Applied History

Jill Gill – Idaho Black History Museum

IMAG0976 — Idaho Black History Museum, photo by Alisha Graefe

The Idaho Black History Museum may seem a bit out of place in Idaho seeing as the population is only .8% Black. (Census) This museum is located in downtown Boise right next to the Boise Art Museum, the Idaho State Historical Museum, and the Boise Zoo. The museum which is housed in the historic St. Paul Baptist Church is in prime real estate in Boise which was more than likely a strategical move by the museum founders. On the surface, Idaho’s past doesn’t seem to have a rich African American story, but this museum proves otherwise. According to the website, the museum exists to “build bridges between cultures to explore issues that affect Americans of all cultures and ethnicity.” (IBHM.org About Us)

According to Dr. Jill Gill, former Board Member of the museum and history professor at Boise State University, it is a volunteer based museum. The IBHM has no paid professional staff. “Therefore, the board runs the museum. It creates the exhibits, and brings in traveling exhibits, solicits donors, rents the facility to other groups, manages the site, sells items for fund raising, and arranges for volunteers to open the museum for business.” Due to the volunteer-run system, the exhibits are mainly put together by amateurs without any formal curator training. This gives the museum a different feel than other museums in the surrounding area.

Just by walking into the museum, you can tell that it truly is a passion project by members of the community. Gill who has served on the board for many years has helped with events and spoken at some. She has worked on fundraisers, created exhibits, and even helped clean up the museum. Being a board member and volunteer means helping out with everything and truly being involved in every aspect of the museum. You can tell by the exhibits that there is a large amount of input and help from the community. The volunteers that are at the museum regularly give great direction and are extremely helpful. Last time I visited the museum, I only got to look at a couple of the exhibits because I was wrapped up in a great and informative conversation with one of the volunteers (who happened to be the grandson of the man who built the church). This all gives the museum a homegrown, comfortable feeling.

Gill spoke about the size of the museum and their goals that include expanding the donor and revenue base so they can hire part-time professional help. They also hope to bring in new traveling exhibits. They hope to gain more volunteers and to expand its outreach further across the state. “The IBHM has always supported human rights and been part of the Idaho human rights movement, which it will continue to do so via its educational mission.”

Gill describes how her interest in Black history led her to get involved with the museum back in 2002. She explained how the Boise State University history department has had a history of representation on the board and have “tried to be helpful in connecting university classes/programs/resources with the museum and vice versa.” Gill describes the success of the museum as simply the number of viewers as well as engagement of the audience. “Oftentimes classes of school kids come through, and success would be measured by indicators that visitors have learned something, or though of things in a new way as a result of the exhibits/programs.”

Visitors can currently visit the museum and see the large piece of artwork by Pablo Rodriguez depicting the journey of Black Americans throughout history called Slave to President.

Idaho State Archivist

As long as there is recorded history, companies, government agencies, libraries, and museums archivists will always be needed to organize, store, preserve, hold accountable, and improve access to historical documents through improved technology. I interviewed Jim Riley of the Idaho State Archives to get a better understanding of what archivists do and the different skills needed to do the job.

Jim Riley originally went through the history program for both his undergraduate and graduate studies at Boise State and did an internship at the Idaho State Archives. Jim also worked with people at the Idaho Military History Museum working on Spanish American War, which was his area of study for his master’s thesis. Jim also worked on the Adjutant General’s collection at the Idaho State Archives, gathering information on active duty troops back to the Nez Perce War. Jim ended up getting a job with the Idaho State Archives due to his internship. Jim also helped digitizing old photos at the archives, and is currently working at the Idaho State Archives and teaching at Boise State in history.

The usual work that Jim does at the archives is processing public record requests for people, which he says takes half of his time, the other half is working on projects finding information for the legislature, needed on a piece of legislation or local projects. The people that Jim works with on a regular basis vary depending on the project. Sometimes, Jim works with legislature, local law enforcement, and the public. Jim can, at times, choose projects occasionally but most of his time is responding to requests or assigned projects, needed by the local community or legislature.

A history degree or a master’s in history is needed for most entry level positions. Jim says that if you are looking to work in most university libraries, one needs a master’s degree in Library Information Science. Jim expected when he started that he would be doing a lot more in collections instead, he is doing more in legislative work and public requests, but that always changes and he finds interesting things when doing research or researching requests for the public or legislature. The salary normally stays the same and depends on the budget by the legislature. Normally cost of living increases are given each year. Jim says he makes, as a state archivist, $33,000 a year.

Positions in the archive field working for the state are funded by legislature and the state budget. Some states have better funding so more archivists can be hired. Job opportunities also vary in some places depending on specific fields. Jim says that this is typical for most state jobs but can change when working for private companies. Jim mentioned that one archivist left and got a job at company, which would pay substantially more. Jim says that the education needed for entry-level and mid-level is at least as master’s degree. The specific degrees needed are history, public administration, and library information science. The most favored degree would be the Library Information Science Degree, but it depends on what kind of work you want to do in archive field. In order to progress into the upper levels of employment more education is needed. A PhD is a typical requirement when progressing into the upper levels of employment as an archivist. In order to make more pay, most archivists end up taking a test to get the Digital Archive Specialist Certificate and the Arrangement and Description Certificate. This allows helps with getting new jobs or progressing in their current job. These certificates are similar to what an accountant would get in order to become a CPA.

