Columbia University’s Oral History Master of Arts program is committed to supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and challenging all forms of structural oppression. Click here to read Dr. Amy Starecheski’s full statement on how the OHMA program is going to continue to work for this change.
Many members of the OHMA community have been using their work to amplify Black voices, end mass incarceration, and challenge white supremacy. You can find links to these projects below along with more information about their creators and ways to support ongoing projects.
Oral History Projects and Exhibits
A View Through Them: An Americana Issue
By Kordell KeyAndre Hammond
Ever wonder what it might sound like to be an educator of color in America?…
Comparative Classrooms: Teaching to Transgress
By Valerie Fendt
The connections between incarceration and under-education are striking, as are the reduced rates of recidivism for those who participate in educational programming either within correctional facilities or when they are released…
A Thesis on Blackness: Testimonies from Young Black Professionals
By Desmond J. Austin-Miller
As predominantly white institutions around the country accept more and more Black students and other students of color, there is a growing need to accommodate these students that is not being met…
Spectrum of Spirituality: On the Religious and Spiritual Experiences of Black Men and Their Relation to the Decline of the Black Church
By Alissa Rae Funderburk
The purpose of this work is to explore and examine the experiences and practices of black men regarding their religion and spirituality…
The Story of Her Skin
By Nyssa Chow
For the women born in the 1920s in Trinidad and Tobago, the generation of grandmothers, it was the women who kept the secrets; they held the stories of the family…
Let Them Find Me
By Courtney Scott
I invite the visitor to imagine-- a black boy, in the 1960's-- inside the complete safety and isolation of his closet, where stories are not only a method of survival, but a kind of superpower…
Stories We Tell Of the River
By Nora Waters
This piece unearths relationships to the Milwaukee River as a way to critically engage with the city’s racially segregated landscape…
The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project
By Lynn Lewis
The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project documents the work of this homeless-led grass roots organization by centering the stories and analysis of its homeless leaders…
Qinky
By Noor Alzamami
At Qinky our mission is to uplift our voices in the BDSM community to create more spaces where we can live our truth, be witnessed by our peers, share knowledge and experiences and build connection…
Ain’t Got Long to Stay Here
By Courtney Scott
Courtney Scott reflects with her father, Barry Scott, on 30 years of portraying Dr Martin Luther King Jr. on stage…
Ballots Over Bars: The Fight for a Voice
By Elly Kalfus
A collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated people in Massachusetts to document and learn from their creative acts of resistance in order to maximize their political power…
The International Phenomenon of Freedom Colonies: the original resistance, the archetypal safe spaces
By Darold Cuba
Since the inception of Western colonialism, the targeted peoples escaped the terrorism of Racialized Inheritable Phenotypic One-Drop – Chattel Atlantic Slave Trade Economy (RIPOD-CASTE) slavery, indigenous mass genocides, Jim Crow, Black Codes, and other human rights abuses, creating their own “colonies of freedom” and successfully protecting these “safe spaces…”
THE 40% PROJECT: An Oral History of Gun Violence in America
By Holly Werner-Thomas
40% refers to the fact that at least forty percent of Americans will either be shot or know someone who has been shot in their lifetimes. This project documents the stories of both those who have survived being shot, and those who have lost loved ones to gun violence…