Top of Page Asking Social History Questions Imagine that you are a social historian studying family life in Massachusetts in three different periods of history. In this lesson, you will use oral histories to explore social history. You will start by studying oral histories collected as part of the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. Then you will conduct some oral history interviews yourself. When you have finished this section, go ahead to Oral History and the Federal Writers' Project .
Oral history is a way to gather information from people who took part in past events.
Gathering oral history is the technique of interviewing people who lived through historical events or time periods and recording their answers. The person being interviewed is often called the interview subject. One such program, designed to provide work for unemployed writers, was called The Federal Writers' Project. This project employed more than 300 writers. Many people who became famous writers were interviewers for the Federal Writers Project.