Texas Christian University Mounts an Oral History Project of the Civil Rights Era

Students at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth are undertaking an oral history project to document the experiences of Black residents of the city during the civil rights era. The Texas Communities Oral History project seeks to recover, preserve and make openly accessible the history of racial, ethnic, gender and economic groups traditionally underrepresented in historical archives. The project is currently seeking funding for a collection of at least 300 new life history interviews and the creation of a public history website.

Wynton Brown, a student who is participating in the project, stated, “You can read a book, but when you’re looking into somebody’s face and they’re telling their story, it’s a little different, you see the tears and the struggles and you know deep down inside that you weren’t there, but they were, and that tree with the roots on it is still growing. It’s growing through us now and we’re going to pass it along.”