Well visit with a historian and author who will share the history of the ozarks and talk about the stereotypes people face living in the region. Those stereotypes have been developing for a couple of hundred years. They are strong and they stick with us no matter what we do. You go outside this museum and you travel around northwest there are fortune 500 companies, there is a Major Research university, there is all kinds of business and industry and high tech stuff going on out there, but these stereotypes will stick with us. It is part of our story. Later, we will hear the story of the family who was residents who were residents of fayetteville and how they were driven from their home during the civil war. This is a family that lived here and survived the war. The war affected them in many ways and they eventually had to leave the house because of the war. Hour with athe visit to the center for arkansas oral and visual history. It was started as a way to preserve the stories of the people of the state. I traveled on the train, we had free passes on the train and my mother would get on the train and come to little rock, go to union station, and i really like to ride the trolley downtown and go to the stores downtown. My love of the ozark mountains started at that age, six years old to seven years of age, that is when i was first introduced to the university. I look back on it now and realize how little we had. We were all happy. We were asnow hardpressed and depressed as we were. You would read about all these things that are happening and think my goodness, the world is going crazy. What are we going to do . When Martin Luther king was shot. Of course the student body was time. D, it was a bad the center is an oral and visual history institute. 1999, the brainchild of david and barbara prior. When david retired from the u. S. Senate, he had about 220,000 in unspent campaign funds. Barbara hadr ian the idea that they want he and barbara had the idea that theyted arkansans had spent decades traveling the state in campaigning. They wanted to preserve them. With a tape recorder in a desk drawer in the History Department and then the tyson 2ily came along and donated million. That money was used to add the visual element to it. Video equipment and upgrades on audio. Other than have arkansans tell centertories, the pryor wants to be a Research Tool and is a Research Tool for documentary filmmakers, for writers, for researchers. Free, the use of our material, once given the permission to use it, can be used. Facility is very production oriented. We have six edit suites, we have , vault, we kept the bank vault and we felt like we can make this be a wonderfully isolated spot to do our interviews. As you can see, it is a fairly small room, the sound is sculpted in such a way that it enhances the voice. There are basically three cameras and two microphones and an array of lighting, all of this is remotecontrolled, the cameras are remotecontrolled, the audio is controlled by a control room console, what happens is it is just two people in this room. It is very intimate and becomes very comfortable for the interviewee. We go for about one hour and then we take a break and then we have somebody that has been there is anyif questions about spellings or names or places of towns or folks, we get those corrected at the time of the break. Then we come back and go again. After a couple hours we have lunch, we have a great time at ch, we have a little copy backtle coffee and come and spend another three or four hours with the interview then. T is totally isolated we could close these doors in here and someone to be screaming at the top of their lungs and you would not hear them. That makes for a very well controlled environment. During an interview, not only is the interview going on but someone is scanning the family photo albums. A Family Member is sitting with that staffer getting what we call metadata, the when and where of an image. The reason we do that is because we feel like it is the basic template for a documentarian to work with. Itself, the interview and in this case, youre actually interviewing the person that the documentary is about and they are giving you their life story in their own words. It becomes a point of reference. It directs everything else. Website, not only do we provide what we call highlights of the video part of the interview, but we post the entire audio. Audio, putnload the it on a thumb drive or a cd and i have an audiobook of a persons life in their own words. Transcript, the transcript we like to feel like it reflects dialect and speech patterns. With all of those elements in place, we feel like anyone that is interested in not only the person but the material covered over a lifetime. Knock, knock. Se are coming into sarah moore world. This is a critical this is a suite,typical pryor edit it is much cleaner than mine, and she happens to have senator screen. On the this interview was done in their home in fayetteville. That both the senator and his wife put off their interviews for quite some time because they were very pryorconscious about the center being named the pryor center, they did not want to draw attention to them. They thought it needed to be about all the interviews we were doing and not so much about them. We finally convinced them it was time to get them. Part he is talking about why he wanted to create the pryor center. I can play it. Looking at some of the old tapes and radio stuff they saved. Havedo not have visual, we oral and visual, seeing what they have in their library. All that the louisiana stuff was just fascinating to me. Seeing what they did, they have kept their history. When you keep your history, you keep your pride and you keep yourself and your values. That is one thing that encouraged us to branch out and see if we could not start saving some of that history right here in arkansas. Our only problem is we cannot get fast