While the professional experiences of Calfee teachers can be found through written sources, the impact that they had exists in the memories of their former students. Oral history has the opportunity to change historical understanding, specifically in Black Appalachian communities. Oral history documents social facts through the recording of personal testimony. By comparing the written and oral history records together, historians can get a more complete understanding of the past.
Oral history interviews serve as examples of memories. Interviewees used in this exhibition include former students:
- Kim Edmonds
- Julius Fuller
- Phillip Gravely
- Rozema Payne Grubb
- Troy Hampton
- Reverend Gary Hash
- Dr. Mickey Hickman
- Marva Hickman
- Mattie Holmes
- Arthur Meadows
- Douglas Patterson
- George Penn
- Lane Penn
- Michael Porter
- Joann Releford
- Carolyn Smith
- Richard Smith
- Robert Smith
Calfee Training School was open from 1894 to 1966. In the beginning, Calfee taught first grade through ninth grade. After a fire took down the original building in 1939, the rebuilt school only offered up to the seventh grade. The former students interviewed include the later generation of Calfee students. Teachers, who taught in earlier decades, are not represented in this exhibit.