Why USC is recording and preserving the stories of local Black Lives Matter activists

Years from now, people will look back on the last 10 years of social justice movements and wonder what it was like to be there.

That’s why the University of South Carolina has been collecting oral histories of the local Black Lives Matter movement to preserve for the historical record.

Oral histories are hours-long interviews that hold a special place in the historical record because they tell the stories of people who are often underrepresented in history books, said Andrea L’Hommedieu, the director of USC’s Department of Oral History.

“Oral history is a real equalizer,” L’Hommedieu said. “Everybody has a voice. Everybody has their own story. And so oral history, as a profession, we’ve emphasized looking at whose voice isn’t being heard in society and how do we lift those voices up? How do we give them a platform where they’re equal to others? One person’s story is just as important as someone else’s.”

The project, named Voices of South Carolina: Black Lives Matter, aims to find what drives South Carolinians who were involved with protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.

One of L’Hommedieu’s early experiences with oral histories was collecting the stories of blue-collar mill workers in Maine, she said. By simply talking to these working-class workers, she stumbled across a story about America’s multicultural fabric.

“And there were a lot of Franco-American stories coming from Canada. So many of them were one of 20 children or one of 16 children,” L’Hommedieu said. “They were so honored to be asked to be interviewed and that was just a fabulous way to let the people in the community know what they did mattered. And we ended up having a celebration for the mill workers. They had a day to honor them. They couldn’t fathom it. it was really something else to know their voices mattered.”

Collecting oral histories reflects the messy, subjective nature of memory, in which two different people who witness the same thing can take away two different things, said Jennifer Gunter, who directs USC’s SC Collaborative on Race and Reconciliation and is helping with the BLM oral histories project.

“You and I could be in the exact same place in the exact same time and have completely different experiences due to our worldview,” Gunter said.

The project is funded by a $13,000 grant from the USC Racial Justice and Equity Research Fund and has yielded 11 oral histories so far, L’Hommedieu said. She expects the grant funding to support a total of 15 oral histories, but the project will likely continue, L’Hommedieu said.

“My department is committed to taking this grant as a foundation, a foundation to expand these stories and these voices in the future,” L’Hommedieu said. “So I imagine, if I have people willing to be interviewed, I will keep building this collection over the years.”