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Growing up in Columbia: The reflections of long-time resident Sehon Williams

Children playing outside of the Blind Boone Center
Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri Photograph Collection
/
Boone County Black Archives, C4057. Item 29.
Children playing outside of the Blind Boone Center.

Reflecting on his experience growing up in Columbia in the 1930s and '40s, Sehon Williams remembered a childhood filled with "good, clean fun." Williams, a long-time resident of Columbia, recounts in an archive oral history interview how children used to entertain themselves, making their own toys and playing in the woods. Amidst memories of Halloween pranks and hayrides, Williams compared his own experience with that of modern-day children.

KBIA's Will Morris shares Sehon William's interview on the experience of childhood in Columbia as part of Reverberations, a project at KBIA that featuring oral histories housed within the State Historical Society of Missouri's archives.

This episode of Reverberations features the voice of:

  • Sehon Williams

It also features the following additional sound:

  • Piano improvisation by William Morris

Reverberations was produced using archival interviews from SHSMO's Haskell Monroe Oral History Collection. This series is a project from KBIA and The School of Visual Studies with support from Missouri Humanities.