Uncategorized – Page 6 – Applied History

Let’s Talk, A Conversation with Troy Reeves, Head, UW-Madison Oral History Program

Photo – Zoom, Model H4n Digital Voice Recorder

I originally met Mr. Reeves through an oral history class taught at the Nampa Public Library in February 2016, courtesy of the Idaho Humanities Council. The two-hour class introduced us to the work of an oral historian and was a wonderful starting point for those interested in oral history either as a hobby or a profession.

To begin it is worth noting some of Mr. Reeves’ bona fides. The following information is drawn from the University of Wisconsin-Madison staff directory. Mr. Reeves manages collecting and curating oral history recordings, as well as communicating and collaborating with interested individuals about the art and science of oral history in both Wisconsin and Idaho. He is responsible for twenty oral history projects in both states covering such topics as cultural, political, and environmental history. He has been published in such journals as the Western Historical Quarterly, the Public Historian and the Oral History Review. He is also the managing editor of the Oral History Review overseeing day-to-day operations, including its social media initiative. He also works with the editorial team to add multimedia (both audio and audio/visual) content into the journal’s articles. Finally, Reeves has held various leadership roles in the national Oral History Association.

Mr. Reeves near twenty-year career began with a part-time, six-month project for the City of Boise in 1997. From 1999 until 2007 he served as Idaho State Oral Historian, Idaho State Historical Society (ISHS). He left that position to become the head of the oral history program at the General Library System at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which encompasses forty libraries on campus.

Mr. Reeves’ educational path typifies oral historians. He received a Bachelor of Arts, History from Idaho State University and a Masters of Arts, History from Utah State University. In both programs he selected projects that allowed him to do oral interviews in conjunction with other research he was conducting. Reeves stated that the few full-time jobs in oral history require at least a master’s degree, typically in history, folklore, library sciences, or journalism. Recently Columbia University began offering an Oral History Master of Arts.

Interpersonal skills are of paramount importance, being a good if not a great listener. He quoted a friend, Sarah White, who says, “Being a good listener requires not only the ear, but the brain and sometimes the heart.” Being a good researcher is essential so you know the person or people you are interviewing and the topic being discussed. Finally, perseverance is vital. People will back out of interviews leaving you stranded. Finding funds for different projects is frustrating. Knowing you have a good idea and the interest in the topic is not enough, it takes perseverance to get the project done.

When asked about salary, Mr. Reeves chuckled and said, “In the humanities there is never a poverty of ideas, only a poverty of everything else.” As the State Historian for the Idaho State Historical Society his starting wage was $13.50. No oral historian positions were found on National Council of Public History jobs board, however other entry level jobs on the site started at $15-$19.

“Oral history is what I do and who I am,” said Reeves. His position is funded by the library to promote oral history on the campus, especially focusing on capturing the history of the university. His projects fall into two “buckets,” campus life stories and project or topic-based oral histories. As an example of the first he cited a recent interview conducted with a wildlife biologist who talked about his work and the history of the university over the last nearly forty years. Reeves would like to do more such interviews, but as a one-person operation he typically can only do a few each year.

Front page of Wisconsin State Journal Oct 67 Riots — In 1967, University of Wisconsin students and police clashed when an anti-war protest – Pinterest

A project or topic-based project can be found in the interviews he is conducting around the 2011 protests which occurred at the state capital and on campus regarding changes Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature were trying to implement. Since summer of 2011 he has been interviewing graduate students and some faculty and staff who were deeply involved in those protests. Another hot period for protests on campus occurred between October 1967, when there was an anti-war riot on campus, and August 1970 when there was a bombing on campus. These interviews continue with people who were actually on campus at that time.

Mr. Reeves also does off-campus work for the Wisconsin State Historical Society. He does training and workshops for them around Wisconsin, at their annual meeting and out of state such as the one in Nampa. He also works with different people who aren’t paid historians but who do oral history work ancillary to their jobs. Finally, he works closely with the full-time oral historian archivist at the vets’ museum. All of this exemplifies the campus ethos to get outside of campus and help others.

“Oral History Now and Tomorrow” was the topic of a panel discussion at the 50^th Anniversary conference of the Oral History Association. Some current issues are:

Now that you can put digital audio online, should you? What are the ethics of doing so?
In an organization that prides itself on being egalitarian, who gets left out when there is a focus on degrees and professional development?
Oral history in crisis or contemporary settings, when is it okay to start doing oral histories?
Are there differences in the way a feminist may conduct an oral history project as opposed to someone not imbued with feminist history or feminist studies.

