Applied History

I thought this was a powerful read that was jam-packed with inspiring reflections on the links between collective memory, place, and the intricacies of presenting difficult history. I must be a glutton for punishment, because I’d love to be involved in the tricky interpretation at the types of sites explored in these essays, especially the national parks.

Blight’s piece on memory and history stood out to me as the root difficulty of interpreting sites or historical moments of shame or conscience. Particularly useful was the equating of history and memory to a contrast between reason and emotion; history stands out in its (theoretically) secular tradition of carefully crafted, painstakingly researched argument, whereas memory functions as the sacred property of an individual or group, blurring together a site and its context where history seeks to tease out the complexities between the two. The polarity of secular and sacred speaks highly to type of ownership and intense reactions people have to the stories discussed in the rest of the book.

Horton’s piece raised an interesting question to me, especially in light of my fond reaction to the previous piece we read on dialogic history. I think dialogue-minded site interpretation is a venerable task, working to inspire action as a result of visiting a site of conscience. Horton’s piece raises the question of what a nationwide dialogue on these difficult subjects might look like, and if it is even possible. Time and time again the book mentioned the overarching uncomfortableness of visitors, both black and white, to antebellum sites that introduced the interpretation of slavery. Much of this was tied to context, such as the taboo discussion of slavery inside a plantation home of a powerful or historically important figure, but the ready attention of visitors to the culture of the enslaved in an area equated with servitude or separate quarters. I think a big barrier to productive national dialogue is the astonishing lack of knowledge of the American public of contentious history, or in some cases very basic history. I was in disbelief at the public history education statistics and ignorance of slavery in curriculums, though perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising considering similar treatment of Japanese incarceration, a much more recent historical blemish. Public historians are tasked then, not to dive right in to these juicy thought-provoking dialogic interpretations, but first with the responsibility of basic education of the bare facts. I have a hard time reconciling the idea that a costumed Williamsburg interpreter can still be barraged with anachronistic ideas and insults that they are trying to educate the public away from with one author’s cautioning against underestimating the public’s ability to discuss complex and sensitive issues in the appropriate context. I guess a main takeaway from this book then, is a survey of the current national landscape for public historians. We are tasked with a complicated goal of confronting difficult history and the equally difficult current issues that are legacies of these histories, in a way that both educates the public on the basic facts and teases out complex and layered interpretations.

I highly enjoyed the piece on Philadelphia’s Independence NHS, perhaps because it was a lesson in how not to act as an NPS interpretive planner: in support of the grand narrative of American exceptionalism, in ignorance of academic history, and without collaboration with experts on the subject or in the local arena. It made me ponder on Kaci’s objections that academic and public historians have the same goals – I think that broadly they do have the same goals, but their missions are made complex considering audience and context. This piece was inspiring in the public’s desire to receive the entire history, blemishes and all, at a place so susceptible to ignoring the painful past to glorify an honored national myth. The international dialogue that the Library of Congress incident sparked was surprising, as I wondered how Mining the Museum received such a contrasting reaction, as both could be viewed as an insulting version history to any of the institution’s workers. Perhaps it is entirely dependent on which set of workers is insulted and what is viewed as politically correct. I loved the combined interactivity and dialogic nature of the feedback comments in the MLK Library’s exhibition, and again the public outpouring of support to confront a difficult history. An interesting idea in these examples is the role of dissonance in aiding historical understanding, and the role of the site to serve as a forum for this confrontation. It seems like something public historians would generally try to avoid, when in fact it seems to signify a sort of point of no return for visitors, who have no choice but to confront their understanding of a difficult history and question the motives behind its past interpretations and its current relevance.

I thought the discussions of Rhode Island’s examples of confronting slavery in cultural institutions could also prove to be instructional to our class. It seems the letter-writing and collaborative campaigns to introduce more critical, informed interpretations of historic sites really are effective, and I was reminded of the possibility of our doing something similar to improve the state of historic interpretation of state history here in Idaho…

“American history cannot be understood without slavery” (Ira Berlin, 2).

