Mississippi Oral History

A state wide oral history project is ensuring that the voices of everyday Mississippians live on. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports.

For the Past ten years the Mississippi Oral History project has collected the stories of over 3500 Mississippians. The state wide initiative, is run by the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage and funded in part by the state legislature. Lewis Kyriakoudes is the Center’s director.

“Oral histories are the best way to preserve the memories and the stories of Mississippians. Paper records, things that get written down and filed in archives and government agencies are important. But if you want to know the real stories of how people’s lives have been lived and how their lives have been changed over time, you have to sit down and you have to ask them.”

The oral histories are digitally recorded, and often times led by community groups who receive training from the Oral History Project. The histories collected come from people from all walks of life.

“When we try to chart how much Mississippi has changed over the years. It’s not just the leading politicians or business leaders that we want to talk to. It’s also the everyday people. The person who made the move from share cropping to working in a factory, or the veterans from our wars. We want to talk to everybody.”

The stories collected by the Mississippi Oral History project are accessible to all through USM’s website, and are used regularly by organizations around the world who are searching for a firsthand account of Mississippi’s storied past. For MPB News, I’m Phoebe Judge in Gulfport.