About the project

The Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Project was launched in 1996 to capture the history of a remarkable movement by people with disabilities to win legally defined civil rights and control over their own lives. Since then, more than 100 oral histories with leaders, participants, and observers of the movement in the 1960s and 1970s have preserved the living memory of the movement. A rich collection of personal papers and the records of key disability organizations join the oral histories in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, comprising an in-depth research resource for the study of a contemporary social movement which has changed the social, cultural, and legal landscape of the nation.

The project has been funded with two field-initiated research grants from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, a division of the U.S. Department of Education. The first grant (1996-2000) focuses on the movement in Berkeley, California, one of the key cities where models for independent living were developed and disability rights issues defined. The second grant (2000-2003) expands the scope of the project nationwide, with oral histories of leaders from Boston, New York, and Washington D.C. to Texas, Chicago, and Los Angeles. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts was received in 2004 to fund a project on artists with disabilities. Further interviews on the antecedents, implementation, and impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act were made possible by a grant from DBTAC-Pacific ADA Center in 2006. Interviews for the project were conducted by a joint team of OHC staff, consultants, and community members.

Additional support was received from private donors Raymond Lifchez, Judith Stronach, and June A. Cheit. The Prytanean Society at the University of California, Berkeley, funded the first two interviews done in 1984 and 1985. Special thanks are due Willa Baum, director of the Oral History Center (then the Regional Oral History Office), 1956-2001, who recognized the value of preserving the history of the disability movement and sustained and guided the development of the project.

See the DRILM collection, including oral histories, video and audio clips, donated papers, and photographs. Please note that some oral histories were compiled into volumes, so there are many more oral histories than the number of hits indicated in the search. From this page, you can refine your search further by filling in the fields at the top of the page, or by clicking on and off the categories on the left.

Related resources

Timeline

This project seeks to move beyond debates over the appropriate size of the national deficit and debt by exploring the recent history of federal budgeting. Through a series of in-depth oral histories with key government officials, we plan on historicizing the debt issue by investigating the various contexts in which policy-makers, experts, and public advocates have thought about and sought to improve the nation’s fiscal condition.

See the Slaying the Dragon of Debt: Fiscal Politics & Policy from the 1970s to the Present project website.

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About the project 

The Oral History Center (then the Regional Oral History Office) was one of five oral history programs that worked with the California State Archives to document state policy development as reflected in the legislative and executive branches of the state government and as reflected by others who played significant roles in the policy process of the State of California. The institutions participating in the program were the Oral History Center, the Office of Oral History at UCLA, the Claremont Graduate School, California State University Sacramento, and California State University Fullerton. Only the interviews conducted by OHC staff are listed below. 

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Project resources

Additional oral history interview projects with substantive content on California political history include: 

Earl Warren in California

Goodwin Knight and Edmund G. Brown Gubernatorial Eras in California

Politics, Law, and Policy — Individual Interviews

Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Era

Women Political Leaders

About the project 

Over 50 years ago, anthropologist Octavio Romano founded the publication, El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought, at UC Berkeley. Indeed, it was one of many actions of the time that sought to channel the educational aims of the Mexican American civil rights movement into the corridors of higher education. In the years that followed, scholars on campuses throughout California and the West built upon these aims, and ultimately established the academic discipline that became known as Chicana/o Studies.

This project seeks to commemorate that historical development and document the formation of Chicana/o Studies through in-depth interviews with the first generations of scholars who shaped it. Based on the selections of an advisory council composed of scholars from around the country, the project will feature oral histories with the prominent and pioneering scholars who helped build the discipline over the last five decades. These oral histories will take center stage in the two main products of this project. First, each interview will be transcribed and made available online below on the project page. Second, the oral histories will form the heart of a forthcoming documentary film series, tentatively titled, Chicana/o Studies: The Legacy of A Movement and the Forging of A Discipline.

Taken together, this project commemorates over 50 years of Chicana/o Studies, and significantly advances our understanding of the field’s development and evolution. Yet the development of Chicana/o Studies, as captured in both the oral history transcripts and film series, is more than just the story of a discipline. It is the story of a generation of Chicana/o scholars who broke through barriers to take their place in the nation’s universities, and spent their careers documenting the history and experience of their community. It is the story of educational reform, where scholars of color demanded that America’s curriculum equally include all its citizens. In many respects, it is also a story that highlights another side of the civil rights movement, one where actions in the classroom, rather than those in the streets, proved the long-lasting vector of social change.

