Video project shines light on Dothan’s history

Dr. Marty Olliff of Troy University’s Dothan campus and Mit Kirkland of the Wiregrass Black History Channel have partnered to complete a nine-person interview project. 

Olliff, director of the Wiregrass Archives, and Kirkland, creator of the Wiregrass Black History Channel, wanted to collaborate to inform and preserve Dothan’s local history.  

The video project consisted of ten total videos, nine individual interviews and one large-group discussion. The project focused on the personal stories of the interviewees who were Dothan, Alabama, residents in the Southside neighborhood during the era of desegregation.

“The Wiregrass Black History project was a happy coincidence among different streams of thought, and we were able to bring them together in this project,” Olliff said. “To me, this is an obvious steppingstone to that quest of helping to develop collections in the African American community in the Wiregrass. 

“This project really is a blessing, and I'm just really pleased with the way it has come together and the interest that it’s generated.” 

This project, funded by the Society of American Archivists Foundation, was one of eight projects to be funded nationally.  

Interview topics ranged from their childhoods, to living conditions, to personal achievements and places of entertainment.  

The people interviewed recalled their experience living through the demolishing of their neighborhood due to an urban renewal project.  

“Listening to people talking about their lives reminds us that people have the right to full humanity,” Olliff said. “If you listen to people who have been systematically denied their full humanity, it should inspire us to live up to the ideals we say we have and create a society that encourages and provides people’s full humanity.” 

The cross-reference project with Olliff and Kirkland also included a collection of 178 photographs in the Wiregrass Archives of the Southside neighborhood from 1958 prior to the urbanization project.  

Olliff emphasized the significance of shining a light on this era of Dothan.  

“When a person rearranges the past and creates a myth of current identity from the past out of good faith, they are deluding themselves,” Olliff said. “When you create a myth of the past in bad faith, you’re doing something wicked.  

“It has terrible ramifications for a society. The danger of not knowing history is that it’s entirely possible for a society’s base instinct to kick back in when they experience the same fear that previous people experienced.” 

Olliff also expressed why it’s important to look back and remember history as it happened.  

“History does not tell us the limits of what we can do,” Olliff said. “History shows us that we’re part of a continuum of humanity, that in many ways has faced a lot of the same things we believe we faced or will face in the future. 

“Their solutions might be models, might be inspirations or might be cautionary tales such as, ‘don't do it this way.’ That's the entire point of archival historical research – it’s to inspire and provide people with information that they didn’t have before.”  

While the individual interviews provided a lot of backstory about the Southside neighborhood, the group discussion opened even more doors to discussion topics.  

“They started chiming in, feeding off of each other and getting wound up, so it was hard to get them to settle down so we could actually do one interview at a time,” Olliff said. “This happens when you do oral history interviews.  

“People begin to remember, get fired up and then become more comfortable with it.”  

Olliff expressed his gratitude for everyone’s response to the project and what he hopes it does for the community.  

“I'm a little jaded about it, but I'm very happy that people are interested in this project,” Olliff said. “I hope it really works for people to connect to either their own history or to history that occurred nearby them that they weren’t really aware of before.” 

All project videos and interviews are available on the project website at spectrum.troy.edu/wbhp.  

All video clips are also available on the Wiregrass Black History Channel YouTube page and Wiregrass Archives YouTube channel.