The oral historian techniques and methodologies should be in every historians’ toolkit. Hearing and not just reading the words of those who witness history provides a bonus of information that may be otherwise missed by any student of history.

Interview with Kathleen Durfee, Manager of the Coeur d’Alene Old Mission State Park

My interview was with Kathleen Durfee, the park manager of the Coeur d’Alene Old Mission State Park. Kathleen has worked for the Idaho Parks and Recreation Department since 1990 when after getting her bachelor’s degree she took a summer job while deciding whether to enter Master’s school. She so thoroughly enjoyed her experience that she decided to stay on with the Parks Department and has remained there ever since. Although there have been ups and downs in her career, including having her position completely removed in 2008 leaving her scrambling for another, her experience with the Parks Department has allowed her to be apportion to four different parks throughout Idaho.

I found her description of the Coeur d’Alene Old Mission Park absolutely fascinating. They have the oldest standing building in Idaho, the Mission of the Sacred Heart erected between 1850 and 1853, as well as 5000 ft²museum that houses around $10 million in artifacts at any given time.[1] Her job as manager includes the upkeep of both of these buildings, especially the mission itself which requires experts and the interaction of multiple historically based groups to be worked on, as well as the entirety of the parks other amenities including picnic areas, restrooms, a gift shop, and much more. Another one of these duties includes the maintenance of the trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, a 72 mile trail that was established by a joint venture between the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Union Pacific Railroad, the U. S. Government, and the State of Idaho.[2] She also organizes a fourth grade fieldtrip for all the children in three towns and eight cities in the area. For Kathleen, there is no such thing as a normal day.

Due to the nature of the park and the area in which it is run, Kathleen deals with a myriad of local, state, and federal organizations. Not only does she deal with her own organization, the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, on many of her projects, she also deals regularly with the Idaho Panhandle National Forest service, the Coeur d’Alene tribe, Heritage Trust, the Environmental protection agency, the University of Idaho, and even on occasion the Smithsonian Museum as well as other large influential museums to keep a good rotation of the exhibits. She had recently returned to the Smithsonian a full dress of “Buffalo” Bill Cody that she had on exhibit for a few months. Working with such a large number of groups, each with different ideas and ideals, means that Kathleen is remains a busy woman year around.

When faced with the issue of hiring new help Kathleen repeatedly stated that the number on attribute that she looks for is a good hard work ethic. Both in her seasonal employees and the park rangers that she hires, Kathleen said, ” We can teach them almost anything except the willingness to work hard.”[3]Above and beyond work ethic, she also looks for specialized skills that are needed from time to time around the park, such as ability to work with computers, communication skills, and mechanical, or other maintenance/restoration skills. With regard to advancement in the field, education is generally considered a bonus but much of the deciding factor is hard work and following of the training goals program that each employee is given with their career goals in mind.

One of the largest problems facing the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation is funding. Kathleen herself, after her position was eliminated in 2008 by budget cuts, has been worried for her job and became the manager of the Coeur d’Alene Old Mission Park in order to retain her employment status with the department. She said that by cobbling together money from the parks passes, a $1 charge to fourth grade students, viewing fees, and expansion of the gift shop, the state has managed to keep most of the parks open and a majority of the positions active even through a 2008 budget cut from nearly $14 million to a measly $1.4 million a year. This idea of doing more with less has become a motto of sorts for the department in recent years.

The interview with Kathleen allowed me to enter a world I have much interest in but, until recently, understood very little about. The history of and prospects of future budget cuts, the massive number of organizations, and astonishing value of the artifacts and land at their disposal was truly eye opening. At the end of the interview Kathleen stated,” No one joins the Department of Parks and Recreation to get rich, but they do join to live a richer lifestyle.”[4]

[1] “Coeur d’Alene’s Old Mission,” Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, accessed Feb 9, 2017, https://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/coeur-d-alenes-old-mission.

[2] “The Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes,” Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, accessed Feb 9, 2017, https://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/trail-coeur-d-alenes.

[3] Kathleen Durfee (Manager of Coeur d’Alene Old Mission State Park) in discussion with Eric Overzet, February 2017.

