StoryCorps: National Social History Project Records Ordinary People Telling Their Stories

Here’s a link to a Democracy Now interview about StoryCorps, the national organization focusing on collecting the stories of everyday people.  The informative clip includes some interesting sample recordings of people, such as a couple of Memphis Sanitation Department workers.  They were there in 1968 when Martin Luther King came to the TN city to help striking workers.  Another one is a very personal account of an aging World War II combat veteran and memories from the Battle of the Bulge that still haunt him.

There are plenty of other pieces, and the project they’re working on, creating a collection of oral histories from ordinary citizens and everyday life, is valuable.  These accounts are exactly the kinds of pieces I enjoy doing as I travel around collecting stories from telephone operators, police officers, firefighters, utility workers, office clerks, healthcare workers and such.  From these many fascinating sources, come some of the best insights and they reveal a part of our past that is often missed by the history books.

Check on link below to go to the the story. 

StoryCorps: National Social History Project Records Ordinary People Telling Their Stories