Voices of Arkansas

The Butler Center is partnering with KUAR-FM to promote oral history throughout 2010.

The Butler Center invites the public into the new ASI Interview Room in the Arkansas Studies Institute on the first Friday of every month to come in and record oral history interviews. The interview studio will be available for 40-minute recording sessions, and CDs of interviews will be given to participants immediately following the sessions.

For more information, contact Sara Thompson at 501-320-5718 or sthompson@cals.org.

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National Day of Listening: Butler Center, KUAR-FM, and StoryCorps

The Butler Center is partnering with KUAR-FM and StoryCorps, a national oral history project, to promote the National Day of Listening on Friday, November 27, 2009. The Butler Center will make the new Butler Center interview studio in the Arkansas Studies Institute available one day a week for four weeks for the public to come in and record oral history interviews. The interview studio will be available for 40-minute recording sessions, and CDs of interviews will be available immediately following the sessions.

The interview studio will be available to the public on the following dates and times:

Saturday, November 28 — 10 a.m. through 4 p.m.
Friday, December 4 — 9 a.m. through 5 p.m.
Friday, December 11 — 9 a.m. through 5 p.m.
Friday, December 18 — 9 a.m. through 5 p.m.


Contact Sara Thompson at sthompson@cals.org or 501-320-5718 to book an interview session or for more information.

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StoryCorps, Part II.

StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening, is coming to the 2009 Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas on September 2-4, to capture stories of our community.

Step 1: Make a reservation.

StoryCorps interviews are designed to be conversations between people who are part of each other's lives. Your interview partner can be anyone with whom you feel comfortable - for example, a family member or friend. Should you choose to come alone, a StoryCorps facilitator can interview you. Once you've decided who is coming to the interview with you, make a reservation by contacting Sara Thompson at storycorps@fgs.org or 501-320-5718 by September 1st. There are a limited number of slots available.


Step 2: Prepare for your session.

A StoryCorps interview is 40 minutes of uninterrupted time for meaningful conversation with a friend or loved one. What are the questions you want to ask and the memories you want to preserve? No matter how well you know your storyteller, a little preparation will improve the quality of your interview enormously.

Read what to expect at a StoryCorps interview http://www.storycorps.org/record-your-story/what-to-expect and visit our suggested questions list http://www.storycorps.org/record-your-story/question-generator/list.

Step 3: Tell your story, pass it on.

At the end of your session, you'll receive a free broadcast-quality CD to share with family and friends. Copies will also be archived at the Library of Congress and at The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a part of the Central Arkansas Library System.



Contributed by Sara Thompson, AV/AR Specialist.

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StoryCorps interviews online!

If you’re excited about StoryCorps presence at the upcoming Federation of Genealogical Societies conference,* here’s a taste of their work in central Arkansas from 2006!

In September 2006, StoryCorps traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas and gave numerous people the opportunity to tell and share life experiences. One of the partners of this project was the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies of the Central Arkansas Library System.

Interviewed by children, siblings, parents, and friends, the interviews are more like comfortable conversations now saved for posterity. The interviews allow people to candidly share painful memories as well as life successes. Some of the topics covered in these interviews include public and private school integration in Little Rock (Central High School and Mount St. Mary Academy), renovation of a room for victims at the Faulkner County Courthouse, and adjustment to Arkansas after immigration from El Salvador.


Currently, the Butler Center’s AV/AR Audio Video Collection contains eleven StoryCorps interviews. The AV/AR database provides full oral history interviews and lectures online. The full length content is divided into clips averaging two minutes and clips are searchable by subject terms. Researchers can search the collection by subject term or by interviewee/speaker.

StoryCorps’s 2006 interviews are in full-length format on the Butler Center digital collections website. You can also listen to clips from other StoryCorps interviews at their website.

*Do you want more information about the FGS annual conference? Visit the 2009 website or the official conference blog.

Contributed by Sara Thompson, AV/AR Specialist.

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MTCC Grand Opening and Genealogical Fair

This Saturday from 2pm-4pm, some lucky Butler Center staff members will be manning a genealogical booth at the grand opening of the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center (MTCC) in downtown Little Rock.

Be sure to come by and see us! We are ready to answer even your most difficult questions.

In a partnership effort with the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Butler Center has processed seven oral history interviews from their collection. The resulting 274 audio clips discuss the history and memory of primarily Little Rock, especially on Ninth Street and African American community in the early to mid 20th century.

To view all of the full length interviews and the clips, click here or follow the link in the right column on the AV/AR homepage.

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Clips from the AV/AR: Brownie Ledbetter and Race Relations

If you were lucky enough to attend Legacies and Lunch this month, you were able to listen to Brownie Ledbetter share some of her experiences with race relations over the years. For those of you unable to make it or just wanting to hear more, Sara Thompson, the Butler Center's Audio-Visual Archivist, has uploaded and clipped an oral history interview with Ledbetter into the Butler Center's AV/AR audio video collection. Click here to listen to the interview in its entirety or to browse the clips available. Or listen to some clips Sara picked out below:

Clip 20
Ledbetter talks about how she was treated by the white community while she was involved in activist efforts during integration efforts as well as her work to promote understanding and acceptance. She also noted her access into the white community for these efforts.

Clip 21
Ledbetter shares her memories of people accepting the ideas of the activist efforts and even offering encouragement, yet not willing to participate in the movement and work. Those people were comfortable staying with the status quo.

Clip 26
Ledbetter talks about how she was naïve about how the school integration problem would be solved once the Little Rock Nine made it into Central High School. She discusses the main accomplishment of the Central High School Desegregation Crisis as well as the increase of denied racism.

Clip 33
Ledbetter talks about a program in which she and Senator Irma Brown Hunter asked junior high students to describe the differences between them . . and one student finally suggests the racial difference only to be labeled by her teacher as the problem child of the class.

Still want more? Why not visit the Butler Center and look at the Brownie Ledbetter Papers, MSS 99-36.

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Nevada Test Site Oral History Project

From the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Website:

"The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is a comprehensive program dedicated to documenting, preserving and disseminating the remembered past of persons affiliated with and affected by the Nevada Test Site during the era of Cold War nuclear testing. From September 2003 through January 2008 a wide range of oral history narrators participated in the project including: national laboratory scientists & engineers; labor trades and support personnel; cabinet-level officials, military personnel & corporate executives; Native American tribal & spiritual leaders; peace activists and protesters; Nevada ranchers, families & communities downwind of the test site. Interviews with more than 150 people totaling 335 hours, related transcripts, documents and photographs are housed in UNLV Lied Library's Department of Special Collections. Searchable transcripts, selected audio and video clips, scanned photographs and images are available on this website."

Contributed by Stephanie Bayless, Manuscripts Department.

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