Did They Say What They Thought? Gender, Sound, and Oral History in a Wisconsin Women's Radio Program

摘要

The physical remnants of long-lost radio programs are not the only sounds that broadcast historians must unearth to unravel the mysteries of radio production and reception. In this essay, I examine the audio tapes of a 1980 oral history interview of Isabel Baumann, a Wisconsin farm wife, rural activist, and radio personality who appeared for twenty years on a monthly local radio show called The We Say What We Think Club. I tell the story of how these recordings came to be archived at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the unique institutional context that preserved Baumann's voice for future generations. The tapes of Baumann's recollections of her farm life and radio career offer us not only one of the few examples of the sound of Baumann's voice, but gives insight into how the very process of making oral histories helped her (and ultimately, us) understand the power of her radio work. Oral histories offer a space for women, so often marginalized in the industry and in historical narratives, to say what they think. Most importantly, the audio recovered from these academic projects allow historians to record with more fidelity what these women thought.