Jalen Porter

Oral History Interview with Jennifer Stapleton by Jalen Porter

Student’s Reflection: I learned that conducting an interview can be difficult at some points, but if you do it early enough, it releases a lot of stress. The only thing that I find challenging is recording the interview. StoryCorps recording feature is only available on mobile. I found out this an hour before the interview. I didn’t want to be rude and make her do Zoom last minute, so I could get a voice recording. I had to hurry up and get one of my tablets to record it. The most enjoyable aspect was getting to know the interviewee. Jennifer was nice and patient with me. I teared up listening to her talk about her grandmother’s story. I was so into the story that I didn’t realize that we were running out of time for more questions.b. I’ve done a research project about the KKK before. I thought I knew some deep information about them. When I was listening to Jennifer’s grandma’s story, I learned that when the KKK was attacking her family’s home, they were singing hymns and preaching like they were in church. I’ve never heard of the KKK doing that. It makes them 10x scarier to me. To think that they thought they were doing the Lord’s work by terrorizing and murdering innocent black and white people is scary to me.c. Conducting an oral history interview felt very nerve-wrecking. Publics peaking terrorizes me. Even though I wasn’t the one to tell a story, I was still nervous about pushing the subject forward and the time running out. On the other hand, it was very interesting listening about her grandma’s story.That’s why I was silent the whole time. I was so drawn into the story.

StoryCorps URL: https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/fys-interview-about-the-stories-of-the-past-with-jennifer-stapleton-by-jalen-porter/