ARC-OH. Avery Research Center Oral History Collections

Abstract

The Guy and Candie Carawan Sea Island recordings, 1960-1969, collection contains field recordings and oral history interviews documenting Gullah Geechee life and culture in rural Johns Island. The recordings were created, first, during the Carawan's time assisting the Island's Citizenship School and, later, when they lived on the Island from 1963 to 1965. The collection consists of reel-to-reel tapes, audiocassettes, and transcripts.

Abstract The Jean Claude Bouffard Civil Rights interviews collection, 1982, contains five oral history interviews with Septima Clark, Mary Moultrie, and Bernice Robinson as well as recordings of lectures that Septima Clark and Thomas R. Waring, Jr. gave to Bouffard's College of Charleston class in the summer of 1982. Participants discuss a wide range of topics including their family history and upbringing, their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and organizing, African American leaders during...

Abstract The Director's Cut Oral History Project is a series of six video oral history interviews recorded in 2025 with current and former living directors of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture. Participants discuss a wide variety of topics including their professional lives, what brought them to Avery, accomplishments and challenges from their tenure, the role the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture and Averyites from the Avery Normal Institute played...

Abstract The Somebody Had to Do It (SHTDI) Project brought to Claflin University in 2008, under the auspices of the Jonathan Jasper Wright Institute for the Study of Southern African-American History, Culture and Policy. This initiative was designed as a multi-disciplinary research project to identify the “first children” who “sacrificed their youth” in implementing the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954. After the creation of a database identifying the names,...

Abstract The William Smyth audio collection, 1985-1994, contains ten oral histories, conducted by William Smyth, and eight music recordings. The oral history participants discuss life in the Charleston area during the 1950s with specific focus given to the Civil Rights Movement and segregation. The music recordings include Gullah Geechee artists from the Lowcountry such as Ron and Natalie Diase (Beaufort), the Brotherhood Gospel Singers (Mt. Pleasant), unidentified "Sea Island Singers," and a...