History News Spring 2016

WHY Historical

Thinking is NOT about

History

REFLECTIONS

on a Career

THE SPIRIT OF

Rebirth

“

WE ARE

FAILING TO PRESERVE HISTORY.

OUR HISTORY IS AT RISK OF

“

BECOMING INVISIBLE.

Dr. Kristen Gwinn-Becker Historian

·

Digital Strategist

· Founder of HistoryIT

View the complete TEDx talk on ‘The Future of History’ at www.historyit.com/TEDx Photo Credit: Sarah Beard-Buckley, TEDxDirigo 2014

Contents

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SPRING 2016 VOLUME 71, #2

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18 ON THE COVER

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Teens Make History Apprentices celebrate the opening of their exhibit and accompanying play, Where Did You Go To High School? in March 2016.

Departments

Features

3 On Doing Local History

7 Reflections on a Career in Public History

By Carol Kammen

By John E. Fleming

5 Generation Why

13 Why Historical Thinking Is Not about History

By Colleen Dilenschneider

By Sam Wineburg

INSIDE: TECHNICAL LEAFLET

27 Award Winner Spotlight

18 The Spirit of Rebirth

By Brandi Burns

By David A. Janssen

31 Book Reviews

22 Historical Thinking Is an Unnatural Act

Incorporating Diversity and Inclusion into Young Adult Programs

By Dwight T. Pitcaithley and Ann Toplovich

By Tim Grove

Courtesy Missouri History Museum

By Dina Bailey, Chris Taylor, and Elizabeth Pickard

History News is a publication of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). History News exists to foster publication, scholarly research, and an open forum for discussion of best practices, applicable theories, and professional experiences pertinent to the field of state and local history.

THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STATE AND LOCAL HISTORY

EDITOR Bob Beatty | ADVERTISING Hannah Hethmon DESIGN Go Design, LLC: Gerri Winchell Findley, Suzanne Pfeil

History News (ISSN0363-7492) is published quarterly by American Association for State and Local History, 1717 Church Street, Nashville TN 37203. Periodicals Postage Paid at Nashville, TN. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to History News, 1717 Church Street, Nashville TN 37203-2991.

Article manuscripts dealing with all aspects of public history are welcome, including current trends, timely issues, and best practices for professional development and the overall improvement of the history field, particularly articles that give a fresh perspective to traditional theories, in-depth case studies that reveal applicable and relevant concepts, and subject matter that has the ability to resonate throughout all levels of the field. For information on article submissions and review, see http://about.aaslh.org/history-news. Single copies are $10.

Postmaster, please send form 3579 to History News, AASLH, 1717 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37203-2921. Periodical postage paid in Nashville, Tennessee. Entire contents copyrighted Š2016 by the American Association for State and Local History. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the American Association for State and Local History.

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From the Editor

ou probably know Sam Wineburg from his awardwinning book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. The book primarily discussed how history is taught in schools, but it resonated with many of us as well. In his History News review of the book Tim Grove wrote, “This is a book that will interest not only history educators, but all in the history field who desire to communicate the importance and value of the study of history to a populace that is often less than eager to embrace it.” We took to heart Wineburg’s message of the importance of teaching the processes of doing history, and how historians use them to construct an understanding of the past.

This past September in Louisville, Wineburg spoke at our 2015 Annual Meeting. In his address, excerpted in this issue, Sam expanded on his original thesis. He discussed not how to best teach history, but why we teach it in the first place: it is an essential skill for “the vocation of citizen.”

Inherent in that, he argues, is the ability to discern the difference between credible and unreliable sources. This is a particular challenge of the Internet Age, is it not? Sam’s piece provides some concrete proof. I’m sure you can cite numerous examples as well.

Tim Grove writes that history organizations play an important role in nurturing historical thinking. You know

Nelson Chenault

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Tim from his “History Bytes” column, but here he expounds on Wineburg’s original thesis. Inculcating a sense of the complexity of the study of the past and how interpretations change over time, Grove writes, is a vital service we provide our audiences and communities.

How many of you have been stuck with a docent who wanted to tell you everything he or she knew about a given topic? Perhaps you have even been that guide at times. (I plead guilty!) What if, Tim posits, our job isn’t to impart information, but rather to help people understand the historian’s craft? What if we measured success not in the number of facts we impart, but in the ways we inspire people to appreciate the past, and develop critical thinking skills that connect the past, present, and the future?