[4] Ibid.

Ava DuVernay on the legacy of slavery: ‘The sad truth is that some minds will not be changed’

From The Guardian, today: an interview with Ava DuVernay, the writer/director/producer of 13th and Selma

“Does she think 13th will help Americans face up to the legacy of slavery? “The sad truth,” she says with despondency, “is that some minds just will not be changed. It might help all of us to once in a while get outside of the United States itself, like go to South Africa or Germany. Because inherent in the very cultural fabric there, you have a sense of the past and of reckoning with it, saying, ‘This happened, and we will bear witness and we will learn from it, we will speak it and say that it happened and we will remember it.’ And we don’t do that here, so we can’t even have a real conversation about it. Because we have not been taught to talk to each other, and we have not been taught to remember.”

If you haven’t watched 13th, I seriously highly recommend it.

Tell the Whole Story

In watching many of the iconic events of the civil rights era on television; James Meredith enrolling in the University of Mississippi; Medgar Evers’ murder; the March on Washington, and the bombing of the Birmingham church that killed four girls, they became part of my own story. Slavery and Public History showed me the shortcomings of my public education, succumbing to the trap of thinking of slavery as an antebellum, pre-Civil War institution. The dichotomy of John Michael Vlach’s story captures the dilemma of public history with the dramatically different responses to “Back of the Big House.” Opposition and support for the project were not divided along racial lines. Neither were the emotional responses. The dialogue that took place from beginning to end demonstrated the best tool for treating such volatile topics.

I personally connected to Edward Linenthal’s epilogue. Whether Linenthal was talking about Jim Carrier’s A Traveler’s Guide to the Civil Rights Movement or Richard Rubin’s Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South, I saw my own experiences in their stories of the ordinariness of the places where extraordinary things occurred. I lived in Memphis in 1971, three years after Martin Luther King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. I drove by the motel on a couple of occasions. In a dumpy part of town, it was so incredibly ordinary. While on a run around the old city of Charleston I stopped at plaques and historical markers, such as looking out Fort Sumter, or interesting looking antebellum homes. I unexpectedly came across a section of cobblestone street. Looking around I was startled to see a building labeled “The Old Slave Mart.” My first reaction was one of disgust, but when I saw that it was a museum, I looked in the windows and grabbed a piece of literature from the display outside. This former slave auction house, in an otherwise nondescript location, was now a museum.

Screen shot from Google Earth, 2017

Not every event in history needs to become a NPS site, a museum or have a plaque. However, things which are recognized as important must have the whole story uncompromisingly told. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter or the “law and order” rhetoric, the events of the past year highlight our need to address this story, whether we want to or not.

Slavery and Public History

The problem, as many of my classmates have already stated, is that changing minds about slavery and racism is often like talking to a brick wall. Ideas about race have passed down through generations and sometimes you’re a victim of backwards ideas just because of the place in which you were born. And, forgive me for the gross stereotyping, but the people who often need their minds opened the most, are the least likely to hit up a museum on a Saturday afternoon. So how do we educate and tell the real stories without “ostracizing” large groups of people or going to war with school boards?

I’m all for heavy, uncomfortable dialogue. These stories need to be told. Make white people feel awful about slavery. We deserve it. And I’m all for two-sided arguments. Slavery doesn’t get to disappear into the abyss as an alternative fact – the very least we can do on the road to reparations is just admit to the brutal, ugly reality of what was done. Berlin’s quote from Garrison Frazier in 1865 hit me so hard that I had to put the book down and walk away for a moment. He defined slavery as “receiving by the irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent” (5). His definition highlights the pure simplicity of the matter: labor was needed, and using human beings against their will for capital gain was totally okay. And it had been totally okay for hundreds upon hundreds of years.

In some places, it’s still okay. And that’s half the reason we need to keep talking about it.

A Difficult Topic to Be Sure

I am rather fortunate, in that aside from a few trips back east and to the south, I have never been forced to confront slavery head on. Academically I’ve considered it, particularly when studying the Civil War and the rise of its romanticism in the south. I’ve read through databases of shipping manifests from Trans-Atlantic slaving companies and looked at plantation agriculture from an environmental perspective. However, living in the west for my entire life, I’ve been rather sheltered from the ever-present knowledge that this country that so loves its freedoms (or claims to, anyway) was built on the backs of those who had every freedom stripped from them. This series of essays was eye-opening to me, as I had never had to consider what difficulties interpretive sites in formerly slave-holding areas would have to confront in telling the story not just of our soldiers or presidents but of the people they owned as well.

