Centennial Voices: Using Oral History to Document Traditions and Guide Transitions in the National Park Service

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

The goal that has guided National Park Service 2016 Centennial planning and programming is “Connect with and create the next generation of park visitors, supporters, and advocates.” How could Park Service historians demonstrate that history and historical thinking are as relevant to the agency’s future as they are to its past? How could we combine the vital work of documenting Park Service history and the equally important work of mentoring the next generation of Park Service leaders? Oral history methodology offered promising possibilities at a critical juncture when a wave of retirements threatened the institutional memory of the agency.

This round table brings together Park Service historians from national, regional, and park levels to discuss how we have used oral history training and interviewing to steward agency history and guide transitions to a new generation of leaders.

• Lu Ann Jones, staff historian for the Park History Program, will describe the origins, challenges, and accomplishments of Centennial Voices of the National Park Service, which is helping regional offices and parks record, preserve, and share the often-untold stories of our own employees, the nation’s storytellers.

• April Antonellis, a public history educator in the NPS’s Northeast Region History Program, will illustrate how a regional Centennial Voices program is pairing early-career interviewers with seasoned NPS employees who share knowledge accumulated from long careers.

• Alison Steiner, project manager for the Association of National Park Rangers Oral History Project, will describe how the project has created new connections across generations and reinvigorated a culture of mentoring.

• Jodi Morris, interpretive park ranger at Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, will discuss collaborations with a team of Central High civics teachers and students on “The Memory Project,” which has linked some 1,500 high school students with elders who participated in school desegregation and the civil rights movement.

Sub Unit

• OHA Annual Meeting

Panelists

• Jodi Morris, Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

• Alison Steiner, Point Reyes National Seashore

Chair

• Lu Ann Jones, National Park Service