Perhaps that is our true measure of success.

Consider the deeper purpose of our work. Consider how you provide opportunities to think critically about the past.

We play an important role, you and I. It is much larger than just imparting information. It is about developing modes of thinking. I can think of no entity better positioned to do this than history organizations.

Bob Beatty

OFFICERS

T H E A M E R I C A N A S S O C I AT I O N F O R S TAT E A N D L O C A L H I S T O RY Acknowledges and appreciates these Endowment Donors for their extraordinary support: Dr. William T. Alderson Society

Friends of the Endowment Society

$50,000+

$5,000 – $9,999

Ms. Sylvia Alderson Winston–Salem, NC

Atlanta History Center Atlanta, GA

Anonymous

Mr. Rick Beard New York, NY

Mr. John Frisbee (Deceased) Concord, NH National Endowment for the Humanities Washington, DC Mr. Dennis & Ms. Trudy O’Toole Monticello, NM

AASLH President’s Society

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Mr. & Mrs. Salvatore Cilella Atlanta, GA Mr. David Crosson & Ms. Natalie Hala San Francisco, CA Ms. Terry L. Davis Nashville, TN

$10,000 – $49,999

Mr. John & Ms. Anita Durel Baltimore, MD

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Mr. & Mrs. Charles F. Bryan, Jr. Richmond, VA

Ms. Barbara Franco Harrisburg, PA

Ms. Sandra Sageser Clark Holt, MI

Mr. James B. Gardner Washington, DC

HISTORY New York, NY

Historic Annapolis Foundation Annapolis, MD

Martha-Ellen Tye Foundation Marshalltown, IA

Indiana Historical Society Indianapolis, IN

SPRING 2016

Mr. Russell Lewis & Ms. Mary Jane Jacob Chicago, IL Maryland Historical Society Baltimore, MD Missouri History Museum St. Louis, MO Ms. Candace Tangorra Matelic Pawleys Island, SC Ms. Kathleen S. & Mr. James L. Mullins Grosse Pointe Shores, MI National Heritage Museum Lexington, MA Nebraska State Historical Society Lincoln, NE Ms. Laura Roberts & Mr. Edward Belove Cambridge, MA Rowman & Littlefield Lanham, MD Ms. Ruby Rogers Cincinnati, OH Mr. Jim & Ms. Janet Vaughan Washington, DC Mr. George L. Vogt Portland, OR Ms. Jeanne & Mr. Bill Watson Orinda, CA

Julie Rose, Chair West Baton Rouge Museum Katherine Kane, Vice Chair Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Lynne Ireland, Immediate Past Chair Nebraska State Historical Society Linnea Grim, Secretary Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Norman O. Burns, II, Treasurer Maymont Foundation

COUNCIL Bill Adair, Pew Center for Arts and Heritage Dina Bailey, Independent Museum Consultant Marian Carpenter, Delaware Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs Janet Gallimore, Idaho State Historical Society Leigh A. Grinstead, LYRASIS Jane Lindsey, Juneau-Douglas City Museum Burt Logan, Ohio History Connection Nicola Longford, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza Erin Carlson Mast, President Lincoln’s Cottage Lorraine McConaghy, Museum of History & Industry Sarah Blannett Pharaon, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience Donna Sack, Naper Settlement Will Ticknor, Center for Museum Resources Ken Turino, Historic New England Tobi Voigt, Detroit Historical Society Phyllis Waharockah-Tasi, Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center

STAFF Aja Bain, Program Coordinator Bob Beatty Chief of Engagement Cherie Cook, Senior Program Manager John R. Dichtl, President and CEO Bethany L. Hawkins, Chief of Operations Hannah Hethmon, Membership & Database Coordinator Terry Jackson, Membership Associate Sylvia McGhee, Finance and Business Manager

On Doing Local History >

By Carol Kammen

The Era of the Great War

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ineteen fourteen was the year of the first scheduled commercial airline flight, a short hop from St. Petersburg to Tampa, Florida (followed by a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco later that year). It was the year the Ford Motor Company fully streamlined its production of the Model T—manufacturing a car every ninety minutes. Greyhound became the first national bus line, Cleveland installed the first traffic light and the Panama Canal opened. Transportation innovations weren’t the only thing 1914 saw. We celebrated Mother’s Day for the first time and the foxtrot was introduced.

Nineteen fourteen was also the year the Great War began. Europeans have already begun to pay attention to commemorations of World War I, and there will be many programs and activities in the United States starting in 2017.