In “Coming to terms with Slavery,” Ira Berlin shows how slavery became associated with black or dark skin, and how that dark skin accrued all the negative associations of slavery. From there, justifications were manufactured or found to justify keeping a person as property through racial theories of congenital inferiority ascribed to Africans by elites who had an economic and institutional stake in maintaining a system of human bondage. And as Berlin illustrates, these elites were the ones who created, interpreted and molded a system of government to ensure their privilege and liberty while denying it to others.

Because slavery is an unpleasant story, an accusatory story, a shameful story, it is a difficult historical conversation for both black and white people to have. Most white people refuse to acknowledge the accrued benefits of slavery to the nation’s development. Nor do we wish to see “white privilege” in society, another legacy of slavery that associated color with a dehumanized being, because it is unsettling, an unnerving dissonance inducing state of mind that demands an apology, a plea for forgiveness and atonement. Many Americans want to believe that slavery’s affects ended on a certain date, 1863, or 1964 or 2008 for sure. They believe it is ridiculous, deceptive, even race-hustling and excuse-mongering to insist that slavery casts a shadow over the US today.

Some of us who claim European origins can declaim the injustices, including ones that predate African slavery in the Americas, bitterly attributing the misery of our ancestors to a particular people, or country, that we still hold liable today for that suffering. That “ancient history” is still alive, still influences us, still informs our worldview yet we cannot accept that slavery still has an impact today. We look at our immigrant ancestors, attributing their and subsequent generations success to their (undoubted) hard work without admitting that by not being African they automatically had an advantage over people of color. As David Blight writes in “If You Don’t Tell it Like it Was,” modern nation states have “built or imagined” a past designed to strengthen and promote the nation by emphasizing commonalties through disinheriting inconvenient truths (24-5). He goes on to say that you cannot build a better, more just world, by forgetting the past.

I found it interesting to discover that many African-Americans are more reluctant to talk about slavery than white people. I assumed, as a white person, that it is easier for black people because the wrong was patently done to them. The moral high ground belongs to those who were enslaved and their descendants. Perhaps because slavery is such an intense, emotional, disturbing and painful concept for African-Americans many avoid it. I tried to imagine how I would feel if my grandfather’s grandfather had been owned. Would I be angry at white people or my ancestors or both, feel inferior or maybe superior to others, would I want to disassociate myself from my ancestors embarrassed by their servility, shamed and saddened by their condition? Or would I recognize their tenacious struggle to survive and create vibrant communities where they exercised as much agency as the situation allowed. In all, I found my thoughts complex, conflicted and even incoherent.   I can only imagine that many African-Americans must experience the gamut of emotions and thoughts about slavery.

In “The Last Great Taboo Subject,” John Michael Vlach’s experience with the Library of Congress illustrates the complexity of an exhibit about slavery. Some African-American staff complained that the display seemed to “celebrate” slavery while other’s projected their own disenchantment with their working conditions onto the images of white overseers driving slaves (62). The Library’s decision to cancel the exhibit also attests to the tensions between institutions of state and their problematic relationship to African-Americans. Perhaps the Library’s administration should have informed staff about the exhibit, and its author’s intentions to highlight the resilience of black people in the face of the evils of slavery, so they understood the exhibit’s objectives.

The crack in the Liberty Bell symbolizes the fault line between the American promise and what many people actually encounter. Maybe the crack is eponymous to what you must ingest in order to write “All men are created equal” while concurrently owning people. I learned in high school that Washington freed his slaves after his death. I didn’t hear about his efforts to chase down runaway slaves, which of course as a slave-owner you would do because of their value, it makes sense in a system where people are property. When visiting Washington’s Mount Vernon home I don’t remember hearing much about slavery just as Joanne Melish tells us was the case at My Old Kentucky Home historical site. Guides were told to refer to ‘servants’ and when a courageous guide lobbied to include information on the lives of slaves, his boss told him not to present an entirely negative view, but to say “something ‘positive’ about slavery” (117). For Melish this represents a “containment strategy,” a form of “denial,’ where slavery is ignored and divorced from sites where it was a central factor of history (115).

