {Georgia} {Hawaii} {Idaho} {Illinois} {Indiana} {Iowa} {Kansas} {Kentucky} {Louisiana} {Maine} {Maryland} {Massachusetts} {Michigan} {Minnesota} {Mississippi} {Missouri} {Montana} {Nebraska} {Nevada} {New Hampshire} {New Jersey} {New Mexico} {New York} {North Carolina} {North Dakota} {Ohio} {Oklahoma} {Oregon} {Pennsylvania} {Rhode Island} {South Carolina} {South Dakota} {Tennessee} {Texas} {Utah} {Vermont} {Virginia} {Washington} {West Virginia} {Wisconsin} {Wyoming}