Fordham University in The Bronx, New York, has unveiled a new online archive on the history of African Americans in The Bronx. The Fordham Bronx African American History Project includes downloadable audio files and verbatim transcripts of 300 oral history interviews conducted between 2002 and 2013.
The interviews, all conducted by scholars associated with Fordham’s Department of African and African American Studies, provide an in-depth portrait of the cultural, political, and social history of Bronx Black communities as seen through the eyes of a diverse group of neighborhood residents and document the mass migration of African Americans and West Indians from Harlem to the Bronx in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
Mark Naison, professor of history and African and African-American studies at Fordham and principal investigator of the project, notes that for many years The Bronx was a very diverse community as White flight did not happen all at once. “For about 20 years the Bronx had a very unusual mix,” said Dr. Naison. “The transformation was a much slower process than people realize. We captured that experience.”
Below is a video about the project.