In “Southern Comfort Levels,” Marie Tyler-McGraw presents the impediments encountered when the history of marginalized groups clashes with the false narrative of the “Mint Julep” historians who rewrote the history of slavery and the Civil War. Likewise, Dwight Pitcaithley talks about the difficulties of interpretation on Civil War battlefields. How do you give slavery its place at these sites when generations of white Southerners, maybe all Americans, have been raised on lies? And why are some so opposed to even listening to a different version of events? Oral historian Anthony Buckley provides this explanation: “to dispel the ‘myths’ of history is to “attack the people who gain comfort and self-worth from these narratives.” As long as the truth about slavery, and its part in making the nation is denied or ignored there will always be generations of Americans who subscribe to the theory that slavery was a peculiar institution of the past, with no effects in the present.

The examples in the text show that if public historians are honest enough, and in many cases courageous enough, to engage the topic of slavery and discrimination in public spaces, that previously ignored people can find a voice for their story. It also makes the history of such places a more accurate depiction of what occurred and how we got to where we are today.

Upon finishing Slavery & Public History I felt incredibly frustrated with Pitcaithley & Levine’s chapters, which focused primarily on the Lost Cause movement and their gnat-like ability to annoy public historians.

Interestingly, Pitcaithley and Levine suggest two different techniques to deal with the controversial Lost Causers. Pictcathley advises that, “… because both [professional and amateur historians] share a passion for history and an interest in its relevance to contemporary society, perhaps it would be worthwhile if they could engage in civil conversation.”[1] Levine, on the other hand, proposes that public historians should not invest the energy to engage with Lost Causers as, “No matter how many fallacies are exposed, however, and no matter how many hard facts are put in their place, the most dedicated Black-Confederate devotees will not change their opinions.”[2]

Reflecting upon Slavery & Public History as a whole, it does seem as if Levine’s solution of giving Lost Causers the cold shoulder may be the optimal choice for the time being. The articles by Nash, Vlach, & Melish indicate we have a lot of work to do within our own ranks before we begin lecturing outsiders. A group of professionally trained group of historians refusing to “tell it like it was” is far more harmful than a bunch of untrained Civil War revisionists.

Furthermore, these craven professional historians provide lackluster reasons for presenting a watered down version of history. They either assume the general public is too daft to understand the material, are unwilling to spend the time to perfect the interpretation’s wording and research, or simply want to avoid confrontational e-mails and tweets. While I realize funding probably plays into at least two of those reasons, it seems to me that presenting a generic, whitewashed history is extremely self-centered and lazy. If the popularity of Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones proves anything, it’s that the public is ready and willing to invest the time to understand complex stories and characters if we can facilitate an engaging way of presenting the information. In an ideal world, building a rapt and loyal audience would in turn help earn more funding.

My eternal grumpiness aside (I always feel like I come off as weirdly aggressive in these posts. My apologies.), as a young historian I was left curious whether using the media as leverage to replace outdated interpretations was common place. Or is it more common to face situations like Melish’s Patriots’ Park example where the change just takes a lot of time and revision?

P.S. – Thought you folks might enjoy this semi-relevant sketch by the comedy duo Key & Peele. Heads up, the language might be inappropriate for a workplace.

[1] “’A Cosmic Threat’: The National Park Service Addresses the Causes of the American Civil War.” In Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory, edited by James Oliver Horton and Lois Horton, by Dwight T. Pitcaithley, 186. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

[2] “In Search of a Usable Past: Neo-Confederates & Black Confederates.” In Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory, edited by James Oliver Horton and Lois Horton, by Bruce Levine, 211. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory

James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton

(These are just some of my thoughts, but I also thoroughly enjoyed chapters four, six, and ten!)

Throughout the process of reading this book I felt saddened, indignant, angry, hopeless, hopeful, and did I mention angry? Maybe angry is too harsh a word, but over and over I thought, “Why won’t you talk about this? How dare you leave this out or cover this up! How can we hope to understand our past if we pick and choose what we will and won’t preserve?! How dare you!” Anyone else? (Mind, I am not sure who the ‘you’ necessarily is in every case). Has anyone else read or heard of A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn? Some of the stories of sites and histories covered in this book reminded me of his approach to sharing our past. While reading Zinn I was continuously angered and saddened as I discovered pieces of my past that were kept from me through a public education system that deemed them ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unimportant’. My reaction to most of the chapters in this book was similar, but I’m now angrier because these places and histories are supposed to be run by people who should know better! “Historians are custodians of the past; we are preservers and discoverers of the facts and stories of which people imagine their civic lives.” (Chapter 2, p. 34).

