Reflection paper

“Listen to this: Crown Heights Oral History Collection” is an oral history donated to the Brooklyn Historical society by project director Alexander Kelly. This oral collection of voices entails audio interview and summaries made and collected within the spheres of the community project. It involves several interviewers, who recorded the audio conversations of forty-three narrators. The oral histories were conducted along the peripheries education experience for student interns as life history and community anthropology interviews. “Listen to this” covers the topics of families, politics, religion, and community activism. In this post, current OHMA student looks at what it means to “Live” a public policy and how oral history can be used to uncover both noticeable and more subtle changes over time.

Here, the changes are the citizens’ interpretations of the frequency of their interactions with police and the amount of criminal activity in their neighborhoods. The residents’ experiences in living in crown heights shortly after violent events shook the area which shows the American Revolution to wars and police roles in the community. Timestamps are given for the full audio interview with one resident that is referenced throughout this post.

In the interview, a young African man Iyedun Ince said that “you can’t be alone – you had to be in a group and you had to be hard to stay in that group, because if you don’t stay hard, you were soft and you were out – you were once again prey to everybody” (2010). This part of the conversation gives advice to people living in Crown Heights to engage OHMA workshop attendees in critical listening exercises. Throughout this conversation, one can hear the voice of a recording that offers an evidence of what is termed as “personal lived experiences of a public society.” This illustrates a used excerpt where black crown heights resident describes the observations and interactions of police. The residents describe different tactics used by police in various situations in the area as criminal activity reduced. Residents describe how police initially patrolled on barefoot then a shift of patrol using vehicles as criminal activity goes down.

Today such methods would be commonly be coined around “stop and frisk” and “community policing.” In an interview such as this, the narrator provides insight into residents’ perceptions of how quickly or slowly this tactic changed their neighborhood, and their comfort level or discomfort with different tactics.

“Listen to this: Crown Heights Oral History Collection” brings me to an understanding of leisure at the turn of the 20th century and today in the perspective that Rand Mills described in the interview about the places he visited with his family such as the West Indian Carnival on the pas labor days. He recalls playing games as a young man which resulted in playing Dominoes in front of Brooklyn storefronts later in life. This shows that leisure activities are defined by the personal needs and the contributing factors within an environment. For instance, Mills states that his recreation was disturbed by drug pushing and one shootout in the area.

“Listen to this: Crown Heights Oral History Collection” is an interesting story because it develops an obligation to honor the legends in the story, important in changing everyday activities, and the formation of senses of self-culture, and politics in overlooked places.