Week 32 – Preserving Heritage – Oral Histories

While photographs preserve a visual window into our past, oral histories have an almost magical quality: they transport listeners not only into a specific time and place, but also into the individual life and of the person recounting their own experience. In recent years, local historians have placed special importance upon oral histories as sources for African American history in coastal Georgia. Several initiatives, like the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Center at Georgia Southern, highlight storytelling and oral tradition’s importance among Gullah Geechee people. Oral history interviews present a chance to carry on that tradition and to learn about events and changes in our community from those who lived them.

Dr. Melanie Pavich serves as the Project Director for the Coastal Georgia Research Initiative at Mercer University. This initiative, run through the University’s College of Professional Advancement, allows students to learn about historical and cultural issues in coastal Georgia “by interviewing members of African-American communities in the coastal Georgia region.” After conducting interviews, students create public presentations and digital stories that are archived for later access. Recently, the Initiative has received grants from Georgia Humanities and has presented public programs including a 2019 presentation “based on oral history interviews of African American residents of [St. Simons Island] whose families date back to the time of enslavement.”

The Coastal Georgia Research Initiative is not the only organization collecting oral histories in Glynn County. Dr. Hector Montford at the College of Coastal Georgia leads the Historic Risley School Archives Digitization Project, aided by students and faculty from the College’s American Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies programs. Their online collections include photographs, scrapbooks, and PTA materials from the Risley School, as well as valuable oral histories from former Risley students and faculty, recorded as part of a Brunswick African American Cultural Center project. Oral histories are also integral to the presentation of history in museums on both St. Simons and Jekyll islands. Mosaic, the Jekyll Island Museum, has recorded oral history interviews with individuals including Sandra Martin Mungin, the daughter of Genoa Martin, the former manager of Brunswick’s Selden Park. At the World War II Home Front Museum on St. Simons, visitors can listen to oral histories that illuminate Glynn County’s wartime efforts, including interviews with members of the Mungin family, several of whom served in World War II.