ORAL HISTORY - StoryCorps, the Great Idea

"StoryCorps gives America a microphone and the chance to tell a story" PBS NewsHour 12/22/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  The holidays are a time of the year when people get together with their loved ones and it’s often a period for reflection and intimate conversations.

Tonight, we look at a kind of unique oral history project that’s built a legacy from gathering thousands of those kinds of conversations and many more.  Its founder just won a major award for his work, which may be well known to many of our viewers.

Hari Sreenivasan recorded this conversation in our New York studio.

NARRATOR:  Time now for StoryCorps.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  For more than a decade, the StoryCorps project has been recording and archiving the stories of everyday Americans, more than 50,000 in all so far, that are as varied as a family of five becoming homeless and forced to move into a shelter.

SHERRY GILLIARD:  I remember pulling my hood over my head because I was embarrassed.  I didn’t want her to see me, you know, or a colleague says, we’re going to go volunteer and we’re going to feed the families, and it would be at my shelter.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  To an Alzheimer’s patient speaking with his wife about his losses.

ROBERT PATTERSON:  One thing that I experience with Alzheimer’s is, I live in the moment, because I can’t remember what happened yesterday.  I can’t remember what happened 10 minutes ago.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  To a mother speaking with the man who killed her son.

MARY JOHNSON:  I just hugged the man who murdered my son.  And I instantly knew all that anger and animosity, all that stuff that I had in my heart for 12 years for you, I knew it was over.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  StoryCorps’ vision comes from its creator, Dave Isay.  The idea?  Get two people together in a room or booth with a microphone, primarily friends or loved ones, and let them talk and listen to each other.

It began with a soundproof booth in Grand Central Station in New York City.  Today, the project has a van that travels around the country, as well as recording rooms in several cities.  The stories are archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., but they also are made available to the public more easily.