Even the federal government recognized the importance of oral histories long ago. Back in the 1930’s, when the Civilian Conservation Corps was established to create jobs during the Great Depression and shore up the nation’s infrastructure at the same time, taking oral histories was one of the many jobs performed by people in the Corps.
There were still people alive in the United States then who had personally fought in or lived through the Civil War, and also people who had been born as slaves and spent the early parts of their lives being owned by other people. The U.S. government recognized the importance of getting the stories of these people recorded while they were still here to tell about those long ago times. They were, after all, an important part of American history. Getting the personal perspective on those times was as important as knowing the book facts about them...