Featured scholars

Rudy Acuña
CSU Northridge

Tomás Almaguer
San Francisco State University

Albert Camarillo
Stanford University

Antonia Castañeda
St. Mary’s University

Adelaida Del Castillo*
San Diego State University

Edward Escobar
Arizona State University

Ignacio García*
Brigham Young University

Mario T. García
UC Santa Barbara

Deena González
Gonzaga University

Richard Griswold Castillo*
San Diego State University

David Montejano
UC Berkeley

Emma Pérez
University of Arizona

Ricardo Romo
University of Texas, San Antonio

Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith
University of Arizona

Vicki Ruiz
UC Irvine

Ramón Saldivar
Stanford University

Rosaura Sánchez
UC San Diego

Guadalupe San Miguel*
University of Houston

Adela de la Torre*
San Diego State University

Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez
Arizona State

Emilio Zamora*
University of Texas, Austin

Patricia Zavella
UC Santa Cruz

*Transcript to be released in fall 2022

Interviews for the project are ongoing.

To nominate a scholar, contact Todd Holmes.

Project director

Todd Holmes

Advisory council

• Miroslava Chávez-García, UC Santa Barbara
• Raúl Coronado, UC Berkeley
• Maria Cotera, University of Texas, Austin
• Ignacio García, Brigham Young University
• Matt Garcia, Dartmouth College
• Mireya Loza, Georgetown University
• Lydia Otero, University of Arizona, Emeritus
• Stephen Pitti, Yale University
• Raúl Ramos, University of Houston
• Oliver Rosales, Bakersfield College
• Mario Sifuentez, UC Merced
• Irene Vásquez, University of New Mexico

Project sponsors

• Arizona State University
• Brigham Young University
• California State University, Office of the Chancellor
• Gonzaga University
• Loyola Marymount University
• Stanford University
• University of Arizona
• University of California, Office of the President
• University of Houston
• University of Texas, Austin
• University of Texas, San Antonio

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About the project 

In 1972, the citizens of California voted overwhelmingly to create a new agency charged with regulating all development along the state’s coastline. That agency became known as the California Coastal Commission. For nearly 50 years, the Commission has worked with coastal communities to shape development along California’s shore, efforts guided by the dual aims of environmental protection and public access. That work has resulted in the preservation of one of the most unique and desirable coastlines in the Western Hemisphere; it has also made the California Coastal Commission the international flagship of coastal regulation.
 
The California Coastal Commission Project is capturing the history of this important agency through oral history interviews with former commissioners, staff, and community affiliates. From the campaign for Proposition 20 that created the agency in 1972 to the various development battles it confronted in the decades that followed, these interviews document nearly a half century of coastal regulation in California, and in the process, shed new light on the many facets involved in environmental policy. The OHC was able to capture parts of this history in interviews conducted years earlier for other projects. The Center now aims to complete that collection.

In addition to the oral histories, the project also seeks to put these voices into conversation and let them tell the history of both the agency and coastal conservation in their communities. It is often said that the true history of the California Coastal Commission is what you don’t see, namely, the developments along the coast the agency either denied or significantly scaled back. This “unseen” history stands at the heart of the 15-episode podcast, Coastal Tales: The Long Struggle to Preserve California’s Coast, which the OHC is producing in partnership with the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University.
 
Each episode of the podcast features a specific site on the state’s coastline and details the story of a proposed development that, if not for the Coastal Commission, would have significantly altered those sites and communities forever. The podcast draws from the oral history interviews of the project, along with smaller, supplemental interviews done for each episode. Episodes are housed on a dedicated website here that also feature the full transcripts of the interviews, along with additional information and resources on the history of the Commission. It is hoped that the California Coastal Commission project site will prove to be a valuable resource for students, policymakers, and the public. In time, it is planned that the public will also be able to access the episodes at the sites themselves with the scan of a QR code.
 
We launched the pilot episode about saving Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz, and the rest of the podcast was slated to be released in the fall of 2020.

If you’d like to learn more about this project, please contact Todd Holmes. Help us to create more of these oral histories and future podcasts by supporting the OHC.

