In 1999, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation gave Conflict Management Initiatives, Evanston, IL, in partnership with the Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder, a grant to obtain oral histories from seventeen mediators from the U.S. Community Relations Service (CRS) in order to document, and make available on the Internet, what they did and how they did it when they responded to volatile civil rights conflicts. The mediators selected for these interviews all have reputations among their peers as accomplished practitioners. They include retired mediators who were with the agency in its early years and others who are active at CRS today. They gained their experience in nine different field offices and the national headquarters in Washington, D.C. They represent the racial and gender diversity that typifies CRS. All have a vast amount of experience working with communities enmeshed in racial conflict. In interviews that ranged from three to nine hours, they described their thinking and the techniques and strategies they used in their efforts to bring parties to agreement in the most racially polarized community conflicts. Respondents were asked to be as specific as possible in describing their case work, although names and places often were omitted or fictitious names were used to protect confidentiality. The edited transcripts of these interviews are posted -- in their entirety -- on this website. While visitors may choose to read one or more of the interviews in full, there are faster ways to find material on particular topics of interest. The most efficient way probably is to look through the list of topics discussed, and click on those of interest. Users can also search for particular topics using the search button.

The Hewlett Foundation funded this pilot project to determine the feasibility and value of this technique to capture valuable data about the work of mediators. The project managers hope to obtain additional support so they can interview an even broader base of CRS mediators and add the lessons that can be drawn from their experience and expertise to this data base.