I am a second-year Master’s student in Temple University’s Department of History. Ten years ago, I secured a B.A. degree in Theater with a concentration in Performance at West Chester University, and I did not realize how much I love history until after I graduated. Ever since, I have worked as a historical tour guide in Independence National Historical Park, where I enjoy telling people all about unconventional topics such as Ben Franklin’s family life or the destructive impact Independence Park’s construction had on adjacent neighborhoods. Currently, I am studying U.S. military history during the long nineteenth century with a focus on atrocities committed by the military, primarily against Native Americans, during that time.

I have zero previous experience with conducting professional oral history, but I have come close. At the age of 9 or 10, I recorded myself interviewing my grandparents about their upbringing during the Great Depression (for reasons which I have forgotten, my young grandfather had been compelled one day to scrub his front porch with a toothbrush, which is how my amused grandmother met him for the first time). Much more recently, last year in fact, I interviewed Mark Segal and Tommi Avicolli-Mecca, two queer elders who were involved in an effort (back in the 1970s) to end Temple University’s participation in conducting conversion therapy on gay Temple students and Philadelphians. I did not use high-quality recording equipment, nor have I deposited the interviews into an archive, so this work does not meet the definition of actual oral history, but it is the closest I have come so far. Turns out, I didn’t even know what oral history actually was until this week.

I have no specific career aspirations involving oral history at the moment, but I very much enjoyed the experience of interviewing people last year and I would like to learn how to do it properly. One day, I might go to South Philly and interview descendants of people who used to live in “The Neck,” a lost and mostly forgotten community which used to exist where the stadiums, FDR Park, and Navy Yard are today. Any remaining physical evidence of that community is now buried under ten feet of fill, and you would have no idea any of it was ever there if you visited the area today. It is a fascinating piece of Philadelphian history which no one seems to be writing about, and I’d like to change that in the future.

– Connor Behm