This made me rethink the last trip I took, which was not to a place where slavery was legal for a time, but to the battlefield at Little Bighorn. It was quite a few years ago, but I seem to remember that it had surprisingly little information on Native Americans for a site commemorating a cavalry unit that was ambushed by them. I have a more difficult time remembering the Civil War sites I visited (that trip was nearly 15 years ago), but I don’t recall seeing much on slavery at any of them, either in the North or the South. I certainly have a new appreciation for the difficulty the National Park Service has in attempting to present a factual and uncontroversial site. Unfortunately, it is clear from these essays that some controversy is going to be unavoidable, whether you choose to only present the positive or appealing history of a place, or attempt to include all of it, and I agree that we should be working toward a more inclusive and accurate depiction of our own history.

Irony of freedom

I must say that one of the most intriguing ideals of this book is the irony of a country “pining for freedom” yet so quick to take it from those they can. Slavery is still such an issue today because, well because it really always was. Personally I do not encourage anyone to live a life filled with guilt and regret about something that they themselves did not take part in, but… I do feel it is important to see why African-Americans see the deck as always stacked against them. It kind of always was. Having been to multiple places throughout my life where racism is not only prevalent but unfortunately it winds up really being the only thing to do for many people on a Saturday night, I find the shock of Caucasians that African-Americans are still not “over it” appalling. The largest problem that I see is that we, as historians, are constantly trying to battle against a group that has a firmly held belief with logic. To me this is no different than trying to argue with a fundamentalist Christian that God doesn’t exist. Although I agree with the Ira Berlin completely when he states, “All of which is to say that what is needed are not only new debates about slavery and race but also a new education— a short course in the historical meaning of chattel bondage and its many legacies.”(5) The problem I see is that education does not always change people’s minds.

Although Berlin is clearly an expert on the subject of slavery, I was disappointed that his description of slavery as, “the story of the power of liberty, of a people victimized and brutalized,” seems to just outright stop at the end of the Civil War until the last paragraph of the essay. (13th,14th and 15th amendments)In may ways, sharecropping was just as brutal and victimizing as slavery was. Sure African-Americans were now “free” but really what does that mean if many are in no better condition than they were before? This too, I believe, adds to the “deck is stacked against us” attitude that one can see in many African-Americans even today. Even when their freedom was realized, the face of oppression simply changed. This being said, I found at least some solace in the essay by James Oliver Horton. He addressed the idea that slavery had a long lasting reputation (at minimum) well into the 20th century( by looking at Bill Clinton and J.F.K.) and by so doing explains in some ways why it is still a conversation. The only thing that I can add to this is the idea that slavery and its legacy reached well into the 20th century and the idea that we as a nation should just forget about it makes me cringe…

Slavery and Public History

The book Slavery and Public History, describes the events and individuals involved in slavery, and how these events transpire and helps how we, as historians, interpret today. The history begins with how African slaves were used as a cheap labor force to help grow cash crops such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton. Kidnapped Africans were mistreated poorly for the benefit of the white man’s wallet. In order to decipher these racist patterns, editors James and Lois Horton categorize the slaves into different human generations to discuss how their fates as indentured servants and freedmen came to be: Charter, Plantation, Revolution, Migration, and Freedom. These stages of African American status in society detailed their rise from indentured servitude upon arriving in the colonies, to the rebellions and abolitionist causes after the American Revolution, and eventual free status after the defeat of the Confederates in the Civil War. Poetry about the tragedies of slavery is one way for people today to understand how slavery caused such miserable suffering to African Americans and their future descendants, such as the poem Middle Passage written by the poet Robert Hayden. His poem describes how African Americans were ripped from their native homeland, put in chains, sailed across a perilous sea by European traders, and then forced to work on plantations for the rest of their lives. The conditions from their cruel abduction to the hard labor of plantation work was under horrible conditions. If someone got sick on the journey to America and died, their bodies were simply thrown overboard. It is something in history that will never be forgotten as it was both the reason for Atlantic colonial stability with free labor and unimaginable human cruelty to African Americans.

