The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Bicentennial oral history program

Repository: Washington State Archives. State Archives Branch.

Collection Description (CRHP): As part of the nation's Bicentennial celebration, the Washington State Archives documented the lives of everyday people through six oral history projects, one of which focused on the African American community in Seattle and King County. The interviews were conducted in 1975 and 1976 by noted local historian Esther Mumford. Over that two year period Ms. Mumford conducted 69 interviews and collected numerous photographs, which are also included in the collection. These interviews produced more than 3,000 pages of transcripts. Almost thirty years after the project was completed, this collection remains one of the richest but underused sources of research into the history of the African American community in Seattle and King County. [description taken albeit minor edits from the publication titled "African American Oral History Interviews Held by the Washington State Archives" (Washington Secretary of State: 2006?).

Collection Description (Extant): Transcripts of interviews taken during the Washington State Bicentennial Oral/Aural History Project. As a part of the nation's Bicentennial celebration, the Washington State Archives embarked on a project to document everyday people in the history of Washington through a number of oral interviews. There were six projects, each involving several interviews. They included the Black Project, the Filipino Project, the Kittitas Project, the Pacific Project, the Wahkiakum Project, and the Whatcom Project. Each project was an investigation of a particular way of life, based on interviews of people with a number of things in common, such as geographic location, occupation, race, time-frame, etc. The results were snapshots of life as it was experienced by a number of people within a given context.

Access Copy Note: The transcripts have been digitized but not the recordings.

The Seattle Public Library has a copy of interview transcripts from the Washington State Oral/Aural History Program, as well as an index to these interviews. Copies of these interviews were distributed to many area libraries. In addition, Western Washington University has microfiche transcripts of the Washington State Oral/Aural History Program.

Date(s): 1975-1976

Digital Status: Partial

Extent: 5 cubic feet

Language: English

Rights (CRHP): Contact the repository which holds the collection for information on rights

Subjects:

African Americans--Civil rights--Washington (State)
African Americans--Employment
African Americans--Washington (State)
Civil rights movements--Washington (State)
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
Labor movement--Washington (State)
Race discrimination--Washington (State)
School integration--Washington (State)
Washington (State)
World War, 1939-1945--Participation, African American

Genres:

Interviews
Photographs
Sound recordings
Transcripts