Oral History, Biography, and Political Demagoguery

Oral history-the systematic collection, arrangement, and preservation of verbatim accounts and opinions of persons who were witnesses to or participants in events of interest to scholars-is an essential tool for researching biographies of twentieth-century figures for whom crucial written records are extremely limited. A case in point is my experience in preparing the biography of Gerald L. K. Smith (1898-1976), the noted Share-Our-Wealth disciple of Huey Long and notorious anti-Semite. What follows, therefore, is a discussion of some of the situational and methodological difficulties I encountered in this undertaking. It is hoped that such a recounting will have the effect not only of directing attention to the colorful, sometimes bizarre, career of Smith but also, and of much greater moment here, of eliciting some operational procedures and conceptual guidelines for use by other biographers of recent

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