Oral Histories - Houston History Project, 1996-2008 | University of Houston Libraries

Scope and Contents: When UH’s Center for Public History and the University Libraries collaborated to create the Houston History Archives (UH-HHA), part of their mission included a repository for oral histories that tell stories of the growth and development of the Gulf Coast region from multiple points of view.  To that end, the Houston Oral History Project in the Center for Public History trains history graduate students to research and interview Houstonians with recollections of the city’s civil rights, women’s, cultural, political, or medical past.  In furtherance of the mission, the UH Oral History Project entered into a collaboration with the City of Houston that will bring to the UH repository interviews of one hundred of Houston’s leaders from all walks of life.  Another large collection headed for the repository is the Offshore Energy Oral History Project, a collaboration among several UH professors and other universities to document  the growth of the oil refining industry along the Gulf Coast before and after World War II.  Topics avaialable include inteviews with Katrina emergency responders in Houston, a series of interviews with African American (black) generals, interviews with members of Houston's Indo-Asian population, and interviews from the Afro-American Physicians project, as well as a number of other topics.