NAACP Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project Call For Proposals

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is accepting proposals for an oral history partner for LDF’s new oral history initiative, a three-year first phase project to begin in January 2022. The oral history initiative will be administered by the Archives team of LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI), a multidisciplinary center within LDF. The initiative aims to document, archive, and share the human stories and impacts of LDF’s racial justice litigation and advocacy. The oral history partner will be responsible for coordinating, conducting, finalizing, and reviewing professional quality video oral history interviews with 30 to 40 individuals who have played important roles in LDF’s racial justice litigation and advocacy efforts since the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement. Prospective interviewees will be former LDF clients, cooperating counsel, local and national civil rights advocates, and community activists located throughout the Southern United States, where LDF has litigated and continues to litigate most of its cases. Interviewees are also located in other areas, including but not limited to Washington, D.C., California, New York State, and Massachusetts. Although LDF plans for all oral history interviews to be in-person, the oral history partner will work closely with LDF’s Archives team throughout the project period to monitor safety risks and travel restrictions due to COVID-19 or climate related emergencies and determine the safest course of action for everyone involved with the project.

We encourage proposals from organizations, institutions, and independent oral historians and memory workers passionate about oral history, public memory, and racial justice. We also recognize that this is a major oral history project that will require significant project management, coordination, communication, and travel, so we encourage independent practitioners to submit proposals as part of a team (for example, a team might consist of an oral historian, a legal history researcher, a professional videographer, and project manager). We strongly encourage BIPOC oral historians and memory workers to submit proposals.

Proposals are due by October 29, 2021.