Dr. Eugenie Blang, Co-Director
Dr. Blang is the Co-director of the NEH sponsored Oral History Research Center at Hampton University. She received a double M.A. degree in History and English-American Literature from the University of Konstanz in Germany, and her Ph.D. in American History at The College of William and Mary. Dr. Blang joined Hampton University as an Assistant Professor of History in August of 2000. Dr. Blang has been instrumental in combining the efforts to record the Schoolhouse history of Smithfield, Virginia, with the goals to collect regional oral histories as stipulated by the NEH grant. She also served as liaison and supervisor in collecting interviews from the historic Aberdeen Gardens community in Hampton, Virginia. Dr. Blang included various Oral History projects in her course requirements, adding to the interviews available in the OHRC database. Currently, Dr. Blang is organizing a writing contest for undergraduate students at Hampton that consists of oral histories and additional research.

Dr. Thomas Burgess, Director
Dr. Burgess served as the principal investigator of an NEH institutional grant to establish the Oral History Research Center in September of 2001. He received a B.A. from Brigham Young University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University. Dr. Burgess joined Hampton University as an Assistant Professor of History in August 2000. From the inception of the research center until May 2005 he served as the Director of the OHRC, and has concerned himself with organizing and supervising oral history projects, maintaining good relations with relevant community organizations, and personally collecting local oral histories. Through his primary academic interest in African History, Dr. Burgess first gained an appreciation for the value of oral histories while conducting doctoral research in Zanzibar and Tanzania.

Alicia Ferguson, Office Coordinator
Alicia is a senior history major from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has worked for this center since her sophomore year at the university. In her sophomore year she worked as a project coordinator for the Smithfield project. In that year she visited Smithfield numerous times in order to meet with residents and members of the Smithfield Schoolhouse committee. She was fortunate enough to meet with over ten people who actually attended school in the Isle of Wright community in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. She was also able to speak to five teachers from the Smithfield schools. During interviews she gained a better understanding of the conditions that the children of Smithfield faced as they tried to obtain education. During these trips she learned about their different lifestyles and social statuses. Some students had chores to complete before going to school, which ranged from feeding chickens to gathering fire wood. The male students had to start a fire once they reached school to not only provide heat but in some cases light. Many of the students walked miles and miles to get to school because there were only a few in the county, unless they were a little more fortunate and their fathers owned an ox/horse cart or tractor.
In her junior year Alicia was hired as Student Coordinator for the OHRC; she was entrusted to coordinate interviews, run the office, train students in proper interviewing procedures, and construct this website. She was also asked to continue her work through her senior year.