enough to do it. ,verybody has a history everybody has a story to tell. As far as favorite interviews a senator and david pryor were best friends. They never had an argument between them. We sat down with senator bumpers before he started having any kind of dementia. It was probably the last chance to get him while he still had a clear head. Ourhen we were young, father was on the lookout, always, for things he could teach us that would be a lifetime experience. We all adored our father so much. I do not know why not mother. Our father was our tutor, he was thedisciplinarian, he was to be schooledus and not just education. He wanted us to be schooled in politics. Who thed us to know first president of the United States was, who the present president was and a lot of those in between. And then of course his wife, started an Immunization Program that started in arkansas. Carter, help of rosalyn became a National Effort under the carter administration. Me not tosident tells make a move on immunization until i talk to you. I went down and had a conversation with him about adopting this national money. Rosalyn carter and i went to every state that had entry laws in place. We lobbied every legislature and governor and got all 50 states to adopt the laws. We appeared before joint sessions and everything else. All the states now have a mandate that all School Centers have to be fully immunized. Brighters were remarkable men. Lee williams is an example of someone who did not grow up in arkansas. He worked for senator fulbright so his ties to arkansas became greatly amplified. Intricate intoy the politics of arkansas, the education in arkansas, National Policy that was being driven by senator fulbright. Had taken fulbright the position that force is not going to cause people to love each other, or to tolerate each other. What is going to get them to ,hat point is education education, and superior education. What needs to be done is that the black schools all to be equal, not just separate, but equal, and they are not. Youre not going to be able to oute this issue and come with any end you would be happy with. David lambert ended up being on the board of the world food organization. Their effort was to make sure children do not starve to death. Are exalted efforts from folks that are arkansasbased. Jones was the first africanamerican female to graduate from the university of arkansas medical school. A wonderful person. Was also great. The overriding thing about these interviews is they believe in doing the right thing. In the american way. Thatu wonder why is it poor, less welleducated children get into more trouble . It is because of education. We know how to do something about this. It is just that we have not had the will to get it done. What good is reading, writing, and arithmetic if you do not teach them to be physically, emotionally, and psychologically fit . Have concentrated so much on the material and the gathering and creating an archive that we have not done much, and really have not been aspared to do much as far making it known. With the vault, we intend to open that up to the public, where someone can bring in their grandfather or grandmother and interview them and walk out with , aigh definition recording video of that interview. I think that once the vault is open and once we open the pryor center to the public, at least locally and statewide, we will start getting some buzz about what we do. All weekend long, American History tv is joining our Cox CommunicationsCable Partners to showcase the history of fayetteville, arkansas. To learn more about the cities on our current tour, visit cspan. Org citiestour. We continue our look at the history of fayetteville. Ian or ozarker is someone from the ozarks. When youre dealing with identity, certainly a person who is a native of the region is more likely to identify themselves as an ozarker or an ozarkian. Covers most ofon the southern half of missouri, much of northwestern arkansas, northeastern oklahoma, and the physical ozarks region goes into the tip of southeastern kansas. It covers parts of four different states. Does notral ozarks necessarily correspond with the physical ozarks. There are people who live in the physical ozarks who would not identify themselves as an ozarker. There are people who live outside the physical ozarks who would. The trilogy that im working on is called a history of the ozarks. It is published by the university of Illinois Press and the first volume comes out this year, it is called the old ozarks. It is a history of the ozarks before the civil war. There a brief chapter on prehistory. I am not an anthropologist so that is why it is a brief chapter on prehistory. It looks at native American Life in the historical period in the ozarks. Of thely settlement first europeans who came into , whoegion who were french came down the Mississippi Valley and spread westward into the and then ofozarks course the thousands of u. S. Citizens who poured across the mississippi beginning in the 1790s and continuing on into the early 1800s. We are in the Shiloh Museum of ozark history in springdale, arkansas. It is the premier museum on the history of the ozarks from prehistoric days to the 21st century. Ozarks is a cobbled together term in the Mississippi Valley. It has french and American Indian roots and has been anglicized, it comes from the old french practice at Arkansas Post on the mississippi river, which is a different region then we are in right now, it is at the delta, all the way across the state. Post wouldrs at the often sign off their letters, aux arkansas. Eventually they shortened that arks and when the british and u. S. Born citizens came to the region they anglicized the spelling to ozarks. It dates back to that aux. Itself is a Highland Region in the middle of the north american continent, it is the only real Highland Region i should say, the ozarks, in combination with the