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Ronald Fraser, who has died aged 81, was one of the most respected, gifted and prolific British historians of Spain. His best-known work, Blood of Spain (1979),  is a peerless account of the Spanish civil war, carefully constructed from interviews with participants on both sides. Conducted with a steady and consistently courteous voice, the book helped establish oral history as a discipline in its own right. Ronnie disliked the description – “as though it were a category of historiography on a par with ‘economic’ or ‘political’ history rather than what it actually is: the creation of new sources to further historical research.” For full story click here.

When Spring Hill Middle School teacher Charlotte Lloyd saw her class’s interest in the subject of Hiroshima develop through reading memoirs and stories about World War II, she seized the chance to have Keiko Fore come speak to her class. Fore, who has lived in Laurinburg for 44 years, was 12 years old and attending school in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.  She relayed her experience of that day and its aftermath to two classes of seventh-grade students last week. Lloyd asked Fore to speak to the class in order to bring to life an event decades removed from her students’ lifetime.  For full story click here.

Decades of oral tradition and a few scant clues suggest the role a northern Maine church played in harboring slaves along the Underground Railroad.  This small Quaker church just two miles from the Canadian border was likely the last stop on the Underground Railroad for many runaway slaves making their way to freedom, according to historians in the Fort Fairfield area.  Documenting the role of the Friends Church and many other sites means relying on oral records passed from one generation to the next. For full story click here.

Last February, the oral history project opened an exhibit at the Nelson Heritage Center displaying the history of the integration of the schools in the county. The exhibit built on the countless hours of research Woody Greenberg had done in 1985 for his doctoral dissertation on the county’s school system, with two of the chapters focusing on the integration process.  He interviewed many people who lived through it and combed through documents from the school board. His research corresponded with a video project members of the oral history project were working on a few years ago and so they decided to create the exhibit, Greenberg said.  For full story, click here.

Cherokee Council Member Diamond Brown, a specialist in the oral history of the Cherokee, was asked if oral history matched the written documents. He replied that written history does not always match oral history.  The story of the Cherokee’s forced eviction from their lands has passed down through oral history.  For full story click here.

An Army Air Corps pilot, 94-year-old Charles P. Evans was the 2,000th person interviewed for the Veterans Oral History Project at the New York State Military Museum program that began 12 years ago.  He got a bird’s eye view of Normandy the day before D-Day while on one of 30 harrowing bombing missions he was assigned to during World War II.  For full story with a video clip, click here.

The thing that Noel Gilmour remembers most about the 1955 flood was how black the sky was. The day before the Hunter River unleashed its fury and the water flowed like an ocean over the top of Mount Pleasant Street, taking his family’s home with it, the 21-year-old Mr Gilmour was leaving his work at Maitland City Council early on that Thursday afternoon when he looked up and noted how dark the sky had become. And it is a detail he will again remember as a speaker at Maitland City Library’s Look Who’s Talking Local History: Memory or Myth? Local Flood Stories event to commemorate the anniversary of the 1955 flood this month (February). For full story, click here.

Recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada as a legitimate form of evidence in 1997, Aboriginal oral history is too often cast aside as an inferior or even illegitimate form of proof in the Canadian justice system, according to scholars at the University of British Columbia.  It’s that lack of information and deep-seated bias towards Aboriginal culture and ways of knowing that they hope to address in “Aboriginal Oral Histories in the Courtroom: More than a matter of evidence” a panel discussion at the University on Wednesday, February 8.  For full story, click here.

Oaks Estate, a forgotten village on Canberra’s eastern outskirts, may not have completely shed its crime haven status, but is nonetheless cherished for its history and obscure status.  Long-time resident Karen Williams says the village’s neglect over many years has inadvertently defined Oaks Estate.  Ms Williams arrived in Oaks Estate in 1987 and answered a call from the Arts Council to establish an arts festival by talking to old people, including some born in 1909. She spent six months gathering oral history, applied for more grants and helped stage an inaugural festival, which drew people from all over Canberra. For full story, click here.

The ABC’s Hindsight program repeated one of its stories during it’s “Summer” break, which is of special interest to oral historians – “The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting”.  “Oral history has been part and parcel of the democratisation of history since the Second World War. Through interviews with historians from many different countries, and archival material from seminal oral history projects, we chart the international oral history movement, paying special attention to the role of oral history in Aboriginal historiography, and in post-Apartheid South Africa.”  See the full description of the program, listing the speakers and references and listen to it by clicking here.