MOUNT VERNON — Five Cornell College students are literally making history by filming interviews with two area residents whose stories will be the cornerstone for the oral history archives at the new African American Historical Museum & Cultural Center of Iowa in Cedar Rapids.
Students in “The Documentary Imagination in American History” interviewed Philip Hubbard of Iowa City and Cecil Reed of Cedar Rapids. Hubbard was the University of Iowa’s first tenured African-American professor, in mechanical engineering, and later an administrator. He retired as a vice president in 1991. Reed was the first African-American Republican elected to the Iowa House of Representatives, in 1966
“Oral history was one of the most important methods for social historians in the 1930s, when a whole range of documentaries were being made,” says Cornell assistant professor of history Catherine Stewart.
The students will edit the interviews and present their documentaries in class Nov. 21. The complete interviews will be contributed to the museum and available to the public when the museum opens at its permanent location, First Street and 12th Avenue SE, in fall 2002. The students’ edited documentaries will be available in Cole Library on the Cornell campus
“Oral histories are irreplaceable. It’s very difficult to reproduce oral history coming from an individual, giving their perspective,” says David Jackson, museum curator. “We get the oral history and the students get a positive and healthy learning experience to carry on with them.”