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Word of Mouth
MTSU’S Albert Gore Research Center moves to the center of the oral history movement in America
Article by Gina K. Logue, Freya Cartwright, and Drew Ruble
C.S. Lewis once noted that “a single second of lived time contains more than can be recorded.” Lewis likened the past to “a roaring cataract of billions upon billions of such moments: any one of them too complex to grasp in its entirety, and the aggregate beyond all imagination.”
While, metaphysically speaking, that may be true, we humans are nevertheless dogged about compiling public records, statistical data, photographs, maps, letters, diaries, and other materials to create “history” in the hopes of better understanding both ourselves and our past.
One such form of recorded history is history that is, well, actually recorded. Oral history, the collection and study of historical information using sound recordings of interviews with people having personal knowledge of past events, provides something invaluable to the study of important events in our collective past—namely, eyewitness accounts. While historical materials predominantly provide basic facts of what transpired, oral history provides a glimpse into how individuals and communities experienced history.
In addition to expansive physical archives, the Albert Gore Research Center at MTSU houses hundreds of oral histories covering a variety of subjects, including veterans and the homefront, University history, regional history, and much more. So highly regarded is the Gore Center from an oral history perspective that one of the nation’s most prestigious and respected groups of historians, the Oral History Association (OHA), chose MTSU for its headquarters in 2017.
Landing the leading organization for people who engage in the creation of extended oral history narratives has been a major reputational coup, advancing “MTSU’s research, public engagement, and public outreach, both to scholarly and professional environments and also to the general public,” said Louis Kyriakoudes, Gore Center director and OHA executive director.
Kyriakoudes and Kristine M. McCusker, an MTSU History professor, wrote the proposal to acquire the headquarters with an emphasis on collaborating with many on-campus partners, such as the Gore Center, Department of History, Public History master’s and doctoral programs, Center for Historic Preservation, Center for Popular Music, and College of Liberal Arts.
Albert Gore Research Center
FY17–21
• $264,332 external funding
• 5 proposals
The Gore Center is named for the late Albert Gore Sr., a 1932 MTSU graduate who served as both a U.S. representative and senator from Tennessee and is also the father of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Scholars come from all over the world to the Gore Center to study documents he created that passed through his office.
The partnership paid off in a big way as Kyriakoudes was part of three MTSU grant-writing teams that netted $1.375 million in total new funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2021. The NEH grants, two involving the OHA, accounted for 56% of awards to Tennessee entities. Additionally, the Gore Center made important research acquisitions recently in political memorabilia and LGBTQ+ archival materials.
THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW
Chicago-based author Studs Terkel popularized the discipline in the 20th century when he published oral histories focusing on themes that included working, war, race, jazz, the Great Depression, movies, and religion.
“Oral historians really do practice history from the bottom up,” Kyriakoudes said. “We want to preserve the stories of a variety of individuals to capture the full spectrum of the human experience.”
As an example, Kyriakoudes cited an interview he conducted with a former resident of the Old Jefferson community near Smyrna, which was eliminated so that the Tennessee Valley Authority could build a dam on Percy Priest Lake.
That talk is in one of several collections of oral histories archived at the Gore Center. The renowned “Middle Tennessee Oral History Project,” which began in 1999 and continues to this day, involves more than 500 recordings of people telling their stories of past events in their own words, including anecdotes of MTSU, African American community leadership in Murfreesboro, veterans, state and local politics, women’s organizations, farming and farm organizations, planning and economic development, and medical history.
Kyriakoudes’ deep expertise in oral history no doubt was a key factor in the OHA’s decision to headquarter at MTSU. A decade ago, his team of historians tried to find every surviving World War II veteran in Mississippi and interview them.
“The veterans are the ones who were there on the ground, and they can help us understand war in a much more personal way,” Kyriakoudes said.
Asked about his most memorable oral history experience, Kyriakoudes recalls interviewing a WWII veteran who hadn’t actually fought in the war. Because of his age, he had enlisted in the spring of 1945 and was sent for training in the Philippines, which had just been liberated.
“He talked about learning of the atomic bomb attack on Japan and the subsequent surrender,” Kyriakoudes said. “He said his commanding officer told him, ‘The war’s over; you were training to be part of the first wave of the invasion of Japan, which would’ve happened this fall, but you won’t have to go through that because we’re estimating a 75% casualty rate.’ And then [he] just stops—and this is a guy in his mid-80s—he starts to quietly weep. And he says, ‘All those women and children and innocent people died in those cities. But if that had not happened, I am sure that everything I’ve done with my life wouldn’t have happened either.’ And he had no answer. He didn’t say, ‘I’m glad we dropped the bomb’ or ‘I wish we hadn’t,’ he just had no answer.
