Yolande Robbins’ early memories of Vicksburg include school, ice cream, comic books — and segregation.

“We have younger people with no sense of what it was like,” during the civil rights era, said the 66-year-old Vicksburg native. “They have no idea.”

But many of her bad memories of the pre-civil rights era are mitigated by lots of good ones, such as sharing sweets with friends downtown, said Robbins.

Jennifer Harper has been director of the Vicksburg Senior Center for the last six years. “I’ve heard a good many stories, but I don’t think we can ever hear them all.”

Capturing stories of the lives of ordinary people is why Robbins and Harper are excited that a national oral history group is set to visit Vicksburg next week.

The StoryCorps Griot initiative is a project funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The goal is to collect at least 1,750 oral interviews from African-Americans. While the emphasis will be on collecting the stories of World War II veterans and those involved in the civil rights era, participants are free to speak about anything, said Ruby Sheets, project outreach coordinator for the Brooklyn-based group.

“We knew we were going to Mississippi and we knew we were definitely going to Clarksdale,” said Sheets. But, “We kept hearing more and more about Vicksburg” when the project visited other Mississippi cities, she said. “We’re very excited to have a full week of interviews.” A specially equipped recording trailer will be in Clarksdale and Holly Springs, while the other workers will travel by car to Jackson and Vicksburg to gather the other interviews. “This is the first time we’re traveling so much within the same state,” she said.

“People would be free to remember and reminisce,” said Robbins.

The original and ongoing StoryCorps project is in its fourth year. Modeled after Works Progress Administration interviews captured in the 1930s, the interviews are considered one of the most important collections of American oral history to date.

Facilitators will arrive in Vicksburg Sunday. The first interviews will be with members of Bethel A.M.E. Church. Public interviews will begin Oct. 2 and continue through the week.

Robbins herself will tell the story of another Vicksburg native and friend, Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister, the first black woman to receive a doctorate degree from Columbia University in New York. McAllister died in 1996. While many of the stories will likely center on the civil rights era, “anything they remember or want to share” is welcome, Sheets said.

Some people come in with notes and a topic ready said Sheets, while others wander in with no idea of what to talk about. Still others are more at ease talking to the facilitator about their lives than they are talking to family members.

With the participant’s permission, a copy of each interview will be sent to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture and to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Interviews that discuss the events of Sept. 11, 2001, may also be sent to the World Trade Center Memorial Museum in New York. Whatever they talk about, the big goal of StoryCorps is to help people appreciate listening to each other, Sheets said.

“I think it’s going to be a valuable tool to have down the road,” Harper said.

Harper and Robbins said they hope to record the stories of nearly 50 Vicksburg area people during the group’s stay. For more information on the project, visit www.storycorpsgriot.net or call Harper at the Vicksburg Senior Center at 601-630-8059.