Oral Histories from the Berkshire County NAACP
Welcome to the digital home of the NAACP Oral History Project. This online collection of oral histories is an extension of an exhibit that was on display in spring 2019. The project is a collaboration between the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College, the NAACP – Berkshire Branch, and the Berkshire Museum. See below for a guide to the online collection.
How to interact with the “Their Stories” digital collection of oral histories
- Explore a “Timeline” of Berkshire County to get to know key historic events, people, and places important to the region (Timeline coming soon)
- Visit “Their Stories Overview” for access to the interviews of key figures of the Berkshire County NAACP
- Check out sources for further reading below
- Be sure to stay up to date with the Berkshire County Branch of the NAACP
- And, for access to the virtual tour of the NAACP Oral History Project Exhibit at the Berkshire Museum, completed 8/2020, click here.
Acknowledgements:
- Judith Monachina, Director of the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College, who coordinated the project
- Dennis Powell, president of the Berkshire County NAACP
- Len Kates, member of the NAACP, who spearheaded the project worked as liaison
- The Berkshire County NAACP
- Sam Redman, UMass Amherst Professor
- Helen Kyriakoudes and Rachel Panasci Lima, UMass Amherst graduate students, who created this online version of the Berkshire Museum exhibit
- Julia McCarthy, photographer of the exhibit portraits
- UMass Amherst Special Collections and University Archives for hosting the oral histories and providing images
- Special thanks to Craig Langlois, Chief Experience Officer at the Berkshire Museum, for creating the original exhibit and providing materials for the site, including the timeline and biographies
- Wendy Germain, for volunteering to record each of these interviews
- Erica Spizz, who edited the clips
Further reading:
- For documents related to the founding of the Berkshire County NAACP, as well as the full audio of interviews from the oral history project, click here.
- For access to the fully digitized papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, click here.
- For access to papers related to the Niagara Movement, click here.
- For access to the fully digitized archive of the NAACP, click here.