An A-to-Z of Oral History at Columbia is a periodic posting featuring the people, events, and organizations in the Oral History Archive at Columbia’s collections, as well as behind-the-scenes info about oral history methodology.
Collection title: Black Journalists oral history collection, 1971-1972
Interview contents: The Black Journalists oral history collection preserves an extraordinary legacy of 93 voices that chronicled the African American press from the late nineteenth century through the early 1970s. These intimate interviews capture publishers, editors, sportswriters, photographers, and business leaders who operated newspapers across dozens of cities, from Atlanta to San Francisco, often navigating economic constraints while simultaneously fueling the civil rights movement. What emerges from Henry La Brie III’s conversations is more than journalism history—it’s a portrait of activists who refused to accept objectivity as a virtue when their communities needed advocacy, debating whether sensationalism was a flaw or a necessary tool for capturing attention in a media landscape dominated by radio and television. From discussions of the Kerner Commission report to reflections on whether a national black newspaper could ever exist, these narrators left behind not just records of their work but wisdom about trust, activism, and the enduring power of telling one’s own story.
Sample Interview:
Provenance: Henry G. “Henk” La Brie conducted the collection’s ninety-three interviews from 1971-1972 to support his doctoral research at the University of Iowa. In 1975, he donated the interviews to Columbia University’s Oral History Research Office.
Behind the archival scenes: The donation included La Brie’s audio recordings on open reel magnetic tape and some transcripts that had been completed by La Brie’s student assistants. The transcripts were full of errors and not considered up to OHRO’s standards, particularly since the repository was considering pursuit of funding to microfiche the collection. In 1996, OHRO received a grant from the Scherman Foundation to transfer La Brie’s original reels to compact cassettes and to transcribe twenty-one interviews. In 2015, the compact cassette tapes were digitized. In 2016-2018, the full collection was transcribed from the digital surrogates of the audio.
Use cases: Quite possibly, the popularity of the Black Journalists Collection speaks to the dearth of materials nationwide on this topic. It is, anecdotally and based on reference requests, one of our most used collections both for researching the history of black reporting in the U.S, as well as individual luminaries featured in the collections.
Access: Columbia University affiliates can listen to these interviews online in the Digital Library Collection by logging in with their UNI. Non-Columbia affiliates can make an appointment in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library reading room to hear the interviews and read transcripts. Information for ordering a limited number of interview transcripts and audio can be found by reviewing the OHAC website.