I thought Blight did an amazing job of truly outlining the difficulties of discussing slavery and managed to come to a great conclusion with those words. “‘If you don’t tell it like it was,’ he said, ‘it can never be as it ought to be.’ Whatever else we do about the legacies of slavery [or any topic] in our history, our institutions, or our lives, we can do no less than heed Fred Shuttlesworth’s plea.” (Ch. 2, p. 45). The chapter by Nash on the Liberty Bell gave me hope and highlighted an excellent, if trying and difficult, example of working in collaboration to tackle the hard topics of history. The fact that the NPS has a General Management Plan that calls for that collaboration raised my spirits. I really liked the quote from Kenneth Moynihan at the end of the chapter that stated, “an ongoing conversation that yields not final truths but an endless succession of discoveries that change our understanding not only of the past but of ourselves and of the times we live in.”

Chapter three, “Slavery in American History: An Uncomfortable National Dialogue” caused a loud and rather heated outburst as I read about the research on history education. Did anyone else lose it there? Teachers with inadequate or no training in history?! The following percents of students were taught by teachers without even a minor in history: 88% in Louisiana, 83% in Minnesota, 82% in West Virginia, 81% in Oklahoma, 73% in Pennsylvania, and 72% in Kansas! WHAT?! How have we as a society, allowed sports to become more important than adequate education for our children? Do we believe that history is a secondary subject unworthy of our attention? I absolutely love the point this chapter makes about our failure to educate our youth. “Public education prepared children to think about slavery and race in ways consistent with the assumption of white supremacy built into twentieth-century American law and custom.” (p. 52). Recent events in Ferguson and elsewhere elucidate the fact that we are now reaping the consequences of this miss-education. “Gettysburg National Battlefield, for example, mentioned neither slavery nor slaves with regard to the war. Significantly, at that time Gettysburg was attracting almost two million visitors yearly. The pattern of ignoring slavery was widespread within the national parks.” (p. 54). As trivial (and possibly ironic given my statement about sports above) as it may seem, the reference that immediately popped in my head when I read this was a scene from Remember the Titans. One hundred years after the battle of Gettysburg, the fear and hatred and racism of slavery’s legacy separated adolescents before they knew one another. It still separates us and if we continue to refuse to engage in dialogue about the tough pieces of history, we will never learn and we will continue to fail our children.

P.S. I meant to put this on here too.

I devoured this book. Most readings in Graduate school focus on theory and methods, so when we get to read one that has a historical narrative, I get really excited. I also learned a lot in this reading! For example, although I knew that George Washington owned many slaves, I had never heard the individual stories of Oney and Hercules. I knew nothing about the Liberty Bell’s history, and very little about Thomas Jefferson’s exploits. I enjoyed each chapter, but I was most drawn to John Michael Vlach’s chapter about his collection of D.C. photographs at the Library of Congress.

As a high school history teacher, I am constantly faced with navigating taboo or uncomfortable subjects. Students love to talk about the hard stuff and they do not shy away from it (unlike many adults that I know). I found the tumultuous reception of “Back of the Big House” frustrating and confusing. At first, Vlach described the removal of the collection with only a cursory explanation of “there were cries of protest by a number of the library’s African American employees” and he failed to give any specifics about the reasons. I think he did this on purpose to convey the confusion and surprise that surrounded the removal. What was the problem? What were they protesting? I was shocked to later find out that the main complaint from those African American employees was that they did not want a reminder of their painful past in their less-than-perfect work environment. Because the complaint was racially charged, the library’s management removed the collection quickly, without considering the validity of the complaints.

I constantly strive for inclusion, tolerance, patience, and understanding of diverse backgrounds in my classroom. However, I do not shy away from hard topics and I’m surprised that the Library of Congress would do so. I really appreciated the  quote from Washington Post critic, David Nicholson, who said, “To deny slavery is to deny the suffering of those men and women who were powerless to prevent their bondage… (and the protesters at the Library of Congress were) using their ancestors’ suffering to extort concessions from a majority white institution; (essentially using) cultural blackmail.”

