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A project funded by the EVPL Foundation
Oral histories, shared stories, and memories of lived experiences are too often lost as people and time pass, yet humanity learns from looking back and reflecting on our history.
The Evansville Oral History Archives, a project funded by the EVPL Foundation, captures stories that preserve and share the history of Evansville and our region. The Oral History Archives includes interviews with current and past residents with unique and first-hand accounts of experiences, as well as conversations with current and former leaders and journalists in our community.
Over time, these Archives will grow to include hundreds of categorized and searchable hours of oral histories that will be added to EVPL’s Digital Archive, which already hosts more than 76,000 images of photographs, postcards, cartoons, and documents representing people, places, and things in and around our community. This project adds oral histories to that collection, which has been a goal since its inception. As part of EVPL’s Digital Archive, the project will also be included in the Indiana State Library’s Indiana Memory collection and will feed into the Digital Public Library of America national collection.
The project was initiated by local journalist, documentarian, and educator Joe Atkinson, who filmed and edited more than 240 hours of interviews that led to this series.
Oral Histories Preserved
From 2014 – 2023, Atkinson produced a series of documentaries for WNIN Tri-State Public Media; these features included interviews and first-hand accounts of historic tri-state events and time periods, including various Top 9 series and Out & About.
“As I was finishing Out & About, I realized that finishing the project meant adding the hard drive to the shelf alongside the drives that held previous documentary projects and hundreds of hours of unedited interviews,” Atkinson said. “Looking at that shelf–and the Post-It notes attached to each drive that marked which project was stored on it–got me thinking: There’s a LOT of Evansville history on these hard drives. There were interviews with people who had survived the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, which was, at the time, the worst tornado on record. There were interviews with people who had lived through the 1937 flood; people who had worked in the factories and in the shipyard during World War II; people who had rushed to the site of the 1977 UE Basketball Team’s plane crash to try to help the victims, and parents who had lost their sons that night.”
“I wanted their stories to live somewhere that people could hear them, and where their descendants or future historians, researchers, documentary filmmakers could access them. It seemed ridiculous that all those stories were sitting on hard drives in my basement.”
In 2024, Atkinson approached EVPL about partnering to preserve these recorded memories and testimonies and to make the interviews available to and searchable by the public. The EVPL Foundation enthusiastically sponsored the project, and thus the Oral History Archives project began.
“Going through all the interviews, captioning them, and removing the mistakes and the side conversations is a process. That’s why the project will be rolling out over the next couple of years, instead of all at once,” Atkinson said. “But the goal is that when we’re finished, all of these great, human stories about the history of our city will be accessible to everyone.”
Archive Details
Beginning in June 2026, the Evansville Oral History Archives will release a monthly series of themed interviews. Many of these releases will be tied to dates of significant events in local, national, or world history.
June 2026 | Weather Disasters
The date “June 8” stands out in the minds of long-time Evansville residents, as historical storms hit the city on this date in 1982 and 1995. But local weather disasters have arrived in all seasons. Learn more from those who experienced, warned, and/or reported on these historic weather events.
July 2026 | Historical Events
Our community has experienced many triumphs and tragedies. Which ones are considered the most significant? Hear interviews of those who lived through them.
August 2026 | Historic Buildings
Which buildings most define Evansville’s past? And are any of them still standing today? Find out which community landmarks have most contributed to how our city came to be.
New releases and additions to the Oral History Archives will be announced each month via EVPL’s social media and in our monthly e-newsletter.