“He simply saw that fundamental contradiction, that dilemma that is war, and he had no resolution to it. He just started to cry. I turned off the recording machine, and his son said, ‘Dad, you never told us that story.’ This was something he had kept inside himself for a long time.”
BEYOND WORDS
The Gore Center’s reputation for oral history studies is obviously worldclass. However, that endeavor is but one plank of the center’s vast infrastructure as a research and academic entity. A unit of MTSU’s College of Liberal Arts, the center collects, arranges, maintains, and preserves all manner of historical materials about MTSU, American democracy, and middle Tennessee life in general. It is a literal treasure trove for researchers worldwide.
MTSU acquired the senior Gore’s congressional papers following his retirement from politics in 1971. The collection includes correspondence, photographs, audiotapes, and videotapes. Expanding to encompass University and regional history after officially opening its doors in 1993, the Gore Center now contains five other collections from members of Congress, including MTSU alumnus Bart Gordon (’71).
The center also contains a huge amount of material documenting the social and economic history of middle Tennessee. This includes a comprehensive look at the way various wars shaped the region through the decades. A digital collection now provides online public access to much of that war material.
In fact, the Gore Center’s military collections are some of the strongest resources for research and education and, therefore, are among its most popular for research requests. Its World War II collections include everything from invaluable oral histories to an extensive archive of photographs to glimpses of people’s personal lives detailed in their correspondence. Examples include the Tennessee Maneuvers Collection involving the large-scale war games that occurred in middle Tennessee from 1942 to 1944.
Louis Kyriakoudes , Gore Center director
Recently, the center obtained a wealth of memorabilia from Tennessee and United States political campaigns, currently being curated by staff archivists Donna Baker and Sarah Calise.
Being such a substantial historical archive—and one housed at a university—the Gore Center’s primary mission is to integrate students into its activities. Interns and student volunteers regularly work with on-location sources to help the Gore Center find out what’s in them, categorize them, and take care of them for the future.
As McCusker said, “It all works together to help MTSU’s History Department—and especially the Public History graduate program—publicize in substantial ways the exciting work that is going on here and the terrific students we are producing.”
A MORE-DIVERSE FUTURE
When the Gore Center relocated in 2005 from the McWherter Learning Resources Center into the newly renovated Todd Hall, the younger Gore—who taught at the University after his vice presidency—spoke at the ceremony about his father’s papers as well as the importance of institutions, such as MTSU, that allow for individual growth and achievement.
“This rededication today is an opportunity to reflect upon what this institution meant to my father’s life and to remark as well that what it meant to him is symbolic of what it means to so many students who come here with native intelligence and energy and creativity and good will and find at MTSU an opportunity to develop their talents,” Gore said, “to become exposed to the universe of knowledge that is accessible here at this great university—the fastest growing institution of higher learning in the state of Tennessee.”
The late Albert Gore Sr., MTSU alumnus and longtime congressman
As the Gore Center continues to seek materials related to political, MTSU, and regional history, it is doing so with a refreshed perspective and mission. The current staff recognizes that the history the center has documented and preserved through the years is a mostly white, heterosexual, male history, which has created many gaps and silences in its collections. Moving forward, the archival staff is committed to collecting and preserving historical records and oral histories from people of color, women, disabled people, and people in the LGBTQ+ community as well.
Some recent digital and physical exhibits include “I am True Black” and Movement ’68 projects on the Black experience; queer history at the University and digitization of Nashville-area gay and lesbian publications; and women’s roles in WWII.
One of the new NEH awards, an $825,000 “Diversifying Oral History Practice” grant-making project, will help oral history practitioners address COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. OHA will award year-long and short-term fellowships, with the aim of creating knowledge that can be deployed to create a more equitable and inclusive field.
“The funds will provide substantial support for under/unemployed oral historians, with a focus on oral historians from communities that have historically been marginalized in the field,” said Kyriakoudes, who is serving as co-principal investigator.
“We are very proud to have secured these important funds, particularly in establishing a more diversified future for oral history.”
A second grant under the NEH’s American Rescue Plan, with McCusker as director, will support the OHA conference and various panels accessible by the general public. Kyriakoudes is also part of the $499,997 “Global Cultures, Political Communication, and Women’s Suffrage” grant team for five MTSU humanities projects.
Lewis described the past as “a roaring cataract” of billions upon billions of moments. The Gore Center at MTSU is intent on preserving those that are meaningful to middle Tennessee.