Podcast — pilot episode

“Saving Lighthouse Point” tells the story of the fight in Santa Cruz during the early 1970s against a massive development that sought to turn one of the city’s last open parcels of coastal land into a bustling tourist and business hub. Bolstered by the creation of the Coastal Commission, the citizens of Santa Cruz organized and challenged the city council’s support of the project, ultimately saving Lighthouse Point. The successful campaign not only came to stand as a testament to the Coastal Commission and its influence in many coastal communities, but also would prove a watershed moment in the history of Santa Cruz.

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Related resources

Bill Lane: Sunset Publisher, Environmentalist, Ambassador

Joe Bodovitz: Founding Director of the Bay Conservation Development Commission and the California Coastal Commission

Michael L. Fischer: Oral History Interview with Michael L. Fischer, Executive Director, California Coastal Commission, 1978-85

Will "Trav" Travis: Leading Environmental Regulator for the Public Interest

About the interviews

The Oral History Center regularly conducts longer life history interviews as well as shorter topical interviews with individuals who have made important contributions to the areas of commerce, industry, and labor. These oral histories may be with individuals who have founded and managed corporations, people who have contributed expertise and spurred innovation in business, or those who represented workers through unions or other organizations. The interviews listed here typically were not conducted as part of an ongoing project. Instead, the majority of these interviews document the singular contributions of individuals to the economic life of the United States and the larger global arena. Interviews are added to this subject category as they are completed. 

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Project resources

Additional oral history interview projects with substantive content on the history of commerce, industry, and labor include:

Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream  

Economists Life Stories

Global Mining

Kaiser Permanente Medical Care

Slaying the Dragon of Debt: U.S. Fiscal Politics and Policy

Venture Capitalists

Western Mining
 

The Port Chicago Oral History Collection rounds out the oral histories about Port Chicago that are already in the Oral History Center’s collection. This new collection of nine oral histories are told from the perspective of the survivors themselves. The Center’s existing collection talks about Port Chicago from a variety of voices, such as sailors on base, teenagers in town, and congressmen working to memorialize Port Chicago as a national park. These new oral histories were conducted by Robert Allen, activist, writer, and retired professor of African-American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the UC Berkeley. First published in 1993 and subsequently in 2006, Dr. Allen's book, The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in the US. Naval History, is the leading scholarly source on the events at Port Chicago. During the course of his research, Allen was able to interview many of the surviving sailors; all of his narrators are now deceased. These interviews are the some of the only surviving first-person accounts of the events. Preserving such important primary sources is critical in preserving the history of these events.

Oral Histories synced to audio

Martin Bordenave

Jack Crittenden

Freddie Meeks

Percy Robinson

Robert Routh

Cyril Sheppard

Joe Small Interview 1

Joe Small Interview 2

Joe Small Interview 4

Edward Waldrop

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the National Park Service for funding the preservation, digitization, and access to these oral history interviews, as well as to Dr. Allen's Port Chicago and Civil Rights collections in partnership with The Bancroft Library. 

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Project resources

Robert Allen Port Chicago Papers

Robert L. Allen Bancroft Library Papers

OHC Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front Oral Histories relating to Port Chicago

This project records the stories of Portuguese immigrants and their descendants in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond who represent various aspects of the history of this early immigrant group. Portuguese began arriving in California aboard American whaling ships—upon which many served—well before the Gold Rush. Although settling in urban areas as well, Portuguese have traditionally preferred to follow agricultural pursuits, where they have been especially active in the state’s dairy industry.

Immigration from Portugal (mainly from the Atlantic archipelagoes of the Azores and Madeira, as well as Cape Verde, now an independent nation) peaked in the first years of the past century and then again in a second wave in the 1960s and 1970s. It is the voices of these people and their descendants that have been the target of this oral history series, which began in the fall of 2002.

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Project resources

Video excerpts

Related resources

Center for Portuguese Studies

About the project

The OAB was recommended for closure by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1995 and finally shut its doors in September 1999. Ownership of the base was transferred to the City of Oakland (City) and to the Port of Oakland (Port) in 2006. Parts of the OAB were determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as a discontiguous historic district. Redevelopment of the OAB by the City and the Port would remove all resources contributing to the OAB Historic District rendering it no longer eligible for the NRHP. The loss of the OAB Historic District was determined a significant impact by the Oakland Army Base Area Redevelopment Plan Environmental Impact Report (EIR), which identified mitigation measures to partially compensate for the loss. The Oakland Army Base Oral History Project implements recommended cultural resources mitigation measures from the Final EIR. The City and the Port jointly fund this project.

