Created by Adam Waisanen. This video is a digital project completed as part of Professor Lilia Fernandez's History 4015: Research in Modern U.S. History course at Ohio State University in the spring of 2015.

A surprising array of critics from both the political left and right agree that public housing as built has next to no redeeming features. These places are written off as havens of crime and poverty. But this is false. Like communities across the United States, the history of Columbus, Ohio’s first and all-black public housing development Poindexter Village reveals a strikingly different story. On the city’s Near East Side, African-Americans formed a neighborhood in the face of segregation, built housing, created a vibrant and supportive community, and even challenged the popular notion of historic preservation.

In the course of the twentieth century hundreds of thousands of American children spent part of their childhood in orphanages or children’s homes across the country. Modern understandings of life in such institutions are typically negative, associating orphanage life with the hardships encountered by fictional characters such as Oliver Twist and Orphan Annie. Surely, growing up outside the family was associated with trauma for many children, but the reality of orphanage life was often more complex. Based on 200 oral history interviews, this talk explores the experiences of more than 200 individuals who grew up in Ohio orphanages between 1920 and 1995. How do these former orphanage children recall their childhood? What is it like to come of age in an institution? Surprisingly, many of these individuals had very fond memories of their early lives, sometimes claiming that their childhoods had been close to ideal. Why did they think so? And what can we learn from their experiences that might influence present-day child welfare policies?

A textual version of this video is available here.

Presented by Prof. Valentine Moghadam, International Affairs and Sociology, Northeastern University at the Center for Historical Research in the Dept. of History at Ohio State University on Feb. 9, 2018.