I have talked with Jim prior to this interview, and it always fascinating to hear about all the different information and projects he works on at any given time. I have noticed that Jim’s demeanor changes when I ask him about his job and the excitement in his voice when he explains some of his current and past projects. Jim really enjoys his job and has been a huge influence on me, in pursuing a career as an archivist. Jim’s best advice for getting a job in archives is to get an internship because that is the best way to experience in the field. The majority of people that do internships get jobs with archives because they are already known and have experience working in that particular archive and with the staff already.

Jim Duran, Digital Archivist and Side Project Historian

In an ever-more digitizing society, the work of a digital archivist is growing. I sat down with Jim Duran to discuss the job of a digital archivist and how the field is changing and what it takes to be a digital archivist.

Duran has worked in the Boise State University Special Collections since 2007, and been the Digital Archivist since 2015. He began his career as a library assistant for the BSU Special Collections while working to obtain his undergraduate math degree. He enjoyed working at the library, and his interest in history was peaked through classes and interactions with history professors in the Residential College housing program. His choice to study history was further influenced by his interest in cause and effect, agency, social systems, and opportunities to teach people who are interested in history. More specifically, with archives, Duran enjoyed organizing things and having the ability to save history from obscurity. Duran decided to pursue a career in libraries, graduating from the Boise State Master of Arts, History program in 2013. He is currently working on his Master in Library Science degree, a requirement for academic archive personnel.

Having been involved with the BSU Special Collections during his undergraduate career, Duran wanted to continue working there for a number of reasons. First, as a Boise State alum, Duran liked the Boise State community, campus, and city of Boise. Secondly, working for a smaller archive with fewer staff allowed for more freedom when exploring different aspects of archives. Lastly, the location of Boise as a capital city offered opportunities to collect political papers and corresponding documentation, which could provide multiple perspectives on historic and current events.

As a digital archivist, Duran’s day is usually spent working with students, staff, and the public, providing access to materials, managing interns, and processing new donations. Additionally, he digitizes audio/visual materials by converting obsolete formats to digital, facilitates duplications since materials cannot leave the area, and creating digital collections. Since 2015, a major part of the job has been website development. That entails creating websites for content management, which make existing digital collections accessible online. The focus for such collections has primarily been University archives and regional papers from Southwest Idaho.

For those interested in history and archival careers, Duran offered up some sound advice. In history, he advised that finding non-profit organizations to work with is a major advantage. Many grants require non-profit involvement, so finding a non-profit that shares your passion for a certain subject increases your probability of obtaining a grant. As historians, many times we are required to write with a specific client or audience in mind. His advice is to practice writing for different audiences as much as possible. In reference to archives, his advice was to volunteer and intern to gain experience. As the field turns more and more digital, he also offered to consider learning a coding language. For those interested in archival work, the standard for academic libraries is a Masters in Library Science, as they will most likely be teaching. The standards for non-academic libraries are a little more relaxed. Some helpful skills are knowledge in the certain styles of processing collections, computer guidelines in describing collections, and familiarity with systems that manage digital content. Additionally, skills associated with negotiating with donors, attention to detail and organization, and an ability to relate what people are looking for with what is available are desired. Duran further emphasizes an awareness that the work you perform is permanent and meant to last a long time. One of the challenges that he faces regularly is that there are no standards for how to archive and preserve digital materials. The policies for such practices are still being written for digital collections.

Since 2011 Duran has also been a side project historian, usually employed through the City of Boise Arts and History Department. He enjoys the variety of the side projects and their ability to spice things up. It was through this collaboration with the City of Boise Arts and History and with the Boise Public Library that Duran published a book about the history of the Central Bench. The book was a success, provided history on a relatively unknown subject, and was a fun way to support the Central Bench neighborhood. The book was so well-received, that the first printing of 1,000 copies was gone in three weeks. As a side historian, Duran’s projects are almost always related to neighborhood associations and grant funded. When on a project, he devotes about 10-20 hours a week to research, writing, interviewing people, and presenting his findings.

My favorite section of the interview was devoted to the projects that Duran is proudest of. He mentioned his Central Bench History book, his Photo Services Negatives Collection, and his Master’s thesis. The Photo Services Negatives Collection involved over half a million photos on two obsolete content management systems. Duran was able to migrate data to access it and preserve the digital content. This project is an example of why Duran likes working in archives. He states that, “Archives can be very rewarding if you enjoy preserving history and helping people discover it”. His Master’s thesis was focused on the Morrison-Knudsen construction company based in Boise, and its connection to Cold War era Afghanistan. Duran discovered that not much research had been done on the subject, conducted interviews of past employees, and became the expert on Morrison-Knudsen. He was contacted by the BBC, the Washington Post, and others to discuss the company. Duran created a professional niche for himself and is particularly proud of his thesis for that.