Even before the end of the Revolutionary War, the issue of slaves being free men was being considered the American Congress. American Quakers even attempted to put to a vote to ban their members who were current owners of indentured servants during the American Revolution, and many of the British, along with the Quakers, began putting together a society that would become the first in abolitionism and that was the beginning of the abolitionist movement that would take years and thousands of committed people and a civil war to realize success. Slavery provided both political and philosophical topics to the discussion of race relations, even after the American Civil War. However, it was rarely discussed in schools throughout the United States, certainly not taught in school textbooks. In the south, it was a taboo subject. Novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought to light the true nature of the institution of slavery and exposed its true ugly nature, detailing how awful the slaves in the south were mistreated. Along with public education, private organizations have also put together information now being used by schools today that could help in educating young people and amend bridges between blacks and whites amongst many years of hostilities.

I have read many intriguing facts in Slavery and Public Life, but the life of John Brown was the most influential about learning of the slave trade in America. John Brown was known for being a pro-slaver, having sailed slave voyages, and was put on trial by his Quaker brother for illegally giving arms to slave traders in American ports. The Rhode Island Historical Society eventually claimed ownership of the Brown House in the 1940s, in order to detail one of America’s patriot families, despite their checkered past in abolitionism and slave trading.

Slavery and Public History

Slavery has been a questionable history when it is brought up in the public spectrum do to its uncomfortable and conflicting history. When I say conflicting it’s due to the individual you are talking to. If a you talk to most white southerners, as I have, while livening in the south, you get conflicting answers to the race question. John Vlach states “when discussing the history of racial slavery in the United States can be traced, suggests James W. Loewen, to the inadequate textbooks that they are compelled to read while in High School.”[1] I agree that the true reason we still have racial inequalities in the nation is due to the inaccurate history. In order to find a common ground of tolerance education is needed through the eyes of the oppressed in order for some kind of change to happen. All I see happening from the past during the civil rights movement to today is young white and black youths have a common misconception of the past that is conflicting the future. “When students are fitted with intellectual blinders, they are likely to become citizen’s incapable of understanding why we remain a divided nation.”[2]

The constant struggle to try adapt to the struggle race causes issues. As a white male, I cannot begin to assume or perceive how that life was even as a descendant of Irish immigrants. In order to become a more unified country we as all people need to find common ground and respect the pasts of oppressed nationalities. The constant adaptation of racial segregating laws or ideals will be the down fall of our union.

[1] James Oliver Horton, and Lois E. Horton, eds. Slavery and public history: The tough stuff of American memory. New Press, The, 2006.Pg. 57.

[2] James Oliver Horton, and Lois E. Horton, eds. Slavery and public history: The tough stuff of American memory. New Press, The, 2006.Pg. 57.

This seems timely…

I am sure it is no accident that we are reading Slavery and Public History at the beginning of Black History Month. It has always perplexed me as to why the society we live in views rights and recognition as a zero sum game. The Nash article, describing the fight between local Park Service people, and historians highlights this point. It also, again not surprisingly, addresses some of the same issues highlighted in Letting Go? specifically the role of museums (but in this case, it’s a historic site) and whether it should be a shrine to past events, or whether it should be a forum to discuss those past events, and how they effect the present.

I had read “Southern Comfort Levels” previous to this, and it made me as mad then, as it did this time around. I understand the reasons for not punitively punishing the South after the war, but it is my humble opinion that it was the wrong decision. And things like “Monument Street” in Richmond is evidence of this point. No such monuments exist in London for Guido Fawkes, instead he is burnt in effigy every year. There are no statues of Cornwallis, Burgyone, or Benedict Arnold in New York City (which remained firmly in the British camp through the Revolution). Because they lost. For me it’s too close to those fascist $&@#%€£ who claim that everything is the Jews’ fault, or immigrants are a problem, or any of those other things that they say. These people/ideas need to be discussed, but in a way that shows them as they really are, not for what they pretend to be. (And I expect my own ideas and such to be put under the same scrutiny.)

Which brings me back to Black History Month, and the “zero sum game” theory. As historians we need to be willing to wade into these troublesome issues. But as Joanne Melish’s article about the John Brown house pointed out, we need to be able to do it expecting nuance and a more complex narrative.