Oral history

Hidden In Plain Sight

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

The Evangelism and Missions Archives holds over seven hundred processed collections. Some correspondence in our purchased microfilm stretches back into the 1600s, but we also have documents and media from as recent as the current year. The predominant time frame for most of the evangelistic and missionary activity documented in these collections, however, is the 20th century. As the Archives’ name suggests, the topics that hold together all the collections are evangelism and missions.

But to assume that the Archives only reflects these two areas is to miss the depth and breadth that these primary sources offer. Many collections also document social movements, political events, cultural trends, and more in the countries where missionaries and evangelists happened to find themselves. It is still surprising to discover unexpected points of convergence between collections that we archivists never anticipated or noticed until a collection was arranged and described to be fully open to the public. Four examples come to mind:

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Billy Graham Before the Crusades: Stories from Wheaton College Classmates

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Portrait of Billy Graham, c. 1940s. Taken by local Wheaton photographer (and Wheaton College alum) Orlin Kohli. Photo File: Graham, Billy 1940s

Seeking to add a liberal arts education to his Bible College background, Billy Graham enrolled in Wheaton College for the fall of 1940. With previous credits from Florida Bible Institute and Bob Jones University, Graham came to Wheaton as a Sophomore, graduating in the spring of 1943.

In 2010, the staff of the Evangelism & Missions Archives at Wheaton College contacted dozens of Graham’s surviving classmates, asking them to fill out questionnaires about their memories of Wheaton in the 1940s and especially their memories of Billy Graham. The staff also taped and transcribed oral history interviews with more than twenty-eight of these classmates. The interviews are all online in the guide to Collection 74 and can be accessed there. Below are excerpts from the interviews, documents, and questionnaires. The excerpts have been edited for length and clarity.

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“Could You Say More About That?”: Oral History as Process and Document in the Archives

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This month, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections features a post from long-time Wheaton archivist, Paul Ericksen. Since joining the then Billy Graham Center Archives in 1982, Paul has interviewed more than 125 individuals and processed and transcribed dozens of oral history interviews with missionaries, evangelists, and Christian leaders.

Archivists are primarily skilled facilitators as they focus on gathering, arranging and describing primary source materials, and assisting researchers in using their collections. Through archival “finding aids,” archivists help create the intricate web of descriptions, subject headings, and box lists that guide a researcher to identify which collections will contain relevant documents for their study, and in which boxes or folders they will find these documents. While gathering existing historical documents and preparing them for optimal access and use by researchers forms the core of archival work, archivists also collaborate to create historical documents through oral history interviews. An oral record of a person’s life and career, these interviews offer a stimulating window into the unique narratives and experiences of individuals.

Our earliest interviews were captured on reel to reel tapes like those pictured above, using Wollensak portable recorders.

Over the course of the almost fifty years since the Billy Graham Center Archives (now the Evangelism and Missions Archives) was formed in 1975, its archivists have continuously managed an informal oral history program to further enrich its resources on global evangelism. Archivists have interviewed more than 370 individuals, compiling over 1,200 hours of sound recordings on analog reels, cassette tapes, and as digital files. Through further transcription of recordings, researchers also gain the benefit of reading or searching the full-text accounts for information on a topic, person, or location. One of the earliest of these interviews was with Andrew Wyzenbeek about his memories of Billy Sunday meetings at the turn of the century. Most recently, a few current Billy Graham Scholarship recipients were interviewed in the past year about their experience and ministry in several Asian countries.

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