REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
This morning, in the historic church that nurtured the young Martin Luther King, Jr., the current pastor preached about Barack Obama and the people who came before.
Senior Pastor RAPHAEL G. WARNOCK (Ebenezer Baptist Church): He sits on the knees and stands on the shoulders of Medgar Evers who died in his driveway fighting for freedom. He sits on the knees and stands on the shoulders of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said I may not get there with you, but we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So keep on moving...
ROBERTS: Senior Pastor Raphael G. Warnock speaking this morning at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has put out a call for sermons like this one. It's asking churches, synagogues and mosques nationwide to send in recordings of speeches that mark Obama's inauguration. Peggy Bulger is the director of the American Folklife Center.
Ms. PEGGY BULGER (Director, American Folklife Center): We expect that a lot of these speeches and sermons coming in will have the traditional speech patterns and the reactions from the congregation or the audience that will serve to be a piece of history and a piece of folk art, if you will.
ROBERTS: How often does the Folklife Center issued this kind of a call?
Ms. BULGER: Well, actually, not that often, but we do try to respond to extraordinary events in history by getting the voices of ordinary Americans, the ones who perhaps might be overlooked by major media outlets.
So on the day after Pearl Harbor, which would have been December the 8th, 1941, the head of the Folklife Archive was Alan Lomax, and he realized that this was a moment that wouldn't happen, again. It was an extraordinary time. And he sent out a telegram, which was the best way of getting a hold of people quickly at the time, he sent out a telegram to 12 folklorists around the country, including his father and said, stop what you're doing and if you would, please collect man-on-the-street interviews about how people feel about Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war.
ROBERTS: I want to play one of those. This was recorded by Alan Lomax' father, John Lomax. And we're going to hear from Edward Crain(ph) of Dallas, Texas.
Mr. EDWARD CRAIN: Frankly, my view is, and I include the Hun or the Germans, so-called, in what I have to say about the Japanese, that is we ought to exterminate both of them. There is no place for either of those races in the world today.
Ms. BULGER: It's kind of astounding to listen to what people on the street were feeling, the absolute fury and the fact that that kind of speech, which we would consider total hate speech, would have been acceptable. It's kind of astounding, and I think that, in history, if we don't get these voices, then we don't get the full picture of how people really responded and why history played out the way it did.
ROBERTS: After Pearl Harbor, was it the next time you issued this sort of call to folklorists was 9/11?
Ms. BULGER: Luckily, we had a listserv of 400 folklorists around the country, and we sent out on the listserv a call saying again, stop what you're doing where you are and interview people about what they're feeling.
ROBERTS: We're going to listen to one. Tell us what we're about to hear.
Ms. BULGER: Well, this is Janet Freeman(ph), and she was in Iowa City, a woman at home who turned on the television. And we all had coping mechanisms, and this is how she coped.
Ms. JANET FREEMAN: I was in my bare feet and my pajamas at that time. And what I did was start cleaning my kitchen. I took the screens down off the windows, washed the windows, washed the window sills, cleaned out the sink, cleaned out the cupboard, took everything out of the cupboard under the sink, scrubbed the surface of the stove, removed everything from the oven and cleaned out the oven.
About three o'clock in the afternoon, I realized that my pajamas were filthy. My hands were all cut up. My fingernails were quite vile, but my kitchen was cleaner than it had been in a long time. I was watching CNN that whole time.
ROBERTS: Why did the Folklife Center decide that the inauguration of Barack Obama rose to the level of historic events like Pearl Harbor or September 11th?
Ms. BULGER: The American people have elected an African-American president which is kind of astounding when you look back even 30 years ago where we were. So we thought this would be a time, a much happier time, to collect people's reactions than, of course, 9/11 and the day after Pearl Harbor. But that this is a time when all people will have an opinion and all people can kind of take pride in the fact that in some way, we've reached a milestone in how we think of ourselves as Americans.
ROBERTS: Have you gotten any submissions yet?
Ms. BULGER: Yes, and we were so surprised. Our very first submission has come in, and it's from a mosque in Montana. Who knew?
ROBERTS: Peggy Bulger directs the American Folklife Center. Thank you so much.
Ms. BULGER: Well, thank you.
ROBERTS: The American Folklife Center's goal is to create an oral history. We're trying to do something similar with a high-tech twist. You can share your story. Find out how on our Web site, npr.org/inaugurationreport.