Brian Lehrer: [music] It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. We've been doing Black History Month segments every Wednesday and Thursday on the show this month, Wednesdays on Afro-Latino history and Thursdays on a variety of other topics. Today, on this last Thursday, in February, we conclude the series with something we hope that you'll find both personal and inspirational, an oral history call in on a question I'll give you in a minute and some advice on how to conduct your own family oral histories from our very special guest who joins us now, it's Kelly Elaine Navies oral history specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Kelly Elaine, we're so honored you join us for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Kelly Elaine: Thank you for having me. Thank you for calling me Kelly Elaine. Most people don't do that. I actually like to be called Kelly Elaine.

Brian Lehrer: Then I will continue to do that and let listeners, here's the prompt. Here's the oral history question we're inviting you to call in on to start a conversation, who's the oldest relative who you've ever had a conversation with and tell us something you learned from that person about your family. 212-433-WNYC. Our context is Black History Month, we'll ask that this be for callers who identify as Black or who have Black ancestors for today. Of course we'll keep doing oral history segments of various kinds as we've been doing all year for different groups of you.

Today for listeners who identify as Black, who's the oldest relative who you've ever had a conversation with?

Kelly Elaine: The oldest relative--

Brian Lehrer: I'm sorry, something. Just putting it out for listeners. Something you learned from that person about your family. One more time, because our context is Black History Month, we'll ask that this be for callers who identify as Black or who at least have Black ancestors. 212-433-WNYC 212- 433-9692. Kelly Elaine, as calls are starting to come in. How'd you get involved in oral history as a specialty for yourself? What drew you to this field?

Kelly Elaine: I was raised by two great storytellers. Both of my parents were very interested in history. My father was an African-American studies instructor. They would both tell these stories. My father would tell stories that embedded our personal family history and the greater story of American history. My mother would tell personal stories about her memories of growing up in North Carolina and Detroit. Then when I got to the seventh grade, I was in an English class and my English teacher gave an oral history assignment and then I started to put it together. Oh, this is actually something I can do.

I already enjoyed listening to the stories that they told and then I was like, "Oh, this is actually something I can record and I can do something with this. That triggered the interest. It all came together when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, in African-American Studies. I started my very first oral history project as a result of an assignment in an African-American women's literature course with Professor Barbara Christian. That led to me becoming an oral historian. What I did was I decided to follow up on a story that my mother had been telling us about her great-grandmother who was born in slavery.

I said, you know what? I want to know more about this story. At that point, I went out and started interviewing my relatives.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to share that story from your own family at all?

Kelly Elaine: Sure, I can share that a little bit of that story. What my mother passed down was that she had met her great-grandmother and that her great-grandmother lived to be over 100 years old and that she was born in slavery. That was enough to just blow my mind as a young person. Like you knew someone who was born in slavery. We think of it as being so long ago. I held that in my mind. She also would add a little bit to it. I think she was born in Africa, she didn't know this.

Of course that turned out not to be true, but when I went back as an undergraduate and interviewed my grandmother's siblings, my grandmother herself had passed away to find out about this ancestor and also to connect with relatives in Asheville, North Carolina, where they were from. I found out that most of what my mother said was true. I was able to find newspaper articles that were written about her because she lived to be over 100. It was a notable story in the community and the newspaper articles, in addition to the oral histories, confirmed and also enriched the story that I had been told and filled in all the gaps.

My family history goes back at least seven generations on that particular branch in Western North Carolina where they were enslaved. I still have family that live in Asheville and we live in Buncombe County, North Carolina.

Brian Lehrer: That's a great story. Before we take some callers and hear some of their family histories, I see the museum has a webpage called How to Do a Family Oral History. I wonder if you would just tell people where you suggest they begin. There are some steps I see before starting to interview your relatives.

Kelly Elaine: Absolutely. There's a lot of research and planning that goes into it and I think the most important thing to remember is that all oral history, whether it's with your family or with other people, is about building relationships. When you're talking about family history, you need to start with connecting with those family members that maybe those elders that you haven't sat with for a long time. Write down the things that you know about the family and then the things that you don't know and we will find that there's so much that we don't know. That's the place that you want to begin.

