The HistoryMakers is single largest archival collection of its kind in the world. Our goal is to complete 5,000 interviews of both well-known and unsung African American HistoryMakers. In doing so, we want to include the stories of individual African Americans along with those of African American organizations, events, movements and periods of time that are significant to the African American community. To date, our oldest HistoryMaker is 105 years old and the youngest is 29 years old. We have done interviews in over 80 cities and towns as well as in the Caribbean, Mexico and Norway. Our collection presently houses 8,000 hours of African American testimony on videotape. The only prior methodic and wide-scale attempt to capture the testimonies of African Americans occurred in the 1930s with the recording of former slaves as a project of the Works Projects Administration (WPA). From 1936-1938, teams of writers/researchers were sent throughout the South resulting in approximately 2,300 hand-recorded interviews and some audio taped interviews. The HistoryMakers is the next methodic and wide-scale collection effort since the WPA Slave Narratives Project.
Historical research has focused largely on slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, music, sports and entertainment. The HistoryMakers’ focus is to capture the stories of accomplished African Americans across all walks of life and to use video and new technologies to create an accessible digital collection to serve as a resource for students, teachers, scholars, documentary producers and the media.
In recording messages of leadership, achievement and perseverance embodied in the life stories, The HistoryMakers has plans to disseminate its holdings traditional and interactive media as well as through public programs, special events, an interactive website and a unique digital archive. The HistoryMakers hopes to enrich the lives of all ethnic groups, both young and old.
An integral part of the American experience, The HistoryMakers' stories are stories of success against the odds, of achievement in the face of adversity, and of inspiration. They are America's Missing Stories.
The HistoryMakers is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit educational institution committed to preserving, developing and providing easy access to an internationally recognized archival collection of thousands of African American video oral histories.
The purpose of this archive is to educate and to:
show the breadth and depth of this important American history as told by the first person;
highlight the accomplishments of individual African Americans across a variety of disciplines;
showcase those who have played a role in African American led movements and/or organizations; and
preserve this material for years and generations to come.
The HistoryMakers is committed to creating and exposing its archival collection to the widest audience possible using collaborations as well as the Internet, a digital archive and other new technologies.
The HistoryMakers is headquartered in Chicago,
Illinois, a city rich in African American history, and was incorporated
in July of 1999 by public historian, Julieanna L. Richardson, a Harvard
trained lawyer, video producer and former American Studies major.
Richardson combined her various work experiences, her passion for
history and her diverse background in theatre, law, television production
and the cable television industries to conceptualize, found and build
The HistoryMakers. She serves today as Executive
Director as well as a member of The HistoryMakers Board of
Directors.
It was during her undergraduate studies at Brandeis
that Richardson first experienced the power of oral history, while
conducting research on the Harlem Renaissance. At that time,
she interviewed Butterfly McQueen and Lee Whipper among others. Having
access to these poignant life stories "made the history really
come alive for me,"says Richardson. From this early exposure,
the seeds for The HistoryMakers project first took root.
A HistoryMaker, African American by descent, is a person: 1) who has made significant accomplishments in his or her life; and/or 2) who is associated with a particular movement, organization, association, event or time that is important to the African American community.
We are in the process of trying to identify our HistoryMakers. Some are elderly and hard to find. Some of their notoriety may have waned, but their historical significance has not. They may have interesting insights to share about important events or historical periods.
They may be your neighbor, your relative, your friend or maybe someone you have worked with or admired over the years. They may be someone you have read about or heard their story. Please feel free to nominate a potential HistoryMaker. Make sure to tell us their background, their accomplishments and/or their role in African American history. It is extremely important that you also include appropriate contact information. To complete your nomination, visit http://www.thehistorymakers.com/nominate. Like other oral history collections, The HistoryMakers collection hearkens back to the earliest and most authentic efforts to capture the voice of a people. The HistoryMakers is providing living proof that African American history did not begin or end with the civil rights movement, that the HistoryMakers number in the thousands and that their names are not just Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald.
While African Americans have made significant contributions to American life, society and culture, the world is still largely unaware of these contributions. The HistoryMakers goal is to change that by capturing the personal stories of African American contributors.
In 2002, The HistoryMakers archives were designated a special collection as part of the Illinois State Library System. The archives are presently not open to the public as we are in the process of reorganizing the collection.
We actively encourage the purchase of memberships by all of our users to help defray the costs of building this important archival collection.
INTERVIEWS
The HistoryMakers archive contains thousands of videotaped oral history interviews. On average, each HistoryMaker interview is roughly 2.5 to 3 hours in length and costs $2,500-$5,000 to produce. This includes the cost of background research, videotaping, editing, transcribing, encoding, digitizing, and archiving each interview. Until the digital archive is assembled, users can visit The HistoryMakers office to test The HistoryMakers test digital archive. Users can also visit on The HistoryMakers website (www.thehistorymakers.com). Interviewed HistoryMakers are grouped thematically for ease of use. Each HistoryMaker is featured with a photo, a biography, an archive of photographs from throughout his/her life and in some cases, with video clips from his/her video interview. The uniqueness of this site lies in its interactivity and the type of information offered. The user can see the HistoryMaker live and hear his/her voice, adding a human quality to historical education.
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