mountains, which are in oklahoma and arkansas on the south side those Arkansas River, two, the ozarks and the watcher up the only Highland Region between the Rocky Mountains and the appalachian mountains. You get a lot of physical diversity within this highland , the aream prairies that springdale, arkansas, fayetteville, arkansas where we are today is a prairie type area. ,f you go 15 miles to the south youre in a more mountainous area. There are a lot of subregions within the ozarks like the Boston Mountains south of here, lots of other little subregions the ozarks region a lot of diversity, physically speaking. Ofinterest in the history the ozarks dates back to my undergraduate days. I went to school on the edge of the ozarks. At that time it was a college called Arkansas College, today it is called lion college. I had grown up in the ozarks. I did not know it. Identity is a funny thing. When i grew up, i associated with the ozarks with places that advertise themselves, that branded themselves part of the ozarks. We watched tv channels in springfield, missouri, and they were talking about the ozarks in springfield, missouri. I thought that is where the ozarks must have been. I remember i was an undergrad and i was in the library at the college and i came across this book called the ozarks land and geographer. By a i opened it up and there is a map of the ozarks, you have the borders around the ozarks and i discovered i am from the ozarks, i grew up in the ozarks. I knew i grew up in the hills, we were hill people, but i never really associated myself with this label, the ozarks. I got really interested from that point, that is been almost 30 years ago. I have devoted my life to studying the history and culture of the ozarks and to try to define what that means and trying to sort out myth and reality in the story of the ozarks. Most of the 19th century settlers and especially the precivil war settlers in the orrks came from appalachia at least the greater upland from theey came piedmont of North Carolina to middle tennessee, from Eastern Kentucky and southwestern virginia and what is now West Virginia and northern alabama and northern georgia, the greater upland south area. Really supplied the majority of settlers here. You transmit those cultural practices and religious practices and everything is kind of bundled up in a culture gets transmitted from places like east tennessee and Eastern Kentucky to the ozarks. We share a lot in common with that region. The culture of the region has been defined largely by people of Northern European descent who were protestant, and not just protestant but evangelical protestant, methodist, baptist especially, who were for the most part rural with at least a few small towns and small cities in the 19th century and who ,ransmitted that culture whatever you want to call that, american kindan of culture that gets created in appalachia and in middle tennessee and in places like and from the scots irish people of english dissent, people of german descent, a handful of scandinavians thrown in there with cherokees and other native american groups. Slaves. Free blacks. All of those people create this of freeouth culture range hurting of cattle and hogs and hunting and trapping as a crucial element of life along with their religious practices that they bring with them and their music, which tends to be scottish and irish with german influences and some african influences. All of that gets transmitted in theat hearth area upland south east of the mississippi, over to the ozarks. Get is the culture that you and the culture people have come to associate with the ozarks, just in the National Consciousness is the same filter that carries out corn whiskey making traditions and moon shining. That kind of stuff. It is a culture that could be violent. It could be very closed minded. Alsos a culture that required a certain hardness and survives to people who in a region like the ozarks, where much of it was a rough and unrewarding place. Then you did have these kind of oases like new york like north arkansas thrown in there. One of the things that has , at least inzarks the late 20th century and into the 21st century, is that the region did stay somewhat homogenous into the late 20th century. The region was one of the wildest places, most extensive places in america. It was the place that was still heavily evangelical protestant and religious orientation and part of that was, part of that of, but a not a lack shortage of Economic Opportunity in much of the ozarks. You do not get a lot of people moving into the ozarks, there is not a lot of dynamic social and cultural stuff going on because theres not a lot of dynamic economic stuff going on. Sameeople tend to stay the generation after generation. Im not saying they are not ernizing and they are not they are driving model ts and listening to radios, but ethnically and religiously and culturally there is this tendency to stay the same over generations. By the time you get into the later half of the 20th century, you have the preservation of oldtimey music. The ozarks becomes popular for folkies in the 60s and 70s. There are folk festivals everywhere. It takes on that image of a place that time forgot. Even then, you were just talking ozarks,ckets of the because you at other places like northwest arkansas that were quickly modernizing. Then in the last couple of decades of the 20th century and certainly into the 21st century, demographics have changed. There has been a tremendous migration of people who do not come from that Northern European , protestant heritage, whether y are of hispanic descent in northwest arkansas, you have a large percentage of people of hispanic descent. You have people from africa and , some ofare coming in them become farmers, chicken farmers in northwest arkansas and southwest missouri. Influx of people who have certainly changed the demographics of the region over the last gener