It is important to remember the war, to honor sacrifice, and to recall causes and outcomes. This essay addresses ways to look at the tremendous change over time that occurred between 1914 and 1924 into which we might fit our discussions of war as one of the causes of significant transformation.

I see the decade as marking the end of the nineteenth century. It was a decade in which we became more mobile and more modern. These years were a time when we began to experience a more national culture, rather than one that might be defined as small-town or regional.

The assembly line produced a relatively inexpensive automobile whose price was within reach of many Americans, not just the elite. It provided Americans with the ability to go beyond rail and trolley lines, to explore and think of more distant places. We became tourists. The automobile also required much of us.

It demanded improved roads, and the codification of an etiquette, a set of regulations so we could pass safely by each other, take turns at corners, and park to the side. The automobile led to the transnational highway system.

The car changed the physical landscape, not only with roads. Signs sprang

up everywhere: showing distances, highlighting local features, and, of course, selling products. Automobility led to a difference in how we talked about time and space. The automobile changed our sense of distance as well. Albany was no longer two train rides away, requiring a wait in a connecting station. It was six, then five, then four hours distant. The automobile was part of a commercial culture and of visible status because not everyone bought the Model T—fancier cars were certainly available for those with more means.

The war itself changed a great deal as well. Young people traveled to places far from home (domestically and internationally). They learned new skills and met

The era made us look more like the people we became, and less like those of the nineteenth century. others who were quite unlike themselves.

African Americans enthusiastically went to war, but their participation was not always greeted graciously. And women drove hospital vehicles, worked with refugee relief organizations, and became professionally trained nurses.

The war also involved America in international affairs and in a tenuous peace that precipitated another war a generation later (and whose terms we are still working out today). In this momentous decade, the U.S. sent Marines into Haiti and the Dominican Republic, flexing our muscle where we claimed it was needed, but was in reality only in our interest.

We commemorate wars to remember the sacrifice of those who have gone before. As historians, we are obligated, in our attempts to interpret the past, to show differing viewpoints—to utilize the memories and the mementos of that era in order to understand various perspectives. It seems to me, however, that we

might be wise to also view World War I as part of a decade that gave birth to a people with a more greatly shared culture than previously.

Movies blossomed during this era, from Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp to The Birth of a Nation. In 1916 Mary Pickford became the first female movie star to earn $1 million. Some consider Douglas Fairbanks in 1920’s The Mask of Zorro to represent the first appearance of a superhero. Not only did these films and movie stars foster a cult of personality, they tied Americans together with a common cultural experience.

Mass media wasn’t limited to motion pictures. Radio, at first local, was soon national and ubiquitous. The first religious broadcast came out of Pittsburgh in 1921. Vinyl recordings became popular.

American foodways became more national. Coca-Cola first appeared in 1916, and Eskimo Pies appeared six years later. By 1916, people could buy goods at the first true self-service grocery store, Memphis’s Piggly Wiggly.

Influenza hit the country in three waves in 1918 and 1919. It felled people in military barracks and in their homes, a pandemic that killed more people than the Great War. Called at first the Spanish Flu, it killed not only the young and the elderly, but also previously healthy adults.

It was the new plague.

Major international events affected the nation as well. The Russian Revolution reverberated on this side of the Atlantic.

It led to the Red Scare of 1919-1920s.

Renewed union activity, and the political fear it incited resulted in punishing reactions, such as the Palmer raids on those perceived to be radicals and socialists.

In this interesting decade, women attempted and then succeeded in expanding democracy. In 1917, women demonstrating for suffrage were arrested in front of the White House, ten at first, forty-one later that year. Twenty thousand women took to the streets in a suffrage parade in New York City as women sought their own voice in civic affairs leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

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On Doing Local History > The decade saw the social experiment that resulted in restriction of the sale of alcohol grow into to full-scale prohibition.

Initial laws curtailed alcohol sales around military bases. This linked prohibition to the flu pandemic—as the virus was a worry in densely packed military quarters.

There was also the issue of who deserved to be “American.” Restrictive immigration legislation enacted in 1924 limited the number of immigrants to 2 percent of the number from that country already living here according to the 1890 Census. This superseded earlier bills limiting immigration from Japan, China, and Eastern and Southern Europe and other legislative attempts to preserve what was crudely thought to be an ideal of American homogeneity.

