the oral history collections of the presidential libraries

The Oral History Collections of the Presidential LibrariesAuthor(s): Regina GreenwellSource: The Journal of American History, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Sep., 1997), pp. 596-603Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2952575 .

Accessed: 19/12/2014 19:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toThe Journal of American History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 19:26:27 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oah

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2952575?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Oral History Collections of the Presidential Libraries

Regina Greenwell

Presidential libraries and oral history are both relatively new additions to the world of scholarly research. Until Franklin D. Roosevelt established the first presidential library, there was no systematic method to preserve presidents' papers. Believing firmly that presidential papers were a part of the nation's heritage (although at that time they were legally the private property of the president who had generated them), in 1939 Roosevelt donated his papers to the federal government and directed that they be maintained and preserved by the National Archives at a site he donated on his estate in Hyde Park, New York. A nonprofit corporation raised funds for construction of the building, which was completed in 1946.

With the exception of Richard M. Nixon, every president since Roosevelt, as well as his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, has followed Roosevelt's example. Noting the success of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, in 1955 Congress enacted the Presi- dential Records Act, which assisted other presidents in donating their papers to the federal government. In all, eight libraries were established under this act, all built by private or nonfederal public funds and turned over to the National Archives for operation.

Following the Watergate controversy, Congress ordered that Richard Nixon's presidential papers be maintained in the Washington, D.C., area and preserved, processed, and made available to the public by the National Archives. They remain at the Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland, to this day. However, Nixon eventually established a private presidential library, not operated by the National Archives, at Yorba Linda, California, which currently houses only his pre- and post- presidential papers.

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 'changed the traditional concept that the

Regina Greenwell, a native Texan and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, is the senior archivist for foreign policy at the Lyndon BainesJohnson Presidential Library. She oversees declassification efforts and the processing of collections related to foreign policy. She is also involved in a project to make available the recordings of President Johnson's telephone conversations and meetings. For many years she was a researcher and editor for the Johnson Library's oral history collection.

I would like to thank my colleagues at the National Archives and in the presidential libraries for their assistance: Pat Anderson, Nixon Presidential Materials Staff; Megan Desnoyers, John F Kennedy Library; Martin Elzy, Jimmy Carter Library; Ray Geselbracht, Harry S. Truman Library; Michael L. Gillette, National Archives Center for Leg- islative Archives; Ted Gittinger, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; Linda Hanson, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; David Horrocks, Gerald R. Ford Library; Dwight Miller, Herbert Hoover Library; Jimmie Purvis, Bush Presidential Materials Project; Catherine Sewell, Ronald Reagan Library; Martin M. Teasley, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; Ray Teichman, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.

596 The Journal of American History September 1997



Oral History 597

papers of a president are his personal property. Beginning with the Reagan administration, presidential papers that reflect the president's constitutional, statutory, and ceremonial duties are now designated as presidential records subject to federal control. The Presidential Libraries Act of 1986 allows presidents to continue the practice of establishing presidential libraries, operated by the National Archives, to house those records in the locations of their choice, but it limits the size of the facilities and requires private endowments to assist in their maintenance.

The discipline of oral history as a method of historical documentation is also of fairly recent origin; it is necessary partly because much modern communication is oral rather than written. Established in 1948, the Columbia University Oral History Research Office is the oldest such program in the United States, and it became the model for the first oral history programs in presidential libraries. Despite some ini- tial skepticism about its scholarly value, oral history has gained rapid acceptance as a valuable tool to supplement traditional historical records, and every presidential library includes an oral history collection among its holdings. The collections vary widely in size and scope, and they reflect trends in oral history and in presidential libraries through the years. This article will present an overview of those collections; for more detailed information, the reader is encouraged to consult the libraries directly.

