Eyewitness To the Movement: Conducting Oral History Interviews in the Classroom

I developed a course on the Civil Rights Movement in a roundabout manner. When Richard Hatcher was mayor of Gary, Indiana, he began an effort to create a National Civil Rights Hall of Fame there. As I was then writing a book on the movement, I served on the institutional planning committee. At the time, I thought that I could work with the Hall of Fame and the university to create an archive of interviews with civil rights activists, but the necessary funds were not raised and the hall was not built, so I shelved the idea.