I am suggesting this broader interpretive scope as we mark the anniversary of our entrance into the Great War. I want to encourage you to find ways to indicate the significance of these vast changes.

Change did not occur all at once, and not everywhere at the same time. But over those years, we moved from the people we had been to a new sense of ourselves.

From 1914 to 1924, America developed some national characteristics that have only intensified over time. The country modernized; it produced more and more ways to communicate over space so that people in Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon, might have common experiences

and concerns. They might speak about the same movie and swoon over the same jazz singer. They might know about the same issues, for example: • Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in 1915.

• Columbia University awarded its first Pulitzer Prizes in 1917.

• The post office issued the first airmail stamp in 1918.

• Prohibition became the law of the land on January 1, 1920.

•R eader’s Digest first appeared in 1922, the same year Calvin Coolidge gave the first presidential radio broadcast.

• The first crossword puzzle book was published in 1924.

They are individual events that together made a national culture. It was a culture available to most, but of course not to everyone and not at the same time everywhere.

In 1893, in an essay historians still discuss today, historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced the closing of the American frontier. Regionalisms have never fully disappeared, but a national culture did develop between 1914 and 1924. We experienced greater mobility as transportation evolved. There was the interesting rise in celebrity, shared travails such as war and illness, and workers of this era who stood up to fight for their rights.

These years saw people democratize, individualize, participate for their own civil rights, and enjoy greater communication.

The era made us look more like the people we became, and less like those of the nineteenth century. This is not to say all of these things worked out well for everyone.

Certainly that was not the case. As historians we know this process was long in coming, that it was not always greeted with enthusiasm, and that some people came along only because they had to.

I believe that we need to commemorate the Great War to remember why it happened, how it ended, and its long-lasting effects on global politics today. Yet, it is important also to see the events of the war in the context of its time. It was not just the war that shaped the first three decades of the twentieth century, but countless other changes as well. It was truly a momentous decade.

I would not suggest that any one exhibit or lecture or program be about all these things. I do not believe in overburdening either history organizations or the public.

But in discussing the war, the materials that document it, and historical interpretations, it would be wise for us to indicate that much more was going on during this interesting time. I believe that we can find ways of suggesting the greater picture while also commemorating the Great War and I think it important that we do so. t “On Doing Local History” is intended to encourage dialogue on the essential issues of local history.

Carol Kammen can be reached at ckk6@cornell.edu.

AASLH acknowledges and appreciates these Institutional Partners and Patrons for their extraordinary support: Patron Members $250+ Jacqui Sue Ainley-Conley Arvada, CO Bob Beatty Franklin, TN Pamela J. Bennett Indianapolis, IN Ellsworth Brown Madison, WI Karen Cooper Minneapolis, MN Georgianna Contiguglia Denver, CO John R. Dichtl Nashville, TN Stephen Elliott St. Paul, MN Leigh A. Grinstead Denver, CO Lori Gundlach Fairview Park, OH John Herbst Indianapolis, IN Jeff Hirsch Philadelphia, PA

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Lynne Ireland Lincoln, NE Trevor Jones Frankfort, KY Katherine Kane Hartford, CT Russell Lewis Chicago, IL Thomas A. Mason Indianapolis, IN Lorraine McConaghy Kirkland, WA Jean Svandlenak Kansas City, MO Richard E. Turley Salt Lake City, UT Bev Tyler Setauket, NY Tobi Voigt Detroit, MI Robert Wolz Key West, FL

Institutional Partners $1,000+ Alabama Department of Archives and History Montgomery, AL Arizona Historical Society Tucson, AZ Atlanta History Center Atlanta, GA Belle Meade Plantation Nashville, TN Billings Farm & Museum Woodstock, VT Bullock Texas State History Museum Austin, TX Cincinnati Museum Center Cincinnati, OH Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Williamsburg, VA Conner Prairie Fishers, IN First Division Museum at Cantigny Wheaton, IL Florida Division of Historical Resources Tallahassee, FL Hagley Museum & Library Wilmington, DE The Hermitage Nashville, TN Historic Ford Estates Grosse Pointe Shores, MI

Historic House Trust of New York City New York, NY Historic New England Boston, MA History New York, NY History Colorado Denver, CO Idaho State Historical Society Boise, ID Indiana Historical Society Indianapolis, IN Indiana State Museum & Historic Sites Corporation Indianapolis, IN Kentucky Historical Society Frankfort, KY Massachusetts Historical Society Boston, MA Michigan Historical Center Lansing, MI Minnesota Historical Society St. Paul, MN Missouri History Museum St. Louis, MO Museum of History and Industry Seattle, WA Nantucket Historical Association Nantucket, MA National Trust for Historic Preservation Washington, DC