Despite their differences, oral history collections at presidential libraries share a common goal, not of glorifying the presidents, the first ladies, or their families, but of supplementing the written record by providing information that would otherwise be lost. Most of the interviews have been conducted by trained historians or archivists, not partisan supporters of the president whose history is being documented. They are almost always recorded on audiotape, but they are usually made available in transcript form. All of the programs are administered by the National Archives and follow its policies on the rights of the interviewee to control the use and content of the interview. In practice, most of the interviews, once they are transcribed, edited, and reviewed by the interviewees, are made available with few re- strictions, and unlike other textual collections in presidential libraries, they are available on loan. Many oral history collections at presidential libraries include interviews about all aspects of the presidents' lives and careers, beginning with interviews about their childhoods and continuing through their years in retirement, with, of course, the most emphasis placed' on their years in the presidency. The libraries documenting the administrations of some presidents, notably the Roosevelt Library and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, include interviews about the lives and careers of their respective first ladies; the John E Kennedy Library includes a separate series on Robert E Kennedy in its oral history collection.

In the early 1960s, as interest in the discipline of oral history began to grow, the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy libraries all launched oral history programs. The Herbert Hoover Library undertook its own privately funded oral history program soon thereafter, when Raymond Henle began interviewing in 1965. This program continued until 1971, and in later years members of the Hoover Library staff conducted additional interviews. There are 400 interviews in the Hoover Oral




History Collection. The Henle interviews exist only in transcript form; tapes were not retained.

The parts of the Roosevelt Library's oral history collection that focus on Roosevelt himself consist primarily of transcripts of interviews conducted by other institutions such as the Columbia University oral history program. In the late 1970s, however, the library began an oral history project, financed by the Eleanor Roosevelt Foun- dation and conducted by oral historians, to document Eleanor Roosevelt's career.

The Harry S. Truman Library was the first presidential library to undertake its own oral history program, which began in 1963 and continued until 1992; it now includes over 500 interviews, including a series of interviews on the Marshall Plan in which a number of European leaders were interviewed. A professional oral historian on the library's staff conducted most of the interviews. The interviews are available in transcript form, and only brief portions of the tapes of most interviews were retained to preserve a sample of the interviewee's voice.

About half of the over 500 interviews at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library were conducted under a cooperative arrangement with Columbia University's oral history program; the other half have been conducted by the library's own program.

Perhaps the most ambitious oral history programs are those of the Kennedy and Johnson libraries. The Kennedy Library oral history program began soon after the Kennedy assassination, funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. Initially, the interviews were conducted not by historians but by members of the Kennedy administration who voluntarily interviewed each other. The flaws in this system soon became apparent; for example, the interviewer and interviewee would often leave out crucial information, not from any attempt to be deceptive, but simply because they both knew the subject so well they did not see the need to discuss all the details. In 1965 the program was transferred to the National Archives, and trained oral historians based in Washington, D.C., began conducting the interviews. In 1970 the program was transferred to Massachusetts. A wide range of people were interviewed: heads of state, members of Congress, friends and family members, White House staff members, business and labor leaders, and opponents of Kennedy as well as his supporters. There are over 1,100 interviews in the John F. Kennedy collection and over 200 in the Robert E Kennedy collection.

Not surprisingly, interviews with heads of state tend to be less useful to researchers than those with other respondents, having a more formal tone and a tendency to memorialize the slain president. The Johnson Library oral history program learned from this experience, and few such interviews were undertaken.

By the time planning for the Johnson Library began, oral history was widely accepted as an important element of historical documentation. Oral histories were considered particularly important in documenting the Johnson years, given Lyn- don B. Johnson's renown as a person most effective in verbal, one-on-one communication. Johnson himself is not adequately reflected in the written record. Unlike some of his predecessors, Johnson did not write extensively. He prefered to com- municate over the telephone or in meetings or by writing his instructions on memoranda sent to him by his aides and advisers. Many of these memoranda ended



Oral History 599

with a simple checklist "Yes," "No'" or "See Me" -so that Johnson could indicate his directions with a check mark.