Then you want to start to talk to these elders, find out who's willing to talk to you, first of all, because you don't want to try and conduct an oral history with someone who isn't ready to share their story and then start to spend time with that relative. You don't just show up with your digital recorder and say, let's do an interview. You have to build them up to it. Right. Spend time with them, maybe looking at photographs and family artifacts before you begin. That's some of the preliminary work that you do before you actually conduct the oral history interview.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting about people needing to be ready. My own grandmother who immigrated from Poland, she hated talking about the old country. She just wanted to leave it behind her. It was only when she got very old into her 90s that she became interested and willing to talk about it at all. People have to be ready.

Kelly Elaine: You raise a very important issue just because, I'm sure she had painful memories. That's why you want to spend time because sitting with an elder to discuss their memories, many of which may be very traumatic, it's a sacred undertaking and you want to really put time and your full being into it. They need to develop a trust in you. They don't want to share that story with anybody. They're entrusting their story with someone that they hope will do something with it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take some callers who have spoken to some of their elders in the quest for family history. Regina in Jersey City you are on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in today.

Regina: Good morning. The relative that I spoke to was my grandmother who died at 107.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Regina: I think it was two or three years ago. Incredible. Her story is quiet but powerful. She was born and raised in Louisiana and she was given up by her family to an orphanage. The first, there were certain formative years that she was raised in an orphanage. I think she had traditional schooling until third grade, but she taught herself to read. Later in life she became an unofficial scribe, because it wasn't a compensated or official position, for a white family in her neighborhood that was illiterate. When their son went off to war, my grandmother would write the letters for them. They would dictate letters for them to their son.

When they got letters from their son who was away at war, it was my grandmother that they called upon to read to the family because the family couldn't read. It's a quiet, gentle story that doesn't really affect the trajectory of history, but I just thought it was so powerful to learn that she did that because usually it was Blacks that couldn't read in the south that she grew up in. She taught herself.

Brian Lehrer: Stereotypes. Kelly Elaine for you, as the professional oral historian. What's the next question that you would ask Regina after hearing that?

Kelly Elaine: I think that's first of all an incredible story. I would say that it's not necessarily quiet. It's profound in many ways. It reminds me so much of that interview that Tony Morrison did with Bill Moyers and he said some people say that your characters are larger than life. She said, life is that large and the story. Yes. If your elder is an illustration of that and I just hope that you recorded it and make that available to your family and to the next generations. I know. What I would ask you is, what did that make you think about your own life?

When we do this research, it enables us to look at ourselves and see patterns in us and it strengthens our sense of identity, is that what this did for you?

Regina: There are many powerful women in my family. I often need to remind myself when I'm challenged of the shoulders that I'm standing on and the adversity that they faced. I'm living in the lap of luxury and ease compared to what my grandmother's generation did. I have another grandmother who lived to a hundred and she integrated a school system because she insisted that her children would not go to inferior schools. She was tough too. I'm standing on some very extraordinary shoulders.

[crosstalk]

Kelly Elaine: That's quite a legacy.

Regina: It definitely helsps to get me through.

Brian Lehrer: Regina, Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Let's go to another caller in here, another story, Mandel, am I saying your name right in Stanford? You're on WNYC. Hi there.

Mandel: Hi. Good morning. You said my name right. My mother's uncle, who's my grandmother's brother, told me when I was 17 years old about my great-grandfather, a man by the name of Edward Holland, who was a Pullman porter on the railroads. He was the first person in our family to go to college. My uncle, who was a Ph.D. who was telling me the story, he was the second in my family. When I was talking about college, and I was talking about it casually, he said to me, "You're only the third person in our family to go to college. This is a big deal." Now, I was always raised to understand that college was automatic.

My parents were not formally educated, but they raised us to understand that college is not an option, we must do this. My going to college felt automatic to me, but when my uncle told me this, I realized that it was a big deal. I still don't know if I fully understood it, because I thought it was such an automatic thing that I wasn't going to go to my graduation. My wife's godmother said to me, "You go to graduation for your family, not for you." When she told me that I fully understood what my uncle was trying to communicate with me and what my wife's godmother communicated with me finally, and I had a better appreciation for the sacrifice that were made in order for me to even have the mentality to say that college is an automatic thing.

Brian Lehrer: What a great story of your own unfolding in terms of your awareness of your place in history, not just as an individual. Did you learn anything else about your uncle's grandfather who was a Pullman porter? Anything else that you would share?

