Several oral history collections at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History pertain to various aspects of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Topics range from interviews about life under segregation and the desegregation of education to interviews with prominent civil rights activists. These collections explore the collective struggle to end legal segregation as well as discuss individual acts of resistance that normally, without oral history, would not make it into the historical record.
You can browse specific oral history subjects below or click on the Collections tab and browse collections related to the Civil Rights Movement. This guide is also searchable.
The Nunn Center
The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Oral History Project is a collection of interviews concerning the Civil Rights movement and the socioeconomic, cultural, and political struggles of African Americans. Conducted in 1964 by Kentucky native, author, and first poet laureate of the United States, Robert Penn Warren, these interviews constituted part of Warren's research for his book, Who Speaks for the Negro?