An oral history program was incorporated in early plans for the Johnson Library; indeed, a number of theJohnson Library interviews were conducted while the president was still in office. Eric Goldman, then a special assistant to the president, conducted several interviews, as did Paul Bolton, a longtime Texas journalist. The program began in earnest, however, in June 1968 with the hiring of Professor Joe B. Frantz of the University of Texas to head a team of historians to conduct a wide- ranging series of interviews documenting every phase of Johnson's long career. Frantz quickly brought on board several historians who were able to specialize in various topics, and they conducted many interviews before Johnson left office in January 1969.

The University of Texas group headed by Frantz continued interviewing into the early 1970s. Eventually, the program was turned over to the Johnson Library's own oral history program, headed by the oral historian Michael L. Gillette, which continued to process the interviews that had been conducted by the University of Texas program as well as conducting new interviews. This project was able to focus on times and events where the documentary record was less complete, conducting interview series on such topics as the New Deal-era National Youth Administration in Texas, which Johnson directed, his Senate career, and the War on Poverty. In addition, Ted Gittinger, a historian at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, conducted interviews on the Vietnam War in an effort to document that most controversial of topics from the Johnson years. Interviewing continued into the mid-1980s. The Johnson Library currently has over 1,500 interviews with over 1,200 people.

The oral history collections I have discussed thus far are representative of the first generation of oral history scholarship. All of these programs have essentially been completed, with interviews now being conducted only as special occasions or op- portunities occur. As of this writing, the Kennedy and Johnson libraries' oral history collections are by far the largest and most wide-ranging. The newer libraries' programs are much smaller in both size and scope, often taking the form of exit interviews of White House staff rather than programs documenting all aspects of the president's career.

The practice of conducting exit interviews of departing White House staff members began during the Nixon administration, and it indicates the degree to which oral history had by then become accepted as an important form of historical documentation. The interviews were routinely conducted by National Archives staff members in the Office of Presidential Papers and Archives in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. The quality of those interviews varies, depending on the amount of time the interviewee had to prepare for the interview. Interviews from the Nixon years have been transcribed and are in the custody of the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff at the Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland. Only eight are available for research at this time.

While such interviews certainly have value, they are limited to White House per- sonnel. In 1987 and 1988, two archivists at the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff




conducted about twenty interviews, concentrating on Nixon's White House years, in part because two other institutions, Whittier College and California State Uni- versity, Fullerton, had conducted extensive oral history series on Nixon's pre- presidential career.

The Gerald R. Ford Library also has exit interviews in its holdings, as well as seven interviews concerning President Ford's early associations in Grand Rapids, Michi- gan. Beginning this year, however, it has started a new oral history program that will initially concentrate on cabinet-level interviewees whose recollections are not available elsewhere.

TheJimmy Carter Library holdings include about 160 exit interviews with departing White House staff members. About 40 of the interviews have been transcribed; many others are available in tape form only. This office also conducted 18 interviews with members of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter's families. In addition, the Carter Library has 21 transcripts of interviews conducted by the National Park Service, focusing on information to assist the National Park Service interpretation of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, Georgia.

The Ronald Reagan Library's holdings include over 190 untranscribed audio recordings of exit interviews of White House staff conducted by the White House Office of Records Management and National Archives staff members and 13 oral history transcripts of interviews conducted either by the oral history program at the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley or by Donald R. Raucum, 'historian for the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Since the Reagan Library is the first presidential library governed by the Presi- dential Records Act of 1978, the exit interviews are presidential records, rather than donated historical materials, and as such are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. They will be released in tape format only, not transcribed.

The Bush Presidential Materials Project has 47 recorded exit interviews among its holdings. Like the Reagan interviews, they are subject to the Freedom of Informa- tion Act, and they will probably eventually be made available in tape format only.

