An oral history project aims to preserve Mossville

“Sometimes they’re just small,” says Jennifer Abraham Cramer, director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. “But this one is going to be huge.”

Cramer is describing the oral history that will be included in the Mossville History Project. Sponsored by the Imperial Calcasieu Museum in Lake Charles, La., and funded by the chemical maker Sasol, the project aims to interview at least 75 elder residents of Mossville to capture their memories of the town, one of the oldest black communities in the U.S., before it disappears. With 47 residents interviewed to date, time is of the essence, Cramer says.

The center has compiled over 70 hours of recorded interviews in a year’s time, says Cramer. Most individual oral history projects generate about 15 hours of interviews in a year. The Mossville project also involves an extraordinary amount of editing, with the unique feature of interviewee involvement in the editing process. And although most community oral history projects take four years to complete, generally involving an average of 25 interviewees, Cramer says the Williams center is trying to finish Mossville in two years, given the age and dispersion of the interview pool.

Mossville, founded by freed slaves beginning in the 1790s, has experienced an exodus over the past 18 years after groundwater contamination led to a voluntary property buyout in two subdivisions. A new buyout program connected to a huge nearby expansion by Sasol has seen more than half the town’s remaining residents move out.

Mossville is already unrecognizable compared with the self-sufficient, unincorporated agricultural town that weathered the Jim Crow era and a succession of industrial expansions. Susan Reed, director of the Imperial Calcasieu Museum, says she is determined to have its story told by the people who remember it best.

“One of my missions is to preserve the history and unique culture of the area,” Reed says. She describes meeting Michael Hayes, Sasol’s community liaison, shortly after the company launched its buyout. “I told him I was wondering if he had any thoughts on what to do to preserve the history of Mossville. He asked me what I would do, and I told him I would contact the Williams Center to do a comprehensive oral history and then contract with a local writer to do a written history. He said, ‘Why don’t you write up a proposal.’ ”

Reed did so, and Sasol came back with a check for $270,000 to underwrite the project.

Cramer describes a thorough process in which her staff does an average of 10 hours of research per interviewee. The interviews are conducted by a team including an interviewer and audio engineer. About 30 hours are spent editing each interview. The recording is then sent back to the interviewee for approval, which could result in further editing before the recording is archived.

Finding people to interview, and making them comfortable with the process, is also labor-intensive. Cramer’s group hosts meetings at the local Rigmaiden Recreation Center at which it explains the project and signs up residents for interviews.

There is also legwork involved. Cramer says her staff is beginning to range out to nearby towns and as far as Houston to connect with people who have left Mossville in recent years. Earlier this month, she says, a long-standing holdout agreed to be interviewed.

Reed also convened a steering committee composed of Mossville residents, some of whom already have been interviewed, to identify people who might participate and convince them to tell their stories.

One committee member, Vera Payne, a lifelong resident of the town who sold her home to Sasol and moved to nearby Moss Bluff, says older people are often hesitant.

“That is for any number of reasons,” Payne says, noting that the shock of relocating or seeing so many neighbors leave town makes some potential interviewees leery of the project. Most of the hesitation, however, stems from lack of familiarity with the process or uncertainty regarding what they might add. “But once you get people started with the interview process,” she says, “they begin to remember things.”

When confronting residents who refuse to participate, Payne tells them what made her decide to sit for an interview with Cramer and to get involved on the steering committee. “If we don’t tell our story,” she says, “no one will tell it for us.”