From the Archives – Columbia Center for Oral History

A medley of voices from the archives of the Columbia Center for Oral History including segments from interviews with Bella Abzug, Gene Kelly, Learned Hand, Alice Paul, Bennet Cerf, Omar Bradley, Edward Koch, and Norman Thomas.

A medley of voices from the archives of the Columbia Center for Oral History including segments from interviews with Hubert H. Humphrey, James Cagney, Joan Ganz Cooney, Ralph Flanders, and Kitty Carlisle Hart.

American politician Abraham A. Ribicoff, in this 1993 interview, describes the events leading up to his famous impromptu speech at the 1968 Democratic National Convention condemning police assaults on anti-war protesters outside the convention center and convention delegates’ responses to it.

Aldino Feliciani describes his last meeting with anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

Former Black Panther leader Bobby Bowen, in a 1984 interview, recalls the first time he read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and explains the profound impact the book had upon him and others of his generation.

Fred Astaire, in this 1971 interview, recalls the making of the iconic scene in the film “Royal Wedding” in which he danced on the ceiling.

Segments from the first interviews undertaken by the Columbia Center for Oral History by founder Allen Nevins in 1949.

South African anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman describes her first meeting with Nelson Mandela while he was a prisoner on Robben Island in this 1984 interview.

Actress Judith Anderson, interviewed in 1971 for an oral history project on the Hollywood film industry, recalls her misadventures shooting the film, “A Man Called Horse.”

Kenneth Lipper, former New York City Deputy Mayor, explained how an incident in a movie theater, not only illustrated Mayor Edward I. Koch’s personal style but also shed light on his tremendous success as a New York City politician. Interview Session: 1992

In a 1985 interview Mario Savio, American political activist and leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, recalls the Freedom Summer of 1964 and his experience during the campaign to register black voters in rural Mississippi.

American Psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner recalls an evening in 1938 when Nazi soldiers and sympathizers marched into Vienna.

In 1971 Arkansas Governor Orvil Faubus defended his record on Civil Rights and recounted a private meeting he had with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the midst of Little Rock school desegregation in 1957.

Actress Nita Naldi, interviewed in 1959 for a project on the American Popular Arts, describes how she won the lead role in the iconic film “Blood and Sand.”

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in this 1977 interview conducted by Ed Edwin, recounts how he first learned of his appointment to the Supreme Court.

Joan Franklin interviews American poet, writer, critic and satirist Dorothy Parker in 1955 for the Popular Arts Project. In this excerpt Parker explained her move to Hollywood in the early 1930s and discussed the attraction to writing for film.

Joseph O'Neill, a medical student when AIDS first appeared in San Francisco in the early 1980s, became one of the nation’s first doctors to specialize in AIDS treatment. In this excerpt from his 1995 interview, O’Neill recalls the case that changed his life.