Research Phase Continues for Deanwood History Project

Participants learn about Oral History and Archival Research

Written by the program participants -
 
Previously in the Deanwood Heights Oral History Summer Project, our team learned about the history of Deanwood and how each of us tends to interact in a group setting...

Moving into this week, we continued to research Deanwood by visiting area libraries. We also found out which elders we would be interviewing.

For our first oral history training, we visited librarian Kelly Navies at the Southwest branch. She became passionate about oral history during her senior year in college when she researched a family member who had been born during slavery. During the training, we discussed various types of questions that we would ask during the interviews: preliminary/background, childhood, young adult life, and current life.  We also talked about guiding questions, which are the overall questions that we want our project to answer about the community.

 
Kelly Navies, librarian, Southwest branch

Another source we used was information found in the Washingtoniana division of the Martin Luther King library. Librarians Faye Haskins and Michele Casto gave us a mini-tour of the reading room and photo collection.

 
Faye Haskins, librarian, Washingtoniana photo room, Martin Luther King

As we began to look for more information about Deanwood, Vera and Ashley were notified that the Deanwood vertical file containing newspaper clippings, pictures and other records collected over the years was missing.

 
Ashley (l) and Vera search the online newspaper database.

This was very disappointing. However, the librarian guided us towards the research computer, where we looked up articles from the Washington Post. One interesting article involved Thelma K. Greene, who taught at Carver Elementary School for 47 years until it closed in 1988.

FUN FACT: Mrs. Greene was the first grade teacher of our project site supervisor (and many other members of her family).

Our supervisor’s first grade school photo.

Meanwhile in the photo room, Raven and Ebony searched the Evening Star and Historical Image photo collections (double check) for helpful documents and pictures of the community.

 
Raven searches the Historical Image Collection.

Lights, Camera, Action!

On Friday, Jayme Morrison guided us through our first video production workshop. We received tips and basic knowledge about the equipment we’ll be using, types of shots, and the production process. She demonstrated how to break down a tripod and how to attach and detach a mounting plate to the camera. She taught us how to compose a shot, and we even got a chance to practice using her Nikon D3000 digital camera.

FUN FACT: The “cost-efficient” way to create a pan shot without a dolly is to close the tripod and walk slowly around the subject. Spike Lee started his productions off this way!

All of our research and training is getting us closer and closer to the moment we’re all waiting for: meeting face-to-face with the elders and hearing their oral histories first hand. Stay tuned next week, as we get more video production and oral history training, conduct mock interviews, and take more pictures!

Links:

Southern Oral History Program at UNC—Chapel Hill: http://www.sohp.org/