Nebraska State Historical Society Lincoln, NE North Carolina Office of Archives and History Raleigh, NC Ohio History Connection Columbus, OH Old Sturbridge Village Sturbridge, MA Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission Harrisburg, PA Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library Lexington, MA Senator John Heinz History Center Pittsburgh, PA The Sixth Floor Museum Dallas, TX Strawbery Banke Museum Portsmouth, NH The Strong Rochester, NY Tennessee State Museum Nashville, TN Utah State Parks Salt Lake City, UT Virginia Historical Society Richmond, VA William J. Clinton Foundation Little Rock, AR Wisconsin Historical Society Madison, WI Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources Cheyenne, WY

Generation Why >

By Colleen Dilenschneider

Why Adding Millennials to Your Board Is a Good Move, TBH* *To be honest

T

here’s a lot of talk among leaders about engaging millennials within history organizations. And who can blame them? We millennials are awesome!

Just kidding…kind of. Even we know that we can be pretty darn frustrating.

We’ve created a bit of a reputation of feeling entitled in the workplace, having our noses stuck in our mobile devices while we are constantly connected to and distracted by the Web, and having a hard time abiding by professional, hierarchical structures. Data show we value mentorship, appreciate feedback, and crave affirmation.

Thankfully, though, data also note we are a whole lot more than an executive time suck when working on behalf of organizations! Millennials have numerous demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that make us especially valuable leaders and constituents.

In fact, organizations increasingly need to engage millennials—both at the admission booth and in the boardroom—in order to survive and thrive.

Neglecting millennial board representation doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t loads of important conversations taking place in boardrooms about how to better engage this valuable cohort. Through my own work, I’ve found it’s not uncommon at board meetings for there to be numerous Baby Boomers—and a few members of Generation X—waxing poetic about the urgent need to “engage millennials”… without any input from actual millennials at the table. (During these conversations, imagine 90 million-ish millennials lining the room with our hands up, looking concerned, and all asking quietly, “Hey, do guys you need some help?”)

Don’t have at least one millennial on your board of directors yet? Here are five

critical reasons to start cultivating some impressive millennials to serve on the board of your organization:

1) Millennials represent the largest generation in human history.

Until Generation Y came along, Baby Boomers represented the largest generational cohort in the United States.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, millennials (born between 1980-2000) total 91 million persons in the United States, and outnumber Baby Boomers (born between years 1946-1964) by more than 16 million people. As Boomers age, this divide will continue to grow. This statistic alone should be more than enough to make executive leaders pause to consider the future of their organizations. Moreover, millennials will surpass Baby Boomers in terms of buying power this year. We are also the most diverse generation in U.S. history.

Approximately 44 percent of millennials are part of a minority racial or ethnic group!

So, essentially, yes—we are a large bunch that is steadily engulfing the United States in a dense fog of WiFi, selfies, brunch spots, startups, snapchats, and contemporary folk-pop music. (Get pumped!)

2) Millennials will have primary influence on culture and policy for an unprecedented duration.

Millennials who have children are not having as many of them as their Baby Boomer parents. Moreover, Generation X (which is only roughly half the size of Generation Y) is simply too small in number to give birth to a future, large generation. Simply put, America’s birth-over-death rate is not increasing at the historic rates established by Baby Boomers. This means that millennials will remain the largest generational demographic in the United States for a much longer period of time than did the Baby

Imagine 90 million-ish millennials lining the room with our hands up, looking concerned, and all asking quietly, “Hey, do guys you need some help?”

Boomers—or any prior generation to date.

This may well be the most straightforward reason to get some millennials involved on the board: There are a lot of us, and unless something crazy happens we’re going to be around for a long time. (Truly. There are a lot of us and it will be a long time.)

This also means that millennial support is increasingly necessary from a policy perspective. Millennials will eventually populate a vast majority of government leadership positions, thanks to mandatory retirement policies. Inviting millennials onto your board helps ensure your organization’s best interests are well represented and protected. In a way, voting millennials onto your board may be a lot like voting in your organization’s own best interests.

3) Engaging millennials requires immediate, strategic shifts in leadership mentalities…and millennial board members can help.

