Brown v. Board of Education Oral History Project

The oral history project at Brown v. Board of Education NHP contains interviews dating back to 1991 and continues collecting interviews today.

For more than 30 years the program has preserved important information about the Brown v. Board of Education, Briggs v. Elliott, Bolling v. Sharpe, Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart, and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County cases. More than 330 tapes from interviews, totaling over 230 hours, have been preserved.

The completed interviews allow the park to document the stories of plaintiffs — along with their family, friends and neighbors — attorneys, activists, historians and other people involved with the court cases. The broad range of people interviewed helps paint a more complete picture of the impact these cases had on American society.

These interviews, previously only available physically through the Brown v. Board of Education NHP research library, were recently digitized. Park staff and volunteers are working on finalizing the digitization process and completed interviews will be posted as they become available.

We reiterate that these oral histories were originally recorded, and then transcribed as best as possible. In some cases, interview subjects used words that may be shocking or disturbing to modern users. Our colleagues at the National Archives have a good explanation of how modern-day historians and users can understand such language: https://www.archives.gov/research/reparative-description/harmful-content.

ORAL HISTORIES

Named for Harry Briggs, one of twenty parents who brought suit against the president of the school board for Clarendon County, South Carolina, the Briggs v. Elliott was an example of the failures of 'equalization' and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to be hear alongside Brown v. Board of Education.

One of the four cases heard alongside Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling v. Sharpe presented a unique situation in the challenge to racial segregation in schools. Due to the District of Columbia not being a state, the NAACP couldn't rely on the 14th amendment in it's argument.

One of the four cases heard alongside Brown v. Board of Education, Belton(Bulah) v. Gebhart was the only case of the five which decided in favor of integration, but was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the school board.

The Brown v. Board of Education case provided the NAACP the chance to argue the impact segregation itself had on school children, rather than the resulting physical inequalities of resources provided. The other four cases were bundled alongside Brown and heard by the U.S. Supreme Court together.

The site of the student-led strike, the Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County was one of the four cases to bundled alongside Brown and heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

We have collected 34 videos of plaintiffs, attorneys, historians, and activists related to the Davis case here.

Read about the administrative history of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Park first hand from community members, NPS employees, site superintendents and even the Brown family.

Currently we have 19 transcripts from interviews regarding the history of the park itself.