Diane Kiesel - She Can Bring Us Home: Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer

Between 1977 and 1981 the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, recorded the memories of certain African American women, age seventy and older, which became known as the Black Women Oral History Project. Among the subjects was Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, who was interviewed at her home on December 28 and 31, 1979, by Merze Tate, a historian at Howard University. It was the most detailed interview she ever gave. The original tape is on file at Radcliffe, and copies of the official transcript of that interview are available at major research libraries around the country. The interviews were also published in book form in 1991.

I interviewed Ruth Edmonds Hill on August 2, 2011, who as Oral History coordinator for the library, supervised the Black Women Oral History Project. Ms. Hill said that each subject was given the opportunity once the interview was completed to review a transcript and make editorial changes. Unfortunately Dorothy was gravely ill when she granted the interview, and died before she was able to edit it. Therefore, the review and editing fell to her son, Dr. Claude Thurston Ferebee II, who was suffering from cancer and died a year after his mothers death, and to Dorothys daughter-in-law, Carol Ferebee. In addition, Dr. Tate did her own editing and revising of those portions of the interview she thought were inaccurate or needed further clarification. I have listened to the tape and reviewed the edited transcript. The taped interview is rambling and repetitive. At times, Dorothy seemed confused about events in her life. Certain words and phrases have been changed in the official transcript, which is tighter and easier to understand than the original interview. The Schlesinger Library considers the edited transcript to be the official interview, and therefore, when I quote Dorothy from this interview, I am quoting from the official transcript. In my opinion the essential meaning of what she said was not altered by the editing process. But where there seems to be a problem with either Dorothys memory or the editing, I have pointed it out.

The terminology for African Americans has changed repeatedly with the times. Words such as colored and Negro, now archaic, were once widely in use and are used in this book when appropriate for the narrative. Unfortunately, like all African Americans, Dorothy and her contemporaries were also subjected to vile racial epithets. Where necessary for historical accuracy, those words are also used.