This downsizing of oral history programs at presidential libraries reflects several trends: the first, and most significant, concerns funding. As anyone who has worked with oral history knows, such programs are expensive, beginning with the cost of hiring a professional oral history staff. The best programs are those conducted by trained historians who have ample time for research to prepare for the interviews; some oral historians believe it is better to do no interview at all than one for which there is poor preparation. Travel costs for interviews add to the expense, as does the extremely high cost of preparing an accurate transcript, which is the format most researchers prefer to use. While they have had some federal funding, most presidential library oral history programs have been supported by private funding, often from the nonprofit foundations that exist to support particular libraries' programs. Such funding now often contributes to other aspects of the libraries' activities.

The second factor contributing to this decline in presidential library oral history programs is the fact that so many other institutions and researchers are now conducting oral history interviews that the wide-ranging presidential library-sponsored



Oral History 601

oral history programs of the older libraries are no longer perceived as so necessary. The newer libraries are often able to supplement their oral history holdings by ob- taining copies of interviews conducted by other institutions, such as the National Park Service or university programs, and all of the libraries have begun to solicit oral history transcripts done by those engaged in historical research at their libraries.

The experiences of the Hoover and Truman libraries in undertaking oral history programs well after those presidents left office also demonstrate that it is possible to conduct valuable interviews at a late date. Certainly, memories are fresher im- mediately after events take place, but often interviewees are more candid after the passage of time. For example, the Hoover Library's interview with longtime Wash- ington journalist Walter Trohan, conducted by library archivist Dwight Miller, was done shortly after Trohan's retirement, when he felt freer with his answers than if he had been an active journalist. Neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson Library was able to obtain interviews with Lawrence O'Brien in the early days of their projects, but he consented to a remarkable series of interviews with Michael Gillette in the 1980s. They covered his years in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, as well as his service as chairman of the Democratic National Committee when his office was the target of the Watergate break-in.

Another advantage to conducting oral history interviews after the passage of time since the events being documented is that it permits archivists at the presidential libraries to process more of the textual collections and to identify gaps in their holdings that should be supplemented by oral history interviews. The War on Poverty interviews conducted by the Johnson Library in the late 1970s and early 1980s aimed to fill such a gap. More material is also available to enable the interviewer to prepare for the interview. The interviews on the Vietnam War done by the Johnson Library in the 1980s certainly benefited from the large amount of material on the war that had already been declassified, enabling the interviewer to be better prepared for the interview. The passage of time also, no doubt, resulted in the interviewee being more candid than he or she would have been in earlier years.

There is, of course, a danger in waiting too long to do interviews, and events cannot always be accurately predicted. PresidentJohnson was never interviewed by theJohnson Library's own oral history program, although its collection does include interviews conducted with him by others. Conversely, the Kennedy Library has an invaluable resource in the seven hundred-page interview that was done with Robert Kennedy before his untimely death.

Several technological developments that have occurred in recent years should make presidential library oral history interviews more widely available and more useful. Computerized word processing has already made transcribing more effi- cient and less costly. A side benefit is that some interviews will already exist in digi- tized form and thus can be posted on the Internet once they have been released by the interviewee. The Truman and Johnson libraries have begun programs to post interviews on the Internet, and other libraries are considering doing this as well. At the Johnson Library, some of the most frequently requested oral history transcripts that did not exist in digital form now have been scanned and then placed




on the Internet. The computerized versions of the transcripts are also text search- able, which is a great benefit to the researcher.

The Johnson Library is also exploring new computer technology to provide an on-line subject guide to its vast oral history collection and thus make it more acces- sible and usable by researchers. The Ford and Carter libraries already have some computer search capability of their oral history collections through the PRESNET finding aid.

Computer technology has also enabled the Kennedy Library to make an inno- vative use of oral history transcripts in their Legacy Room museum exhibit. Museum visitors can read portions of interviews on selected subjects by simply touching a computer screen, which then displays the oral history transcript. This exhibit proved popular, particularly with young people.

