Resilient Houston: Documenting Hurricane Harvey, an initiative of the University of Houston (UH) Center for Public History, has created a substantial archive of oral histories and supporting materials to tell the story of the storm and the city’s response. The interviews conducted by faculty and public history students represent three primary groups – survivors, responders, and volunteers – whose stories are told through this website. They are mapped by location and can be searched by keywords, communities, and specific topics.
Oral history has a long and successful tradition of documenting the human and community experience of signal events like Hurricane Harvey. To date and moving forward, Resilient Houston: Documenting Hurricane Harvey has and will continue to reach a broad audience of community members and policymakers through public events, this website, and a rich oral history archive open to the public and researchers alike.
We hope that you will find meaning in these stories that highlight individuals devastated but still hopeful after the flood, those who worked to rescue others no matter who they may be, and the volunteers who did everything from muck out houses to cook meals and offer their homes as shelter. These are the stories that demonstrated Houston’s resilience.
The project is supported by grants from the Center for History and Culture of Southeast Texas and the Upper Gulf Coast at Lamar University, Humanities Texas, Texas Jewish Historical Society, the Southern Jewish Historical Society, and the Summerlee Foundation. The work of talented UH students was supported by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Dean’s Office and four undergraduate research programs funded by the Provost’s Office: The Cougar Initiative to Engage (CITE) program, The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Provost’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship, and Research for Aspiring Coogs in the Humanities Program.