Activity+One+Listening+to+the+oral+histories

Activity one: Listening to the oral histories

 * 1) Oral histories provide a chance for the “regular person” to record his or her experiences, not just the well-known or famous people often recorded in written history.
 * 2) **Oral history allows you to learn about the perspectives of individuals who might not otherwise appear in the historical record.**
 * 3) **Oral history allows you to compensate for the digital age.**
 * 4) **Oral history allows you to learn different kinds of information.**
 * 5) **Oral history allows you to ask the questions you’re interested in.**
 * 6) **Oral history provides historical actors with an opportunity to tell their own stories in their own words.**
 * 7) **Oral history provides a rich opportunity for human interaction.**
 * 8) What are some other reasons we should value oral history?
 * 9) Post your answers on your own wiki home page after you listen to the oral histories

Introduction to the first oral history (Madge Hopkins):

Madge Hopkins attended segregated schools in Charlotte, North Carolina. She remembers hearing abut Dorothy Counts, a young woman she knew through church, becoming one of the first four students to desegregate Charlotte’s schools. Counts struggled with verbal and physical harassment: her brother’s car windshield was broken when he picked her up from school, she was taunted on a daily basis, and her family received many threats of violence. The harassment continued for weeks, and Counts’ parents decided to withdraw her from school to protect her safety. Listen to the excerpt media type="file" key="pioneers_hopkins.mp3" width="240" height="20"
 * Discussion questions:
 * How did Madge Hopkins know Dorothy Counts?
 * Why do you think Ms. Hopkins would not have wanted to be the first student to integrate a school?

Introduction to the second oral history (Sheila Florence): > Sheila Florence was one of the first students to desegregate schools in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. When she began attending Chapel Hill Junior High School in 1962, she endured hurtful treatment from her white classmates, who refused to sit by her, used racial slurs, and threw spitballs at her. Here, Ms. Florence remembers her fist day of integration.

Listen to the excerpt

media type="file" key="pioneers_florence.mp3" width="240" height="20" Introduction to the third oral history (Daisy Bates): >> Daisy Bates was a civil rights activist and the head of the state chapter of the NAACP. She served as advisor to the Little Rock Nine, nine black students who enrolled at the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Alabama in 1957. She helped the students cope with the harassment they suffered from white students by organizing daily after school meetings at her home where the students could talk about their frustrations and learn the non-violence strategies practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr. Here, Ms. Bates recalls Minnijean Brown, one of the nine, being expelled for fighting back against students who taunted her. After leaving Central, Minnie was enrolled in and graduated from an integrated school in New York. >> Listen to excerpt.
 * Discussion questions
 * Why did Sheila Florence dress up for her first day of attending an integrated school?
 * What do you think Ms. Florence may have been scared of on her first day?
 * What were some of the difficult experiences she had at the new school?

media type="file" key="pioneers_bates.mp3" width="240" height="20"
 * Discussion questions:
 * Why did Minnie get expelled?
 * Why do you think she was punished, but the boys who harassed her weren’t?
 * How would you have reacted in Minnie’s place?