Slavery is a difficult topic to present and museums and institutions could easily mess it up. But ignoring it and shuttling it off to a dark basement is just as bad (if not worse!) than bad interpretations.

To be honest, I approached this book with a big chip of my shoulder.   I figured that the aim of the book was to ensure that every museum exhibit from here on out was served with a generous serving of guilt about transgressions of the past.

Slavery is such an emotional issue, but I never considered that it could be painful for the black community. The story about the “Back of the Big House” exhibit that caused workers of the Library of Congress to feel offense, gave me pause. I never realized that slavery was a topic that many African-Americans would like to skirt just as many from the white community would like to do.

I agree with the statement that there is a perpetuation of superficial knowledge about slavery in our society.  I know that in my History 10A class, which covers from English Settlement to the Constitution, the only mention of slavery is during the ½ day discussion on the Triangular Trade.   There are two problems – a lack of time, a lack of importance placed on the subject with curriculum writers, and lastly, the one mentioned in the book, is my own superficial knowledge. School textbooks are also trite in the mention of slavery – textbook companies go out of their way to avoid controversy.

In the chapter, “If You Don’t Tell It Like it Was, It Can Never Be As It Ought To Be,” a roundtable of historians asked African-American community leaders what message they would like to see in a museum about slavery. The answer was surprising.   Instead of a museum that wanted to punish the present about the past, they felt that museums about slavery should teach truth, but yet, ultimately give visitors a feeling of pride of heritage and a hope for the future.

Even though the book focuses mainly on how to address the topic of slavery in the south, the philosophy of creating museum exhibits that focus on those who have not had their histories told by the general populace in a truthful yet compassionate way can help create a new dialog of understanding between historically conflicting groups.

Billy Yalowitz’s “The Black Bottom,” shows how powerful participatory history/art can be in bringing an abused community’s story to light. His project illuminates institutionalized racism and its lingering effects, while also showing how tenaciously that community has labored to stay connected. It is a common refrain from many white Americans that black people need to clean up the crime and dysfunction in their neighborhoods before they can get ahead in society. Yet here we have an example of a supportive community, where neighbors created a positive environment that promoted constructive behaviors, only for it to be destroyed by government connivance with a powerful wealthy interest group, the local university, in a policy of ‘Negro Removal’ (162). To demonstrate this history university students researched and wrote scripts, high school students acted, and former residents of the destroyed neighborhood were an interactive audience. In allowing the former residents ultimate veto power over any scene, Yalowitz demonstrated a commendable sharing of authority. He also raised concerns over appropriation of other’s stories, and who receives credit, fame, publicity and money from the story. Do movies or plays that highlight the plight of marginalized people, make money and generate fame for wealthy white directors/producers/writers with little benefit to those who are portrayed in the work of art? Double whammy! Not only did we profit by directly exploiting you, now we are profiting again by telling the story of your abuse and you get nothing! Was the university’s employment of Yalowitz, and its sanctioning of the project a form of reparations, as some former residents of the Bottom were asking for? Or was it “Reparations Light,” where a past wrong is acknowledged indirectly, a bronze memorial is erected and the institution feels no real financial pain. Along the same lines, the former residents were glad to have their story heard and genuinely appreciated Yalowitz and all the students’ efforts, but maybe this just makes the dominant group feel good that it has addressed an “issue,” it has listened to a recounting of its sins so its conscience is mollified, and it can happily go on its way without meaningful compensation.