Millennials aren’t horrible visitors, either. If fact, we may arguably be a history organization’s best visitors—and millennial board members can help reach this visitor demographic powerhouse.

At IMPACTS Research, we define a high-propensity visitor as someone who­ demonstrates the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that indicate an increased likelihood of visiting a museum.1 Millennial high-propensity visitors are the most super-connected among the three generations that make up the majority of the market today—meaning we are most likely to have access to the Web at home, at work, and on a mobile device.

Millennials taking the lead in digital connectivity may not be surprising. With index values over 100 for all three generations, however, being super-connected is an indicator of heightened connectivity for all visitors! That Internet thing? It’s not just for reaching the kids.

Interestingly, millennials are also the most likely to recommend a museum to HISTORY NEWS

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Generation Why > a friend and revisit sooner. Add this all up, and millennials are coming back most often and therefore have more opportunities to have positive experiences. And, because we are super-connected, we can share these positive experiences with lots of friends. Millennials can do a lot of valuable legwork for organizations in terms of reaching potential audiences and promulgating positive messaging.

Engaging millennials isn’t merely a communication medium opportunity with social media serving as a selfbrewed, ale-filled holy grail. Engaging millennials requires new ways of thinking about marketing, development, human resources and operations, and even new strategic practices regarding membership.

Millennial board members may provide valuable perspective regarding their own peer group and generational mindset.

4) Millennials can help lead a new generation of giving.

Despite what may be a strange desire to perpetuate the myth that millennials never do and never will actively contrib-

ute to nonprofit organizations, data from the 2014 Millennial Impact Report and multiple other sources demonstrate that most millennials do contribute. Indeed, as the generation with the largest amount of student loan debt, things aren’t all rainbows and unicorns for every millennial. That said, millennials are the largest generation in the country and in the workforce…so logic alone would have it that some of us have some dough. After all, Mark Zuckerberg is a millennial, and so are many, many other financially successful leaders.

The good things about adding other, more diverse members to your board are still true for millennials: insight, connectivity to the right people, an “in” with a valuable group of up-and-comers, and fresh perspectives. Millennial board members can help spearhead a new generation of connectivity to your organization and a new era of philanthropy over time. The oldest of us are thirty-five, and many of our connections to causes are solidifying as we create our own families.

Want to have millennial donors later?

You need to engage them now.

With all of these reasons why it is critical

to add quality millennials to your organization’s board of directors, why are so many organizations lacking in millennial representation where it counts most? What are we so afraid of? Is it change? Shifting ideas? Loss of power? It seems that generational change is inevitable and the choice is yours, older and wiser history lovers, as to whether or not to embrace new perspectives at the hearts of your institutions.

To quote the magnificent Albus Dumbledore, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” At the risk of sounding like a Harry Potter-loving millennial, I wonder if the man is on to something. t Colleen Dilenschneider is Chief Market Engagement Officer for IMPACTS, a global leader in predictive market intelligence and related technologies. She is the author and publisher of the popular blog Know Your Own Bone (colleendilen.com/), a resource for creative engagement for nonprofit and cultural organizations. She can be reached at colleendilen@gmail.com.

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See http://on.aaslh.org/GenWhySpring2016.

J. M. Ke l l e y l T D.

Specializing in the Preservation of Period Architecture and Interiors 5075 Old Traveller Lane • Mechanicsville, VA 23111 • Phone: (804) 200-5705 • www.jmkelleyltd.com

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SPRING 2016

Official Photograph, The White House, Washington

Reflections on a Career Public History in

By John E. Fleming E d i t o r ’s N o t e : This article continues our series on AASLH’s diamond anniversary. Here, John E. Fleming, who won the AASLH Award of Distinction in 2008, adds a personal note to our history, as he shares his experiences as one of the few African Americans working in the field at a national level through much of his long and distinguished career.

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here are milestones in all of our lives that make us pause and reflect on people, places, or events of significance. Certainly thirty-five years in one’s chosen profession is one of those milestones. Whether we enter the history field as a professional historian or not, most of us come to understand the meaning of history from our own family experiences.

We turn to family histories as we grapple with questions about our roots and identity. I am not

Fleming and then-Vice President George H.W. Bush at the National AfroAmerican Museum & Cultural Center in 1988.

Giving the gold to the ship’s captain, he told the captain to tell Avery, his former master, that he could not sell his fellow Africans into slavery in exchange for his freedom.

