Purpose of this Project

            Perhaps the most succinct explanation of oral history is the definition by the Oral History Association, posted on the OAH website.  “Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.  Oral history is both the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st-century digital technologies.” 

<http://omega.dickinson.edu/organizations/oha/about.html> 

[Accessed, September 10, 2005].

            The purpose of the Hurricane Katrina Diaspora Oral History Project is to gather and preserve for future scholars the memories of the experiences of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina who took temporary refuge in the J. K. Northway Coliseum in Kingsville, Texas in September, 2005.  The project is the work of students in history classes at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and the South Texas Archives at TAMUK.