Part II – Section One
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The Real World History collection (size, scope, demographics): In thinking about what this new archive has to offer historians of the Great Migration, let’s first get a sense of the size and scope of the collection. What follows is a sketch of the collection at the time the interviews were donated to the People’s Archive (2020). New interviews will be added each year, and we are still reaching out to narrators from previous years with the hope that they may be interested in donating their interviews to the Library. As of the summer of 2021, there are 40 interviews (with a total of 39 narrators) in the Real World History collection (one narrator, Ms. Jaqueline Hines, was interviewed in both 2018 and 2019). Of these 40 interviews, 37 are fully accessible through the Library’s digital gateway, Dig DC.41 Of course, given the design of the oral history project, all of the individuals interviewed by Real World History students are Black/African American.
Gender Breakdown of Narrators Men (12) 31%
Women (27) Men (12)
Women (27) 69%
Figure 1.
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Three narrators, Rev. Evangeline Taylor, Hattie Dunston-Tanner, and Clara Benjamin Neal, placed restrictions on their interviews requiring researchers to request access.