I found Melissa Rachleff’s piece on Mining the Museum, in “Peering Behind the Curtain,” shocking! It is a naïve question but I will ask it anyway. How could a museum in a majority African American city, in 1992, have nothing about black people on display? 1882 or 1952 maybe, but 1992? I will say that it was brave of the museum and historical society to allow Fred Wilson, the exhibit’s designer, a freehand in resurrecting artifacts from the basement that attested to the injustices African Americans suffered. The juxtaposition of iron manacles alongside refined repousse silverware jarringly reminds one of the wealth that slave labor endowed on the owner of that human “property.” Wilson’s paucity of explanatory information engenders questions rather than answers. Is the artisan who made that silverware implicated in the crime of slavery for taking money for his work that was made on the backs of unfree people? Or perhaps a freeman made the silverware and a white business made the manacles? Maybe it underlines the hypocritical nature of humans: we can create art at the same time we can create shackles, akin to “all Men are created equal” rhetoric side by side with blatant discrimination. In one display, a picture that depicts African Americans, is titled by its 1797 sketcher as Preparations of the Enjoyment of a Fine Sunday among the Blacks, Norfolk, is retitled by Wilson as Richard, Ned and their Brothers, perhaps to give back the individuality and humanity associated with familiarity that is denied in anonymity.   In terms of participatory activities, this made me wonder if retitling works could be an interactive experience. For example, “Here is a work titled The Signing of the Declaration of Independence. If you were to retitle it what would you call it?” Have page sized stickers and markers available and place the stickers, filled in with a new title, on a board by the work so they could be seen. Visitors could not only retitle a work, but also vote for the best new title, and the wining new title would be displayed the following day while others would be removed. Each day a new winner would be crowned and the week’s winners could be displayed.

When Wilson was interviewed by Paula Marincola and Marjorie Schwartzer, one interviewee stated she went to school in Maryland and was “explicitly” informed that the state “never had slaves” (238). If the Maryland Historical Society had not historically ignored marginalized groups, presenting only a white narrative, perhaps a future teacher would have encountered artifacts that would have countered this falsehood, which was then passed onto another generation. Another good example of why it is important, a historiographical imperative, to question curatorial authority.

StoryCorps may deserve some of the criticism that academic historians level at it—its sentimentality and pathos that sometimes lurches toward bathos—but it does give a voice to ordinary people’s history rather than the traditional elite version of history. Friends who involuntarily grimace at the mention of the word “history,” relate how their Friday mornings are ruined if they miss StoryCorps. I asked the same friends if they thought what they heard on StoryCorps was history. The answer I got was “maybe sometimes,” but “not really, it is more about individual people’s lives.” When I asked why this wasn’t history, why a person’s story wasn’t history, my friends struggled to reply. I believe their inarticulateness on the subject relates to what has been defined as history for generations, and how we have learned what history is. StoryCorps may be imperfect but it is an attempt to listen to ordinary people, and by doing so it validates their stories as part of the country’s history just as elites’ stories have traditionally been.

Again, some academic historians probably shudder at the “power” of the “evocative” over the “merely informative” that Mary Teeling discovers in “Visiting Dennis Severs’ House” (321). She too, as a public historian worries about blurred timeframes and fake pieces, but she feels the overall effect outweighs the drawbacks.  Based on her experience I would agree.  A site like Severs’ House can do more to help us understand the influence of daylight and nighttime on the rhythm of life before electrification, than an academic work might.

So far in my life, I have only been to museums that follow the “old” way of doing things- I approach a painting or artifact, read the brief description, then move on in the low-light galley to the next object. I have never had the opportunity to use digital devices, participate with strangers, or create an object d’ art. I think that is why it is hard for me to visualize the effectiveness of all these new ideas within my museum context. One thing is for sure; the concept of what museums are to be is going through a major revolution. Last week in class, we discussed the blurring of lines between digital and physical presentations, as well as the shared ownership of authority between curator and community. This week’s discussion focuses two other changes that I feel are much more daring. One, the lines between historical and art museums (or other artistic groups such as playwrights, and dancers) are becoming blurred. This includes the idea of bringing in an artist and having them curate with the museum’s artifacts or creating a play about a historical figure. Secondly, and probably most revolutionary, is the idea that historical museums are moving away from being collectors of the past to being active creators of the present.

Using the Mining the Museum exhibit as an example, I wonder what the public reaction was to the collaboration.   People are used to being shocked and pushed in art galleries, but not necessarily in historical museums.   Instead of seeing the stagnant displays that had been there for years, visitors were treated to displays that were meant to create strong emotion and discussion.   Challenging the emotions as well as the intellect can be a difficult process for visitors. That being said, is challenging emotions such a bad thing?   Probably not, but it will be something that visitors will have to get used to in the new museum model.

Curators will have to become much, much, more creative when developing new installations for museums.   It seems that museums will spend less time will be spent building up collections in lieu of creating collaborations with others.   Ideas are now the focus, not things.