Above: Material from the Animal Rights and Animal Welfare Archive at North Carolina State University Libraries

Background

Between 1999 and 2004, Carmen Lee (of the Tiny Beam Fund) engaged a team (including Martin Rowe, the Executive Director of the CAF) to conduct interviews with 14 animal advocates, active from the 1950s. This was the Recording Animal Advocacy Oral History Project (RAA OHP). The original audiotapes and transcripts of these interviews are stored at Columbia University’s Oral History Archives in New York City. However, the audio recordings and transcripts are available online. In a parallel development, Kim Stallwood and Jill Howard Church of the Animal Rights Network (ARN) conducted four oral history interviews. Animal archives are also contained at the British Library, the Library of Congress, and Tier Im Recht in Switzerland.

In 2003, CAF’s co-founder, philosopher Tom Regan donated his personal papers and the CAF archives (1985–2001) to North Carolina State University (where he taught for 34 years) to form the Tom Regan Animal Rights and Animal Welfare Archive at the NCSU Libraries. Since then, NCSU Libraries has added the archives of the ARN, the HSUS, and several private collections, and has digitized the APSCA archives. Since 2019, CAF has sponsored an annual Tom Regan Research Fellow to conduct research at the Archives.

Why the New RAA OHP?

Since 2004, many long-time vegetarian and animal activists have died and their knowledge and lived experience lost. With funding provided by the Phauna Project, CAF is embarking on a new RAA OHP, conducting interviews with thirty individuals in their seventies, eighties, and nineties who contributed to the growing awareness of the rights and interests of animals from the 1960s to the present. The project, which will be overseen by Martin Rowe, will (it is hoped) involve as interviewers younger scholars/activists in the disciplines of each interviewee. The interviews will be videoed and transcribed, catalogued and stored, and (pending agreement with the interviewee) made freely available online via a portal at NCSU Libraries.

Why This Project Matters

The goals of the new RAA OHP project are fivefold:

  1. To make sure that the rich and complex histories of the last sixty years of vegetarianism and animal advocacy are not forgotten.
  2. To learn from the past to avoid repeating mistakes and to recognize that vegetarianism and animal advocacy are long, and ongoing, traditions.
  3. To provide resources to expand and deepen the archives of animal advocacy and vegetarianism.
  4. To explore whether and how the vegetarianism and animal advocacy movements intersected with other social movements of the last sixty years, such as the civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, peace, and women’s rights movements.
  5. To understand the social, political, and historical context within which the vegetarian and animal advocacy movements of the last six decades have operated.

Project Timeline

  • December 2024–January 2025: Contact made with interviewee and time arranged to conduct interview. Research conducted.
  • January–February 2025: Interview with interviewee: Recording sent to Martin Rowe at CAF for backup and storage.
  • February–March 2025: Transcript made and edited
  • March–April 2025: Sign off documents from interviewees. Final transcripts sent to Martin Rowe at CAF.