Both of us met Dr. Sloan before our interview; Luke, two years ago at the Palladium downtown, and Emily, four months ago at a crowded UPS store on 8th Street.
Emily stood shoulder to shoulder in line, a box of homemade cookies in her arms. Suddenly, the tall gray-haired man behind her broke the silence and asked, “Who are the cookies for?” As she told him about her boy five states away, Dr. Sloan intently listened, only interrupting with thoughtful questions.
Luke, fresh on campus and surrounded by unfamiliar faces, had an evening saved by conversation with Dr. Sloan, started only by a single family connection. The encounters left both of us feeling known. As it turns out, Dr. Sloan, the Director of the Institute for Oral History, is no novice at listening to people’s stories.
Years and months after these encounters the two of us sit opposite Dr. Sloan in his office located in the Carole Science Library. Accolades, family photos, and books line the shelves (as well as parts of the floor). Dr. Sloan confidently and comfortably leans back in his chair, leg crossed over his knee. His words are imbued with a commanding electricity, and more—a deep sincerity.
“I direct the Institute for Oral History, which has been around since 1970. We’re the largest oral history collection in the state. We conduct and collect and partner with oral history projects on all sorts of different topics: community based, academic based, undergraduate, graduate. We run our own projects, but we also collect other people’s work.”
“Hey, I’d like to show you this.” Dr. Sloan leads us out of his office and towards the opposite wing, coming into a room lined with shelves. He moves towards a corner and starts drawing his finger along the wall, looking for something. I realize we’re looking at walls of cassettes, years of hard-copied interviews. He draws one out–dated 1989–and opens it, revealing the spool. “Leon Jaworski. This is the man that prosecuted Nixon.”
There are hundreds more of these interviews, dating back to the Institute’s founding in 1970. The Institute’s purpose, demonstrated by these tapes, is to collect and conduct interviews with various people across historical periods. Their efforts, as well as partnerships with other Oral History projects across the country, have developed a web of primary resources spread across time and space. And in the time since their founding, the Institute has grown to become the largest in the state.
Dr. Sloan talked with us about one of the institute’s current projects: recording interviews with the first generation of African American students at Baylor. “The idea being, you got the statues, which are wonderful, but they don’t live, talk and breathe, and they don’t communicate the experience of being black at Baylor in the late sixties and seventies. And so, these stories do that. It’s within those stories that that experience lies.”
The Institute records these stories by first reaching out to the individual for an interview, conducting it, and then transcribing with artificial intelligence before undergraduate students revise and format the transcript. This transcript is then reviewed by the interviewee, and upon their approval, goes online in the Institute’s digital collections.
“You got the statues, which are wonderful, but they don’t live, talk and breathe, and they don’t communicate the experience of being black at Baylor in the late sixties and seventies. And so, these stories do that.”
Dr. Sloane
The Institute views this collection as having three primary functions: Project, Public, and Private. The Project purpose is what you think of first where the interviews are used in academic research.. Dr. Sloan also emphasizes oral history as an outward-facing medium; the project serves not only academia, but the community and beyond. That’s where the Public purpose comes in. The Institute’s digital collection is a community resource “that’s going to be available 50 to 100 years from now.” Dr. Sloan spoke most passionately about the Private purpose. “The private value is:what does it mean to this individual? What does it mean to this family?”
Dr. Sloan shared anecdotes of family members coming back to the Institute to hear the voice of a deceased loved one. He emphasized the value of preserving an individual’s story. “Everything else is going to be stripped away. But we have our stories and our experiences. I want whatever we do to operate on all three of those levels.”
Dr. Sloan recalls a series of interviews conducted with a woman for a project about housewives in Waco. “I think it changed her relationship a little bit with her own story that someone thought, ‘hey, they’re recording this and they’re typing it up and they’re writing it down, and they’re spending money to make sure it’s archived.’ […] Not that she thought it was unimportant, but it elevated maybe even how she thought about her own experience.”
“Everything else is going to be stripped away. But we have our stories and our experiences”
The conversation turned to the use of AI to conduct interviews, the argument being for increased efficiency. Dr. Sloan believes differently.
“Let’s leave a little humanity in it. The humanity part is extremely important. And so, it’s not just about the story. Without a listener it’s not the same. […] You need the human element there. Interacting and listening deeply.”
The Institute is making waves through individuals and families with their ability to simply listen. We want to tell our stories. We want to be known. The Institute for Oral History is creating space for people to tell their stories, even when they may not feel worthy to tell them. The Institute is bringing new life to the stories that we have overlooked, and by returning us to these stories, they return us to our humanity. Through each of the Institute’s interviews, there is an opportunity: by listening, we are bringing renewal to our communities and to ourselves.
