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Lesson Overview

Todd Sonkin collecting stories

Using Oral History

Student Lesson

Section 3: Analyzing Oral Histories

Directions | Working Women in the 1930s | Dancing as Recreation | Americans and the Automobile

Directions

Now you will analyze excerpts of oral histories collected by the Federal Writers' Project. You can find complete versions of these oral histories, and many more interviews in the on-line American Memory collection, American Life Histories, 1936-1940.

In your group, choose one of the Primary Source Sets below. Read as many excerpts as your teacher assigns. In your group discuss and record answers to the questions that accompany each interview.

When you have finished answering questions, as a group select a research topic related your primary source set that you want to investigate further. Your group might want to investigate a different aspect of the topic during the same time period, or investigate the same topic in another time period.

Once your group has chosen a topic for further research, go ahead to Background Research for Oral History Interviews.

woman in factory

Primary Source Set A:
Working Women in the 1930s

I Ain't No Midwife (1939)

Packinghouse Workers (1939)

Italian Feed (1938)

Miss Henrietta C. Dozier (1939)

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couples dancing

Primary Source Set B:
Dancing as a Form of Recreation, 1890s-1930s

Charles Cole (1939)

Mrs. Charley Huyck (1939)

Old Time Dance Calls (1938)

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car at gas station

Primary Source Set C:
Americans and the Automobile

Roy A. Morse (1938)

Yankee Innkeeper (undated)

Dunnell #13 (1939)

Transportation (1939)

Once your group has chosen a topic for further research, go ahead to Background Research for Oral History Interviews

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Last updated 09/26/2002