RIAMCO

Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online

For Participating Institutions

Family in the Fifties: Hope, Fear, and Rock 'N Roll (Mss. Gr. 116)

University of Rhode Island, University Archives and Special Collections

15 Lippitt Road
Kingston, RI 02881-2011
Tel: 401-874-4632

email: archives@etal.uri.edu

Scope & content

Under the supervision of Ms. Wood, librarian at South Kingstown High School, and English teacher Judi Scott, fifteen students from a tenth grade English class at the high school conducted interviews with twenty-four Rhode Island residents who had lived through the decade of the 1950s as teenagers or young adults. The interview subjects were asked to recall their experiences in the 1950s and to recount the impact on them and their families of such topics as the Cold War, McCarthyism, racism, the birth of rock and roll, and the advent of television.

The records include twenty-nine cassette tape recordings of the interviews, transcripts of the interviews, indexes for each interview keyed to the frame counter of a tape recorder, signed release forms, "information forms" completed by each of the interview subjects, and papers or "stories" done by each of the students and based on the interviews.