Joshua Cawley (Graduate Program in Public History, California State University, Fullerton), Anne Soon Choi (Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, California State University, Dominguez Hills), Allison Varzally (Professor of History, California State University, Fullerton), and Shreshta Aiyar (History and American Studies, California State University, Fullerton) seek to broaden our understandings of post-World War II migrations and the profound changes to the individuals and groups involved as well as to the larger Southern California culture that resulted. From complicating the experiences of Japanese Americans who were forced to endure internment camps during the war yet maintained their friendships and community ties, to the contributions of Japanese-American Hawai’ian migrants postwar to the region’s suburbanization; from the impact on restaurateurs who experienced profound accelerations in the patterns and practices of “eating out” due to migrations, to the lived experiences of South Asians who changed familial histories and created new opportunities for future generations, each of these presenters spotlights the richness of oral histories, family interviews, and innovative interpretations of the increasingly globalized region of Southern California.
Holly Baggett (Missouri State University), Rachel Jamieson (Missouri State University), Anne Baker (Missouri State University), and Amy C. Schindler (University of Nebraska at Omaha) document the uses of oral history to resist homophobic bigotry. The NO Repeal campaign tells the story of how people in a city in southwest Missouri fought to retain legal protections in the face of overwhelming resistance from conservative forces. Activists recorded oral histories both during and after the campaign and donated them to a local LGBTQIA+ archive; they also helped expand the LGBTQIA+ archival collections at Missouri State University. The oral histories were transformed into “verbatim theatre” and many of the student/actors in the play were also NO Repeal activists, as were members of the audience – a rare opportunity for in-depth reflection on this experience. The challenges of initiating a new community-based LGBTQIA+ archive in Omaha archive, including working with student interviewers and addressing archival silences also will be discussed.
Carlos Lopez (Archivist, Arizona State Libraries, Archives, and Public Records; Arizona State Representative, SOHA Board of Directors), Ryan Morini (Associate Program Director, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, University of Florida), and Joyce Marshall Moore (Archivist, Special Collections and Archives, UNLV; Historian, SOHA Board of Directors) features individuals and groups in Nevada and Arizona whose stories help illuminate not only their eras but also the present and future. Rugged individualists such as Nevada rancher Andy Thompson, a founder of the Duckwater Shoshone Reservation, complicate the narrative of Indigenous history. The stories gathered by the Legislative Oral History Project of Arizona state legislators who are no longer serving in office help us understand the shaping of Arizona and, arguably, national policy over the last thirty-plus years. Also timely are the reports of sexual harassment, coercion, and violence in their working lives described by Strip showgirls decades before today’s #MeToo movement.
Southwest Oral History Association 