By Jay Sowers

The Selma Times-Journal

Molly Gamble knows there are thousands of stories just waiting to be told here in Selma, and she’s working her hardest to capture them all.

Gamble, a member of The Ossian Club and ArtsRevive, has been working with others on the Selma Stories Project – which aims to record interviews with as many Selma residents as possible.

“This is a beautiful city with so many great people and it is really important to get as many of their oral histories down,” Gamble said.

Anyone interested in being a part of the Selma Arts Project, or interested in learning how to perform and record interviews like the ones used in the project can learn about that and more at a special event next Wednesday at the Selma Dallas-County Public Library.

Maurice Gandy, M.A., an adjunct English Instructor at the University of South Alabama and feature correspondent for the Mobile Press-Register, will be presenting “Famous Last Words: Recording and Preserving Oral History” at the library at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

Gamble said Gandy would be speaking about the importance of keeping recorded history from people in a community, as well as the proper way to perform the interviews.

“His main point will be to remind people that the best time to start recording these interviews is now,” Gamble added.

Gandy is a member of the Alabama Humanities Foundation — a nonprofit organization which aims to create and foster opportunities to explore human values and experiences through the humanities.

Gamble said she hopes a lot of people will turn out on Wednesday, and that they will then express an interest in being part of the Selma Stories Project.

“We want to record a broad spectrum of people who are willing to be recorded,” Gamble said.

“There have been other oral history projects here in Selma, and we are hoping to consolidate all of them into one place because this will be a valuable resource for researchers in the future,” Gamble said.