In an age increasingly digitizing, the work of Jim Duran will not cease any time soon. His interview shed light on the roles of archivists in preserving digital content, and what it takes to enter the field and be successful.

Central Bench History book by Jim Duran

The most special things in Special Collections

As an undergraduate I embarked on a solo transcription and translation of a portion of Boise State University’s sixteenth century copy of Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica, a twelfth century university history textbook. In order to perform a proper textual comparison, I needed to procure another version of this text. My search led me to the University of Iowa Library Special Collections. After a thoroughly enjoyable exchange between myself and the curatorial staff I obtained digital representations of what I needed.
This experience had a real impact on me. I decided I needed to find out how one came to be in a position to be around old texts all the time.
For this purpose I contacted Amy H. Chen, Special Collections Instruction Librarian at the University of Iowa. I asked, “What path led you to your current position?”
She replied, “I obtained a PhD in English from Emory in 2013. During my time at Emory, I worked in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL, now Rose Library). That experience allowed me to get a Council on Library and Information Research (CLIR) postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alabama, where I worked from 2013-2015 as the coordinator of exhibitions, instruction, and online outreach. I then moved to the University of Iowa to serve as the Special Collections Instruction Librarian in June 2015. In October 2016, I became the interim English and American Literature librarian.”
Having no idea as to what a Special Collections librarian does, I asked, “What sort of projects do you work on?”
“I coordinate instruction for our department, which means managing the 250+ classes that book with us on an annual basis. I also do teach, but we all teach here at Iowa. On the side, I do things like develop games (#codexconquest and #markthegame on Twitter if you want to check it out), serve on local and national committees for both English and special collections, and conduct my own research. I publish in the fields of pedagogy and literary collection acquisition; the latter of which I am currently writing an academic book on.”
Intrigued by these opportunities, I asked, “Are you afforded autonomy to pick your own projects, or are projects generally assigned to you by other in your organization or elsewhere?”
“I create my own projects,” she stated, “aside from the general coordination of instruction.”
Knowing so little about the challenges that Special Collections librarians I asked, “What are the current issues in your field?”
“The role of PhDs in libraries, PhD job placement overall, increasing pedagogy in special collections to partner with DH and move beyond show and tells, information literacy standards (especially following the election!), moving toward multiple sessions per class rather than one shot classes, game development in higher education.”
I asked, “How is your position currently funded? Is this typical for positions in your field or organization?”
She answered, “I am salaried through my department, yes, this is normal. I am salaried as a Librarian II (will be a III in June 2017) but many are salaried on a non-librarian level.”
Hoping that she was as enamored with Historia Scholastica as I am, I asked, “Knowing that you prize everything in your care, is there one thing you prize above the others?” I was dismayed when she replied, “Maybe our Babylonian clay tablet, our oldest item in the collection. I also am partial to our medieval manuscripts on paper (especially rare), and the marker drawings of Kurt Vonnegut.”

While medieval text books, clay tablets, ink drawings, and the lot are special, and worthy of the title, it is my humble opinion the most special thing is Special Collections are the librarians charged with their protection.

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.

The Vastly Significant Topic of Slavery and Public History

The topic of slavery is a difficult one regardless of background and personal experiences. I agreed whole-heartedly that Americans know little about history, slavery in particular. My own experiences attest to that. I attended K-12 grades in California and Nevada, much removed from issues concerning the Civil War, segregation, and slavery. I received the standard glossed over narrative of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. Last semester, taking the History of Race and Rights class, I was embarrassed by the amount of information that was unknown to me. I left that class with a much deeper understanding of contemporary issues that others are clueless about. I know I’m not the only one with this experience, and I think it shows the holes in public education. I also agree with the statement that history must be taught in various non-academic settings. Many of the examples shown in the book represent exhibitions appearing on the eastern side of the country. That is problematic because it further distances the information from people like me, who have never traveled east of Utah (besides Florida, but it was only for a day so I don’t count it). It’s important for these exhibits to tour the country to reach people who otherwise would only receive the national educational standard version of the South, supplemented by Gone With the Wind. Although I wonder if it is futile to try to reach the Southerners who so deeply believe that the war isn’t over and that slavery did not cause the Civil War.

Within the reading I was interested in how the power of places was presented. This was profoundly present in the Williamsburg slave auction and with “Back of the Big House”. By removing Williamsburg from the slave auction, and replacing it with a mall, the power of the dramatization is completely lost and becomes a farce. It amazes me that when planning such an event, people were blind to the lost context that came from the site itself.

I’m curious how the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture last fall has presented the difficult topic of slavery and subsequent Jim Crow oppression. I have not heard much outcry, which makes me wonder if it’s not as “shocking” as it should be. Like the book suggests, race and slavery within American memory risks provoking defensiveness and confrontation. I’m also curious if the museum utilizes any participation elements that we’ve previously discussed. I would hope that whites take advantage of the opportunity to visit the museum and hopefully fill in some of the gaps in their understanding of history. It is so important to continue to find ways of discussing race and slavery.

I think it’s also noteworthy that the museum is on the National Mall down the road from monuments and buildings honoring the very men who owned slaves.

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.