This oral history project on the OAB is intended, first and foremost, to capture living memories of a now closed institution. Beyond the basic act of recovering memories, however, the project seeks to gain information about: the core functions of the base as part of the Port of Embarkation, as headquarters for the Military Traffic Management Command, Western Area, and as a key element of the Port of Oakland, one of the largest deep-water ports in the United States; the social, cultural, and military life on the base as it relates to a wide variety of issues including labor, housing, politics, public order, and the environment; and the relationship between the OAB and the surrounding world, from immediate community of West Oakland to the City and Port of Oakland to the rest of the world.

The OAB Oral History Project is designed to last three years. During the first two years of the project, approximately 45 interviews shall be conducted on the topics mentioned above with veterans, former base employees, community members, and policy makers. The interviews are transcribed, reviewed by the interviewees, and then posted on this website (the Regional Oral History Office is in compliance with the UC Berkeley Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects.) The final year of the project will be devoted to creating a book about the OAB based primarily upon the oral history interviews.

Project team (2007-2009)
Martin Meeker, Project Director and Interviewer
Vic Geraci, Associate Director of ROHO
Lisa Rubens, Interviewer
Ann Lage, Interviewer
Robin Li, Interviewer
Jess Rigelhaupt, Interviewer
Julie Allen, Production Coordinator
David Dunham, Web/Video Editor

Funding
The Oakland Army Base Oral history project is funded through a contract with the Port of Oakland and the City of Oakland for the duration of three years.

Statement of Scholarly Independence
Although funded by the Port of Oakland and the City of Oakland, this project was planned and is being executed as an independent scholarly research project; individual interviewees are covered by UC Berkeley Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects guidelines that provide for sealing portions of interview transcripts at the discretion of the interviewee. While the research design and interviewing are independent of the Port and the City, we have been assisted by staff at both institutions in identifying research themes and in selecting and locating potential interviewees.

Bibliography

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Project resources

Thematic focus

We propose to select interviewees and conduct interviews with an eye to addressing three overarching themes, each of which contain a number of research questions and subthemes:

1. Core Base Functions: By focusing on “core base functions” we intent to explore the raison d’etre of the OARB: its role as the point on embarkation for supplies, weapons, and troops. We propose to examine the following issues:
   1. Technology and labor: the sixty years from the beginning of the Second World War to the decommissioning of the OARB witnessed vast changes in the use of technology and labor for supplying the military. We will explore the nature of these changes and how they played out on the piers and in the warehouses of the base.
   2. Military objectives and tasks: Work on the base varied greatly from wartime to peacetime, and from one era to the next. We will explore the relationship between the context of worldwide and hemispheric military engagements and the kind of work accomplished on the base.
   3. Military and capital/trade: Presuming there is a close relationship between U.S. military action and the opening (or closing) of foreign markets to U.S. commerce, we will explore the role played by the OARB in the management of this relationship in both larger global matters but also developments closer to home, such as the military command of the Port in WWII and the gradual transfer of base land to the port in the 1990s.
   4. Transportation networks:  As a port of embarkation, the OARB served as a hub, linking two great transportation networks: road and rail on the land and ships at sea. Interviews will explore not only what (and who) traversed those networks, but will examine how those networks changed along with the ramifications of those changes, such as the emergence of intermodal transport.
2. City within a City: With a varying population that, at times, reached the tens of thousands, the OARB was a city within a city. We propose to explore the internal life of the army base by focusing on:
   1. Community and cultural life: For residents of and contractors working at the OARB, the base provided not only the necessities of life (food and shelter), but also made an effort to sustain community and culture. Interviews will explore all facets of cultural life, including: religion (individual and communal experiences), entertainment (movies, dances, concerts), athletics (baseball, bowling), sociability (clubs, bars, mess halls), and foodways (from MREs to the officer’s dining hall).
   2. Governance and Order: Like any city, the base required a local structure of governance to maintain working order (sewers, water, power), including policing apparatus to keep public order. We will examine the ‘local’ governance structure with an eye to explaining how the various arms of it accomplished their assigned tasks; interviews will examine how base life facilitated order but also incidents when it was undermined.
   3. Housing, health, and well-being: Public health and housing take on new meanings when the site under consideration is a military base, where the federal government is obliged to provide all the basic needs of its residents. Interviews will explore the military-model of housing and health provision. We will also examine the place of families, children, and schooling on the base.
   4. Military and social hierarchies: Hierarchical to its core, military order and function derives from and is integral to its structure. Interviews will explore the ways in which hierarchies of rank were mobilized to serve the mission of the OARB, but also instances in which rank hierarchies were questioned.  We also will examine historically variable hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality at the base across all project themes. 
3. Community Impact:  Being a city within a city, the OARB was compelled to interact with surrounding communities, cities, and regions as part of its mission. We propose to explore the impact of the OARB on the surrounding communities, and vice versa, by focusing on the following issues and questions:
   1. City of Oakland and Alameda County governance: Because of state and federal precedence, city bureaucrats and elected officials find the governing of municipalities difficult. This is compounded when a massive federal institution sits immediately adjacent to the city in question. Although many cities compete for new military bases, others lament the difficulties caused by those already present. Located in a large urban area, the OARB was an integral part of the patterns of everyday life and the eruptions of sensational events that make up the history of the San Francisco Bay Area since the beginning of World War II. Interviews will explore the ways in which local government dealt with the OARB and vice versa.
   2. Public order and policing:  One of the most important, and troubling, arenas of base - community interaction came with policing and public order. Interviews will explore how several difference policing forces (Oakland Police Department, Alameda County Sheriff, base MPs, Shore Patrol, Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Board) addressed issues related to soldier behavior (e.g. AWOLs, public drunkenness, rape), vice (prostitution, gambling, drugs), etc.
   3. Politics and protest:  As an outpost for both the military and federal government, the OARB was a lightening rod for community pride and protest. Interviews will examine instances in which the surrounding community looked to the base as a national pride (e.g. VJ day, Memorial Days) and as a source of national shame (i.e. during the Vietnam War and the anti-nuclear movement).
   4. Community outreach and crisis mitigation: Beyond the obvious times of stress during protests, the OARB and the surrounding community (particularly of West Oakland) had to maintain a stable working atmosphere. Interviews will explore the mechanisms, protocols, and organizations established to facilitate constant contact between the base and the surrounding communities.
   5. Environment:  Perhaps the most profound and longest-lasting impact the base has had (and will continue to have) on the surrounding communities comes in terms of its environmental impact. Interviews will explore how the OARB impacted the local environment from landfill programs to oil spills to cleanups following decommissioning.
   6. OARB and Port of Oakland relations: Sharing the same waterfront and engaging in the same larger project of producing wealth from the nation, the OARB and the Port of Oakland still were two very different entities who had to work together closely over the entire period of this study. We will explore the larger issues as well as the intricacies of this relationship.

Oakland Army Base book

To your reserve your copy of the Oakland Army Base book, please send your name, address, email, and phone number to Paul Burnett with ‘OAB Book’ in the subject line.

• Excerpt: CHAPTER 3: The Oakland Army Base and the American Dream
• Read Oakland Tribune Article on Oakland Army Base Oral History Project Book.
• Read UCB article: “Oral history weaves story of the Oakland Army Base and its profound region-wide impact.”

Related resources

Port of Oakland

City of Oakland

California State Military Museum

Oakland Museum of California

Brief history of the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (formerly the Military Traffic Management Command)

Historical overview of the Oakland Army Base

Randy Wayne Schekman: Cell Biologist and UC Berkeley Nobel Laureate Oral History Transcript 

This oral history with Randy Schekman is one in a series documenting bioscience and biotechnology in Northern California. Schekman’s research investigates fundamental cellular processes at the molecular, biochemical, and genetic levels. In the interviews, he describes the work which illuminates the mechanism and control of the complex intracellular pathways by which proteins are transported within the living cell. It was this body of research which led to the highest honors in biology, the Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research in 2002 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013. Interviews conducted by Sally Smith Hughes in 2014.

Related resources

Dr. Schekman’s 2012 oral history for the Daniel Koshland Retrospective.