Pontiac Oral History collection

Johnetta Brazzell was hired as director of community programs at the Oakland University Urban Affairs Center in 1973, under the direction of Wilma Ray-Bledsoe. Established in 1968, the Center’s mission was to develop new curricula dealing with racial issues, to create new programs to support disadvantaged minorities on campus and to strengthen relations with nearby communities, especially Pontiac. Brazzell was promoted to director of the Urban Affairs Center and then became director of career and placement services. She stayed at OU until 1987.

While at OU, Johnetta Brazzell was particularly interested in the history of Black migrations to Michigan from the South in the 1920s-1940s period, and Pontiac had many residents who had been part of those historic population movements. Attracted by manufacturing jobs and the economic growth of the area, those men and women had contributed to the growth of the Black population in Pontiac.

In the early 1970s, historians were increasingly interested in oral histories as a way to record the experiences of ordinary Americans -- factory workers, small business owners, professionals, families, and more. For Brazzell, it was vital to document the lives of Black Pontiac residents, because, as she put it, “oral history is the only account anyone has” of those lives.

She joined the Oral History Association and learned how to produce her own oral histories. She started the Pontiac oral histories project in Fall 1975. Armed with a tape recorder, she went out to interview Black Pontiac residents in their own homes or businesses. She also enlisted students from a class she and Professor DeWitt Dykes were teaching.

In 1976, Johnetta Brazzell obtained a $2,000 grant from the Oakland County American Revolution Bicentennial Commission and $600 from the Pontiac Bicentennial Committee to continue the interviews. She envisioned a larger project that would include other racial and ethnic minorities.

Oakland University fully supported her project. According to OU President Don O’Dowd, “If older people are led to believe that their memories are no more than nostalgic remnants, important pieces of history may never be recorded.”

However, for lack of funding, the interviews ended a couple of years later.

Sources: Tish Myers, "Those Who Were There Write Ethnic History," Detroit News, Nov. 10, 1975, 4C; BOT Minutes, April 28, 1976; Timothy J. McNulty, "Oakland Blacks Put History on Tape," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 15, 1975, 1A.