Oral History Association Annual Meeting Scholarship

The Oral History Association (OHA) is a national organization that "seeks to bring together all persons interested in oral history as a way of collecting and interpreting human memories to foster knowledge and human dignity."  Last year, the OHA held its Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, which we learned about through our participation in the Community Scholars Program.  We were unable to attend at that time, but this year we applied for and received a registration and travel scholarship to attend the OHA Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia from October 28-31, 2010. 

Some of this year's conference themes include "civil rights, human rights, immigration, and LGBT history," and it will also commemorate "the 50th anniversary of the Atlanta Student the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina."  So Timi and I are especially excited to be awarded scholarships to attend the 2010 Annual Meeting in Atlanta at the end of the month.

Another special and important part of our trip that we're looking forward to is seeing and/or staying with some fabulous folks from Alternate ROOTS.  We had the pleasure of hosting some folks at our house as well as hanging out with them and other ROOTers at the Clear Creek Festival in September.  Plus a couple of ROOTS friends from ATL weren't able to make it up to Kentucky that weekend, so it will be fun to visit everyone on their home turf while we're there.

Thanks to the Oral History Association for providing scholarships for Timi and I to attend the Annual Meeting this month!  This is a valuable opportunity to learn from others as well as share our experience working on this and other projects.

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UPDATE: 
(27 Oct. 4:45 pm)

Alas, Timi and I will not be attending the OHA Annual Meeting in Atlanta after all.  In recent months, well more like a year, we've had transportation issues that we've struggled to resolve.  We have three cars that all have some major functioning problems!  Right now we're fortunate to borrow a vehicle from my papaw to get to work, but we just weren't able to coordinate a ride to the conference in Atlanta.

Given the generosity of support from the OHA, we regret that we may have inadvertently prevented someone else from receiving a scholarship to attend the conference.  We're also disappointed to miss all of the amazing presentation sessions and events the annual meeting has to offer.  We hope that we can attend in the future, but for now we can only wish all the best to the folks gathering for this year's annual meeting.