Goin' North

Goin' North is a remarkable digital collection that digs deeply into the experiences of African American migrants to Philadelphia beginning in the years before World War I. The Web site combines traditional oral history sources, such as transcripts and recordings, with interactive maps, timelines, and video clips. The site offers a variety of digital stories that provide important context for the powerful interviews and images it provides. This award-winning site was created by a combination of students and faculty at West Chester University. The project is anchored by a collection of oral history interviews done in the 1980s by Charles Hardy. These interviews are housed at the University of Kentucky and are being put to new use in this site through technologies not previously available. In 2014 professors and students began crafting a digital platform that would both curate and expand users' access to the interviews and related historical materials. The resulting Goin' North provides an exceptional example of how oral histories can interlink with other sources to provide a wraparound experience of a historical era. As a testimony to its success, Goin' North won awards from both the Oral History Association and the Mid-Atlantic Region Archives Conference

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