Building An Oral History Program At West Point: Creating a Dynamic Organization that Supports the Academy Mission

• In Event: Reflecting and Shaping: traditional and new techniques in oral history to collect and share the military experience

Abstract

The West Point Center for Oral History is a relatively new organization that has recently undergone a fairly rapid expansion to better support the United States Military Academy. While the center was formed in 2005, its formative years saw many of the typical growing pains associated with developing an Oral History Program. We struggled with technology, interviews, and “growing the business.” Over the past few years the West Point Center for Oral History has started to come into its own, developing specific archives, sponsors, a business plan, and a sense of direction. In the last year, the Center has dramatically increased the volume of interviews conducted to build robust archives, aggressively pursued social media advertising to create interest, reached out to new sponsors, and sought out ways to support not only our own department, but also other departments in an effort to increase interdisciplinary cooperation.
The West Point Center for Oral History is currently collaborating with the Department of History in creating a new Military History Digital Text Book and with the “West Point Guide to the Civil Rights Movement” by providing clips from Oral History Interviews. We are working with the Law Department on a Law of War project, and with the West Point Diversity Office in developing an “African-American Military Experience” archive. We are supporting U.S. Army to provide interviews that will be instrumental in the creation of a new digitized Army Leadership Manual. We are working in conjunction with West Point’s Protocol Office by interviewing many of the distinguished visitors to the Academy. Finally, we are working in conjunction with various alumni classes to capture the stories that are critical to their experience such as the Vietnam War and the Honor Scandal of 1976 that shaped the United States Military Academy Class of 77.

Author

• David R. Siry, West Point Center for Oral History