Sidney Offit was born in 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Johns Hopkins with a B.A. in English literature in 1950 and went on to have a robust and successful career as an author. He is best known for his work as a children's author, including works such as The Adventures of Homer Fink and Soupbone. He is also known for his work on televised debates with Martin Abend on WNEW-TV. In this history, Offit discusses his time at Hopkins as well as his writing. This oral history is a part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

Paul Quin is a writer and designer who graduated from Hopkins in 1965 with a degree from the Writing Seminars. Quin notes Elliot Coleman, founder of the Writing Seminars in 1947, as an early teacher. During his undergraduate years at Hopkins, Quin witnessed historical events at the school including the anti-segregation protests from 1962-1963 and when Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on campus. In this interview, Quin talks about his early life, experiences at Hopkins, coming to terms with his identity as a gay man, life in Baltimore in the early 1960s, and the trajectory of his life in his post-Hopkins years. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral histories series.

Donald Perry, a 1961 graduate of Johns Hopkins University, talks about his life, career, and his experience as one of the few African-American undergraduate students at Hopkins.

Levi Watkins, Jr. was born in Parsons, Kansas. He completed his undergraduate work at Tennessee State University, where he majored in biology. He went on to become the first African American to be admitted to the Vanderbilt School of Medicine. Despite facing enormous prejudice, Watkins graduated in 1970. He completed his medical internship at Johns Hopkins, where he was the first black intern. He then went to study at Harvard Medical School's Department of Physiology. There, he completed revolutionary research on congestive heart failure. In 1975, Watkins returned to Hopkins and became Hopkins' first black chief resident in heart surgery. Watkins notably performed the first implantation of an automatic heart defibrillator. In this history, Watkins discusses his experiences as an African-American in the medical field in the middle of the 20th century as well as his career and education. This oral history is part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.