Mandel: I did. I learned that his grandfather and my great-grandmother, their parents were born in slavery in Georgia. Someone had mentioned earlier that we feel like slavery was so far away from us. It's only 150 some odd years away. When he said that to me, it jarred me because I said, "I thought slavery was something very ancient." You start doing the math on, and you say, "My God, I'm only a few generations away from that horrible institution."

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much, Mandel. We really, really appreciate it. Kelly Elaine, it raises a number of questions. One is, is 150 years ago a long time or a short time?

Kelly Elaine: It's not a long time at all, especially considering his story and the story that I shared where my mom actually knew someone who was born in slavery. That's one generation away. She remembered this woman clearly and it affected her for the rest of her life, so much so that she made sure to pass that story onto me. I think it's wonderful that your uncle shared that story with you of the importance of education in the family. That's something that we really need to do. It's important for young people. It's astounding to me when I hear some people say that young people don't think it's important to be smart. Young, Black people don't understand that. That's a part of our tradition. It's in our culture. If people would pass that down to young people, then they would understand that we have a legacy of education in our communities.

Brian Lehrer: I guess when we think about why to do an oral history, we could ask, is it just to satisfy our human curiosity about where we came from as individuals or can they serve in the purpose of self-betterment or more broadly of advancing social justice? How broad is the context as you see it as a professional oral historian?

Kelly Elaine: Oral history has multiple uses. Of course, it can be used in a scholarly fashion. In academia, we use oral history to supplement research in certain periods of history, to have a firsthand account. I believe that in terms of an individual impact of oral histories, it can have not just strengthen your sense of identity, but it also has a healing effect on the two people that are involved. The person sharing the story and you as the oral historian listening, you're allowing someone to share a story. I've had many interviews where people share stories that they've never shared before, and you are helping them to do that. That's one of them uses, of course, oral history, they also not only capture the witness accounts, but you're also capturing the style of storytelling. You're capturing the sound of someone's voice. All of those things are important records to be passed onto the future. It goes far beyond just the two individuals that are involved in the oral history or even the few that may be involved.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're doing a Black history month segment asking you to call in, inviting you to call in on the question, who's the oldest relative who you've ever had a conversation with, and tell us something you learned from that person about your family. Because our context is Black History Month, we're asking this only be for callers who identify as Black or have Black ancestors, for today's oral history, call in 212-433 WNYC. We're being greatly aided, as you can hear, by Kelly Elaine Navies, who's an oral history specialist at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in DC. Mia in Highland Park. You're on WNYC. Hi, Mia.

Mia: Oh my goodness. I am so overjoyed with this conversation. I live in Highland Park, New Jersey. I'm a native Washingtonian. The eldest relatives I've had conversations with are my grandmothers, one is still living, shout out to granny. She's 97. My grandmothers are the sugar on top of my life. I think this conversation is helping me understand that the story of my grandmothers is the story of Black joy and Black abundance. My grandmothers are professional grandmothers. They just make my brother and my lives just so much better, so much happier. I've learned in conversations with both of them that they inherited that role, that vocation from their own grandmothers. For my grandmother who's still living, granny who's 97, she had a grandmother that just made sure that she played this role of nurture and joy and just supplemental love for her and her brother through all of the struggles that they went through.

My mother's mother, just thinking about the experts just comment she just made about sound, the sound of my mother's mother telling me the story of her grandmother was that she would say this name, Annie Rebecca Gay Bell Davis. She would say that name so often that I can just rattle it off in my sleep. What a joyous name. Gay Bell, that was her grandmother born in Waynesboro, Virginia. She was born on August 16th, and all of her grandchildren would come celebrate August 16th with her. The joy that my grandmother had when she would say that woman's name, it's contagious. I feel it. I feel like I know her. I would love one day, shout out to anybody who's a relative of any Rebecca, Gabe Bell Davis. I would love to have a reunion in Waynesboro, Virginia.

I know exactly where she's resting on that very site. That's what I've inherited, a sort of a feeling of joy in my family from the stories that they told. I want to keep that joy and I want to pass it along to the next generation.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Kelly Elaine, we're hearing a story of somebody's grandmother's grandmother's. How would you follow up with Mia?

Kelly Elaine: My first question is, have you recorded your grandmother's, you've got these great stories that you're carying, but have you actually recorded their voices and captured as much of the stories as you can to document this?

