ABSTRACT
Oral history plays a vital role in capturing lived experience, revealing a wide range of stories about individual perseverance and collective struggle. This chapter outlines a two-year service-learning project to explore how the changing workforce of Robeson County, North Carolina, shapes the lives of Lumbee elders who lived during the growth and decline of manufacturing in the American South. Excerpts from interviews document the social, cultural, and economic changes the region has undergone since the mid-20th century, emphasizing how the shift from farming to industry impacted Lumbee history and cultural traditions over the years. Moreover, the interviews represent a chapter of American Indian labor history, an important aspect of working-class life that has largely been ignored in the field of working-class studies. In bringing together these two distinct groups—Lumbee elders and university students—this project has begun the process of breaking down cultural barriers, lessening the divide between the campus and the local community, and serves as a model for integrating service-learning and working-class activism in the college classroom.
