The Saving the Blennerhasset oral history collection documents the history of a tenant-owned co-op located at 507 West 111th Street in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City. 

The interviews have a special focus on two episodes in the building's history. The first is when tenants worked in the late 1960s to fight a city-approved redevelopment plan, backed by Columbia University and others, to level their block to build an old-age home. Narrators describe the social and legal efforts to hold back powerful interests whose urban redevelopment plans stood to displace residents. The second episode is when tenants banded together in 1979 to form a co-op and purchase the building from their landlord before it was sold to an unknown outside purchaser. Narrators discuss the legal process of forming a co-op, financial challenges, and social dynamics within the building. Narrators also describe the neighborhood of Morningside Heights from the 1960s to 2016. 

Issues addressed include economic and cultural demographics of the area over the decades; crime in the 1960s-1970s; community organizations and activism; and the gentrification of the neighborhood of the 2010s. 

The collection also addresses life in the building more generally, as narrators recall personalities in the building, maintaining the building, childhood activities on the block, and the camaraderie and challenges of apartment living.

Oral history interview with Don Colflesh, 2016

In this clip, Mr. Chester describes how he came to draw Bungleton Green, noting that he too was green to drawing a strip that was both humorous and political.  Read more about Mr. Chester and the Chicago Defender on the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library's news site: 

See other interviews included in the Black Journalists oral history collection, 1971-1972: https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/11561600.

Oral history interview excerpt with Chester Commodore, 1972

Renown psychoanalyst Margaret Morgan Lawrence (b. 1914 - d. 2019) was interviewed in 1991 by the Columbia Center for Oral History as part of the Northside Center for Child Development project. Dr. Lawrence was a student of Dr.Benjamin Spock and did pioneering work with children and young families in Harlem. 

This clip is part of a longer interview available on-site in Columbia University Libraries' Oral History Archives at Columbia in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Photo via National Institutes of Health (NIH) photo archives. - https://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_195.html

Oral history interview with Margaret Morgan Lawrence, 1991

Bobby Bowen was a leader of The Black Panther Party in Richmond, CA. In this excerpt from a 1984 interview with Rob Grele, he discusses what it was like to read Malcolm X's autobiography and  coming to consciousness after a lifetime of mis-education about Black people in America.

Citation: 
Reminiscences of Robert Bowen : oral history, 1984.
Student movements of the 1960s project. 
https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/4072623

From the Archives

Bobby Bowen on reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Addicts Who Survived Oral History Collection contains a myriad of perspectives, including those of narcotic addicts and dealers, doctors specializing in addiction treatment, police officers and detectives specializing in drug-related crime, and founders of various narcotic treatment programs in twentieth century New York City.

Read more on the OHAC/RBML website: "Newly available collection on addiction in the 1970s & 1980s," https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/rbml/

Oral history interview with Otha Williams, 1980

Oral history interview with Herbert Huncke, 1980

The Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC), founded in 1948, is credited with launching the establishment of oral history archives internationally. At over 10,000 interviews, the OHAC is one of the largest oral history collections in the United States. Housed at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library in Butler Library, Oral History Archives at Columbia are open to all

Oral History Archives at Columbia

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