Mia: Yes, I have.

Kelly Elaine: That's wonderful.

Mia: Yes. I need to do more. I have gotten some of those, but to me, yes I do have those.

Kelly Elaine: That's wonderful. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much.

Mia: Thank you very much for your work.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Mia. let's go to another caller and hear another story. Brooke in Brooklyn, if you come from Brooklyn, why not be called Brooke? You're on WNYC. Hi, Brooke.

Brooke: [laughs] Thank you, Brian. I'm so glad to be able to share this. My grandfather was born in 1880 and he worked his way through all aspects of his education. When I sat down with him, I did not know how important it was to him to get an education and how he struggled to get it. He said that he was taken out of elementary school when he got to fourth grade because he was tall enough to reach up to the top of the corn stalks. He had to work in the fields but he insisted on continuing to learn to read and his sister stayed in school, so she enhanced his education by teaching him every night what she had learned during the day. When he was an adult, he managed to get into Tuskegee Institute, when it was first started and he was so dedicated to getting an education, that one year he had earned enough money to be able to pay his tuition but he didn't have any money for room and board.

He got a job working on a farm 10 miles outside of school and he had enough money to also buy a bicycle. He slept in the barn with the cows and the horses and everything else. He got up at four o'clock in the morning and fed them, had his breakfast and rode his bicycle into town 10 miles each way to go to his classes.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. What year was that?

Brooke: I cannot imagine anything that I would ever want that much now and how hard it was to just be able to do that on his own.

Kelly Elaine: It really puts things in perspective.

Brooke: I'm just awe struck at the idea.

Kelly Elaine: It puts things in perspective, what we're doing today when we learn of the struggles of our elders.

Brian Lehrer: How old was he when he was biking to school like that, if you know Brooke?

Brooke: Oh, he was in his 20s. He had worked both ways to get there. I think he said he was 30 when he finally graduated.

Brian Lehrer: What year would that have been?

Kelly Elaine: She said he was born in 1880, around the turn of the century.

Brian Lehrer: Beautiful story. How has knowing that affected you in your own life if at all?

Brooke: Oh, it makes me treasure all of the education I have had, all the benefits that have come to me from getting it and I really encourage anyone and everyone and support anyone who wants to get an education because I keep saying, education is the key to our growth and our respect as human beings. When you're Black in this country, nothing comes easy, but when you appreciate that struggle to learn, once you get an education, no one can take that from you.

Brian Lehrer: Brooke, thank you so much for a wonderful call and wow, we've had four great samples of oral histories. We could go on because our board is full but we have to go on to our next segment, so we'll take this as some sampling and maybe as some modeling. Kelly Elaine Navies, how can people pick up on this, if maybe they've even been inspired just by hearing the four callers who we were able to get on and maybe using the guidance that you provide, I know there are websites and stuff from the museum.

Kelly Elaine: You can't help but be inspired by these stories and this is why I do the work that I do. I've never had an oral history that doesn't inspire me in some way and it's one of the reasons I do this work. There are many resources available. You can go to our website where we offer a downloadable guide to doing family oral histories.

You can also go to the Oral History Association website. I happen to be the vice president of the Oral History Association, by the way, but you can go to the Oral History Association website and they have a whole list of resources related to oral history on that page as well. There are programs all over the country that have excellent webpages related to oral history.

Brian Lehrer: By the way I see you have an oral history archive at the museum. We have so many listeners who have gone or want someday to go to the museum in DC. Do you have listening stations with headphones or how does that work?

Kelly Elaine: We don't have listening stations with headphones. There may be something like that in the future. What we do have, we have the reflections booths where you can actually record yourself and we have three of those located in our history galleries. People can go into the reflection booths and they can respond to one of four questions and we get great stories from our visitors, because some of those questions ask about family history, ties to slavery or they ask people to respond to the exhibitions. We get people of all races coming and sharing their stories in these reflection booths. but in terms of accessing the interviews themselves, you can access those on our website.

Brian Lehrer: As we conclude our Black History Month series here on the show, we learn as if we didn't know, that you don't only get history from books, you get history from your family members. Kelly Elaine Navies, oral history specialist at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Thank you so much for riding along and everything you shared today.

Kelly Elaine: Thank you. I've enjoyed this tremendously.

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