Welcome to the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program
JOIN THE CLUB
By becoming an official SPOHP supporter, you make it possible for us to sustain our program.
Please DONATE online!
SAM PROCTOR FLORIDA HISTORY LECTURE SERIES
The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at UF presents a new Fall 2009 lecture series. First lecture: Ditch of Dreams
For a complete season listing, visit our Public Programs page.
SPOHP NEWS ONLINE
HISTORY SPEAKS NEWSLETTER
WINTER 2009
FALL 2009
SUMMER 2009
SPRING 2009
PODCASTS
SPOHP's podcasts are now available on iTunes.
LISTEN NOW and subscribe!
Listen to SPOHP podcasts directly from this site on our new PROCTOR PODCAST page.
RECENT EPISODES:
Howard T. Odum on Florida Growth Management
Ahmed Sherif on Islam in Gainesville
LISTEN to SPOHP Director Paul Ortiz speaking about his own experiences conducting oral histories on UCF's Public History Podcast.
UPCOMING EVENTS
September 12 SPOHP Director Paul Ortiz presented an oral history workshop for a local historical consortium at the Courthouse Heritage Museum in Inverness.
September 23 "Ditch of Dreams: The Cross Florida Barge Canal and the Struggle for Florida's Future". UF history professor Steven Noll and Santa Fe College history professor David Tegeder will be discussing one of Florida's most controversial environmental projects in the first program of the Sam Proctor Florida History Lecture Series.
October 14-18, 2009 SPOHP has been selected to present a panel discussion at the annual ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE, which will be held this year in Louisville, Kentucky. The topic of the panel will be: "How to Produce a Low Budget Documentary: Giving Life to Death in Time of War."
November 9 SPOHP Director Paul Ortiz will present an evening program titled "Preserving and Promoting American Narratives of WW II: The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at UF" for the Alumni Association. The presentation will include segments from the program's documentary on the Bataan Death March, podcasts, and educational Web content on WW II.
NEW PROJECTS
SPOHP is proud to announce two new projects that will document the lives of two very important legal legends. We recently began collecting interviews related to the lives of Hon. Stephan Mickle and Chesterfield Smith. MORE
One Community. Many Voices.
RECALLING A DITCH OF DREAMS
On Sept. 23, the Sam Proctor Florida History Lecture Series will open its 2009-2010 season with an informative discussion on the Cross Florida Barge Canal. The lecture will center around an upcoming book by Steven Noll and David Tegeder to be published by the University Press of Florida in November 2009. Professors Noll and Tegeder will be speaking at the event about the complex issues and history of one of Florida's most controversial environmental projects. The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at UF will present the program in Pugh Hall Ocora at 7 p.m. Open to the public. (Above photo courtesy of the Florida State Archives)
UF BLACK ALUMNI WEEKEND 2009
Left to right: Alicia Antone, director of development at UF Libraries; SPOHP interviewer Marna Weston; Sam Taylor, first UF black student government president (1972); and SPOHP Director Paul Ortiz.
Sept. 4-6, SPOHP was invited by the UF Association of Black Alumni to conduct oral history interviews during the Black Alumni Reunion Weekend in Gainesville. In a few hours, SPOHP volunteers were able to collect 14 interviews on topics ranging from the social climate for African American students during their time at UF to the changes they would like to see implented at UF today to make it a more inclusive institution.
"This is a golden opportunity for the UF Oral History Program," said SPOHP Director Paul Ortiz. "We have approximately 1,000 interviews in our archival collection that discuss some aspect of the development of the University of Florida. In an academic sense, we serve as the institutional memory of the university. In our voluminous collection of oral histories, we have only about 40 interviews with African Americans who give their perspectives about UF. It is time to achieve a greater historical balance in our holdings, and this gives us the opportunity to begin to do just that."
MISSISSIPPI RESEARCH TRIP 2009
During the week of Aug. 18-23, 2009, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at UF returned to the Mississippi Delta to continue research on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi with veteran Civil Rights activists and leading scholars of the Mississippi Freedom Movement. SPOHP brought a research team of UF undergraduate and graduate students, as well as one student from FSU, to collaborate with the Sunflower County Civil Rights Organization in conducting oral history interviews in the historic Mississippi Delta region. The research team focused on uncovering the movement’s origins and researching its impact, as well as documenting contemporary legacies in a region that gave birth to one of the most vibrant social movements in American history. The trip was the second of its kind, the first one having taken place one year ago.
In 2008, SPOHP participants conducted interviews with veterans of the Civil Rights Movement on topics such as the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the establishment of Freedom Schools, the leadership of local people in the Civil Rights Movement, and the personal histories from participants in Mississippi’s Freedom Summer of 1964. The 2009 team expanded geographic coverage of data collection under the supervision of Mississippi Valley State University Professor Stacy J. White, the Sunflower County Rights Organization, and SNCC veteran Margaret Block. The mayor of Cleveland, Mississippi, Billy Nowell, hosted a reception welcoming the research team to his city. 2010 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the main organizing groups in Mississippi, and SPOHP will be returning to collect another round of interviews.
A highlight of the 2009 trip included a scholars’ panel at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, on the legacies of the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. Along with SPOHP Director Paul Ortiz, participants included: Ohio State University Professor Hasan Jeffries, author of the newly released Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt; SUNY-Geneseo Professor Emilye Crosby, author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi; University of Southern Mississippi Professor Curtis Austin, author of Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party.
Listen to an audio podcast featuring selected segments from the 2008 trip, including interviews with longtime SNCC activists and Civil Rights Movement educators Margaret Block and Hollis Watkins, who spoke about the history of SNCC, the importance of music in the Civil Rights Movement, and the ongoing fight for racial equality.
