HistoryMakers is the largest digital African American oral history collection in the United States containing over 148,163 stories collected from 2,691 African Americans of historical significance. There are a wide variety of topics and subjects that range from the importance of work ethic to being an activist discussed by everyone being interviewed. As always in oral history, questions revolve around people's origins and backgrounds as a way to understand who they are and how they became to be. Out of all the 2,691 interviewees, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an interview of my cousin Dr. Merline Pitre, a long-time History professor at Texas Southern History. She spoke of growing up in the small Louisiana community of Plaisance where my paternal grandfather was from and mentioned her grandmother who happened to be my great-grandfather's older sister. Because cousin Merline is a historian, she talked about the early schools and churches within the community and their histories and how my family contributed to it's founding. For me, her oral testimony added some cultural and colorful layers to my own family history and Louisiana Creole heritage.
If you're a genealogist exploring African American family history, one of your relatives may be one of the subjects being interviewed in HistoryMakers. HistoryMakers can be accessed free in the library and at home remotely if you have a Houston Public Library card.
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