What is Dartmouth Black Lives?
- DBL is an oral history project that aims to create a publicly accessible archive of testimony by Black Dartmouth alumni about their lives and experiences.
- It is also an innovative contribution to the Dartmouth curriculum; its centerpiece will be a co-taught course in which Dartmouth undergraduates will learn oral history theory and methodology, as well as the art of oral history interviewing.
- In addition, DBL is an experiential learning initiative; students will conduct an initial interview with an alumni narrator while enrolled in the DBL course, and then will have the opportunity to conduct additional interviews while working for the project on a co-curricular basis in one or more subsequent terms.
- Finally, DBL is a digital humanities program. In its initial years, DBL will make interviews and transcripts available here, but in the long-term, we will incorporate cutting-edge digital encoding methods and software currently under development at Dartmouth. This will enable users of the DBL online archive to analyze and visualize data from large sets of interviews.
Why oral history?
Oral history methodology provides interviewers with the opportunity to reflect upon and question their own assumptions as they engage with the people they are interviewing (narrators). While such self-reflection often characterizes liberal arts inquiry, oral history makes that process explicit and widely legible. It equips students with the conceptual and interpersonal skills to engage in meaningful and difficult conversations about our past. It also illuminates the intersections of racism, institutional power, and the production of knowledge. Oral history is not merely the recording of an individual’s recollections, but the creation of a new primary source through collaboration of interviewer and narrator. Oral history has long been critical for recovering perspectives that are marginalized in conventional archives and for capturing the nuances and complexities of individual lives.
Why now?
This project draws inspiration from the July 2020 open letter authored by Dartmouth Black faculty, staff, and students. In keeping with the goals outlined in that letter, DBL aims to support and advance new efforts to reckon with the structural racism, White supremacy, and anti-Blackness that have plagued Dartmouth since its founding. To this end, DBL is a collaborative and community-based project that aims to bring Dartmouth students, alumni, staff, and faculty together via the practice of oral history. Dartmouth Black Lives will be a student-centered program, but it will leverage the experience and expertise of many members of the Dartmouth community. History and AAAS faculty members will provide expert perspective and training on African American history, Modern US history, and the history of higher education. DBL will draw upon the prior experience of Dartmouth faculty and staff with other oral history programs, such as the Dartmouth Vietnam Project and SpeakOut. It also expands upon knowledge of Dartmouth’s relationship to African-descended people that has been forged through the “‘Lest We Forget: Dartmouth Slavery Project,’” created by Professor Deborah King and students in her course. DBL will partner with the archivists at Rauner Special Collections Library to provide students with training in archival methods and resources; in addition, Rauner will serve as the permanent repository for the DBL interviews. Dartmouth Black alumni have offered their support to identify narrators for the project. Expertise in website design, digital encoding of interview transcripts, and data visualization will be provided by the Dartmouth Digital History Initiative, with additional support from Research Computing.