In 2007, Ingrid Drake coordinated the Coolidge Senior High School Oral History Project, interviewing 25 alumni, staff, teachers, and students of Calvin Coolidge Senior High School. Drake applied for and received a $5,000 grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to obtain equipment and facilitate the interviews. A radio show was produced for WPFW of the final interviews; and bound copies of the interviews to give to the alumni. This collection is comprised of 16 audio CDs (14 CDs of 24 interviews of 27 people, plus two CDs for the final radio show), and 26 color 4"x6" photographs of 25 of the 27 interviewees (includes one duplicate photo). The radio show contains snippets of interviews interwoven with popular commercially recorded music.
The Coolidge Senior High School Oral History Project interviews reflect the school's history of student political and social activism, demographic changes in the student body, and a chronicle of school spirit between the mid-1960s to 1997. The earliest alumni interviews are from the class of 1965; the latest from class of 1997. Missing are interviews with alumni who graduated during the 1980s and much of the 1990s. Included are stories of a student chapter of the Black Panther Party, a student march with a coffin to the White House during the Vietnam War, student pushes for creating black studies in high school, mention of the DC riots, historic DC events, student clubs, sports and extracurricular activities, popular music and dances, and the activism of the alumni association. Interviewed are 27 people: Verna Avery-Brown, Vanilla Beane, Gregory Bell, Michael Blakey, Consuelo Ellis Brown, L. Nelson Burton, Christine Easterling, Kenneth Ellerbe, Terry Goings, Susan Gordon, Terri Jo Hayes, Jerome Johnson, Frank Jones III, Loretta Kelly, John Mercer, Ada Mitchell, Aric Moore, Donna Pixley, Philip PremDas, James Proctor, Shawn Ruffing, Harold Smith, Vincent Tate, Ray Weaver, Stephen Whitney, Sylvia Frazier Weathers, and Davey Yarborough.