While most researchers prefer using oral histories as transcripts rather than as audio recordings, the newer libraries do not have the resources to prepare transcripts and plan to make their interviews available as tapes only. This may seem a disadvantage to those accustomed to textual research, where documents can often be visually scanned and irrelevant material disregarded. The same method cannot be used with a recording; you must listen to it in real time. However, since even the best of transcripts cannot convey all the subtleties and nuances of the interview, listening to a taped interview may provide researchers with benefits they had not expected. Even slight changes in a person's tone or timing can result in significant changes in interpretation. Researchers who listen to recordings often find that the added dimension the actual recording provides is well worth the time invested.

The recent release of presidential tape recordings by the Kennedy and Johnson libraries and by the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff may at first seem to lessen the importance of an oral history collection at these institutions. One reason that oral history was considered so essential at theJohnson Library was to try to capture some ofJohnson's famed persuasive abilities. While this is not captured in the written record, it is amply demonstrated in the recordings of his telephone conversations, 25 percent of which are now available for research. Those recordings are, of course, "oral" history, but they do not have the same character as an oral history interview. They are spontaneous and often fragmentary or cryptic. Oral histories, by contrast, allow the interviewee to be analytical and thoughtful, and the trained interviewer can elicit detailed answers. Both types of oral records have their place as historical sources, and oral histories complement these audio collections as they do textual ones, supplying detail and explanations that the recordings may lack.

Researchers have always considered the oral history collections of the presidential libraries valuable resources. The early libraries were truly pioneers in the new field of oral history, and their ambitious programs contributed to the development of oral history as an accepted discipline. All of the libraries continue to explore new means of enriching their oral history collections, either by conducting interviews themselves or by soliciting interviews done by others. While the newer libraries may not undertake such large-scale projects as the earlier presidential libraries did, oral histories will no doubt continue to have a place in presidential library collections.



Oral History 603

APPENDIX

Presidential Libraries The World Wide Web sites of the presidential libraries can be accessed through the National Archives Web site: http: iI www.nara.gov

Herbert Hoover Library Nixon Presidential Materials Staff 211 Parkside Drive National Archives at College Park P.O. Box 488 8601 Adelphi Road West Branch, Iowa 52358-0488 College Park, Maryland 20740-6001 (319) 643-5301 (301) 713-6950 e-mail: library~hoover.nara.gov e-mail: nixon~arch2.nara.gov

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Gerald R. Ford Library 511 Albany Post Road 1000 Beal Avenue Hyde Park, New York 12538-1999 Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2114 (914) 229-8114 (616) 741-2218 e-mail: library~roosevelt.nara.gov e-mail: library~fordlib.nara.gov

Harry S. Truman Library Jimmy Carter Library 500 West U.S. Highway 24 1 Copenhill Avenue, NE Independence, Missouri 64050-1798 Atlanta, Georgia 30307-1406 (816) 833-1400 (404) 331-3942 e-mail: library~truman.nara.gov e-mail: library~carter.nara.gov

Dwight D. Eisenhower Library Ronald Reagan Library 200 SE 4th Street 40 Presidential Drive Abilene, Kansas 67410-2900 Simi Valley, California 93065-0666 (913) 263-4751 (805) 522-8444 e-mail: library~eisenhower.nara.gov e-mail: library~reagan.nara.gov

John F. Kennedy Library Bush Presidential Materials Project Columbia Point 701 University Drive, East, Suite 300 Boston, Massachusetts 02125-3398 College Station, Texas 77840-9554 (617) 929-4500 (409) 260-9552 e-mail: library~kennedy.nara.gov e-mail: library~bush.nara.gov

Lyndon Baines Johnson Library 2313 Red River Austin, Texas 78705-5702 (512) 916-5137 e-mail: library~johnson.nara.gov



the oral history collections of the presidential libraries

Documents