Oral history is about documenting the experience of folks often left out of the historical record.
So, the letters, diaries, and speeches of famous historical figures have likely been preserved “like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Simon Bolivar, like, Jose Marti, these prominent leaders and thinkers,” said NIU Professor and the Director of the NIU Latinx Oral History Project Christina Abreu.
“But oral histories, Abreu said, “help us, allow us to capture the stories, the experiences, the perspectives of everyday, ordinary people.”
The NIU Latinx Oral History Project commemorates 10 years collecting stories of Latinos in Northern Illinois.
Abreu said the initial focus of the projects was “on capturing and documenting the experiences of undocumented individuals in the area of immigration stories in the area.”
Since then, the collection’s scope has widened to stories of Latinos involved in politics, community organizing and those in the teaching profession.
“Really,” she said, “we’re centered on capturing the stories and making more visible, right, the presence and the contributions of Latinos in this area.”
Voces of a Pandemic Oral History Project
The collection contains over 300 interviews, including an estimated 50 oral histories of Latinos impacted in the first year of the pandemic. It's part of a collaborative effort with the University of Texas at Austin called "Voces of a Pandemic Oral History Project."
“A lot of those stories really captures the stories of Latino health care workers," she said. “For example, like what their experiences were. What was it like working in a nursing home? What was it like working in a hospital”
In one recording of an NIU graduate, registered nurse and DACA recipient, the interviewee recalls trying to convince a construction worker suffering from COVID to stay for treatment.
“So it was this difficult situation of him, like, picking between his health and then his livelihood,” the interviewee said. “And I wanted him to understand that you can't have a livelihood without a life, But he was very much like, adamant about leaving and going to work, unfortunately.”
A recent focus on the project is interviewing Latino leaders of higher education. Those conversations are being led by Alexandra Alcantara, a first year NIU law student.
Her first contribution to the project though was last year when she interviewed undergraduate students of mixed-status families as part of her honors thesis.
Participants were given aliases to protect their families, that included members with varying legal status. She finds involvement in the project is beneficial to both the interviewer and interviewee.
“I think [it] gives them a big amount of power for themselves,” Alcantar said, “but it also gives me, like, being appreciative that someone feels comfortable saying this and that they feel comfortable about their story being out there.”
Digitization phase
The project was awarded nearly 350,000-dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize the collection, and they're partnering with NIU libraries to complete the work. Abreu anticipates the whole process to take about two years.
She said the grant is a big deal.
"Now we have this tremendous opportunity,” she said, “to give folks online access to this, like, treasure of information and stories that that are otherwise not available anywhere else.”
Political climate
When asked the project’s relevance in light of an anti-Latino, anti-immigrant political climate, Abreu said it stands against false rhetoric about the community’s presence in the area.
“On the one hand,” she said, “it's about combating or posing a challenge to erasure.”
Abreu said the stories give substance to Latinos' long history in the Midwest and their contribution as leaders, as workers, and as neighbors.
The collection of stories may also help generate empathy by “sharing people's hopes and dreams and contributions and family life, school life,” she said, “and trying to counter maybe some of the more harmful narratives that are floating out there and showcasing the real richness and depth of the Latino presence in the area.”