I remembered this and other stories my grandfather told me. He served as a role model for me on what it meant to be an African American man in a segregated southern society.

He set the standards for how one was to respond to injustices. Thus, several months after the February 1960 sit-ins at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, my Olive Hill High School classmates and I were given the opportunity to correct an injustice in our hometown of Morganton by sitting-in in the local five-and-dime store.

Similarly, I was part of the college team that organized Berea College students to participate in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. As a student in Berea, I, and my other classmates, were devastated by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to have inspired a whole generation of young people. His presidential campaign gave me the inspiration to run for President of the North Carolina Association of Student Councils. Later as a college graduate, I would take up his challenge to “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” and joined the Peace Corps.

Historians Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen found in The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life that while white Americans tend to think of the past as

sure that I would have ever entered the field of history if it had not been for my paternal grandfather, who we affectionately called De Pa, and his stories. I grew up in a small western North Carolina town and heard many times the story of the old African named Tamishan, De Pa’s great-great-grandfather.

According to family tradition, Tamishan could read and write from the Koran and could speak seven languages. He was unhappy enslaved and wanted to return to his native land of Africa. Fearing Tamishan might foment trouble on the plantation, Waightstill Avery, the plantation owner, allowed him to travel to Charleston with William Walton, a local merchant and slave trader. By prearrangement, Walton was to meet the captain of a slave ship and instruct him that in l Afroa reception for the Nationa al Black Caucus officials at sion gres John exchange for his freedom, Con ator and Sen o ), Ohi firm with Fleming (engineer/architectural tural Center: Henry Wilson ator Howard Sen , kes Tamishan was to secure four Sto is Lou n American Museum and Cul sma gres ntative C.J. McLinn, U.S. Con Glenn, Fleming, Ohio represe Africans for enslavement, ll. che Mit ren Par n sma gres Metzenbaum, and Con but was not to go ashore alone once they reached West Africa. During the voyage, Tamishan impressed the captain with his knowledge and was permitted to go ashore. He returned in four days with $400 in gold dust.

HISTORY NEWS

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something personal, African Americans are more likely to think in terms of broad shared experiences like slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. So, too, it was slavery and the struggle for Civil Rights during the Reconstruction era, that first captured my attention in college. While not yet wedded to the idea of history as a profession, I challenged my favorite college professor to be more inclusive and integrate blacks into the American narrative rather than continue his practice of dealing with blacks only during the periods of slavery and the Civil War. It was this same professor who exclaimed to his 98 percent white American history class that no Negro had ever earned an A in his class. Neither did I, in spite of my 89.5 grade point average and A term paper.

How historians interpreted African American history in the 1960s generally mirrored the treatment blacks received in American society. Not even Berea College’s liberal tradition encouraged professors to be more inclusive in their teaching.

For example, African history from the beginning of time to the present was covered in a one semester, two-hour class taught by the chair of the history department. In spite of these structured limitations, I discovered Kenneth Stampp’s Peculiar Institution and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. How refreshing and energizing it was to read Du Bois after plowing through James Pike’s The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government! Inspired and determined now to be one of the new revisionist historians, I tackled the history of Reconstruction in South Carolina in my University of Kentucky graduate seminar on the history of the Old South under Dr. Clement Eaton. Notwithstanding our somewhat opposing views of the Old South, I earned one of the two top grades in Dr. Eaton’s class. Armed with a new vision of my abilities, I decided to study at the University of Chicago under John Hope Franklin. However, I never completed the application, having decided to join the Peace Corps.

During my Peace Corps years in Malawi as a volunteer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. I wrote in my journal that I began keeping in 1967 how disappointed I was in America and its commitment to racial equality.

While thousands of miles from home, I had to suffer the agony of the assassinations in 1968 of two of my heroes

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use-Paul Morse The White Ho

Reflections on a Career in Public History

Fleming (far left) participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March with fellow Berea College students, who stand behind a banner with the motto: “God has made of one blood all nations of men.”

John Fleming

Michael Clark

with the murder of President Kennedy’s brother, New York Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.

Race riots were rampant throughout the major cities of the U.S. I vowed to again become active in the Civil Rights Movement once I returned to the states.

In 1970, I settled in our nation’s capital. I kept that promise when I obtained employment with Youth Pride, Incorporated run by Marion Barry, former organizer of the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee and future mayor of Washington, D.C. Hopeful of combining my interest in civil rights with academic pursuits, I enrolled as a fulltime graduate student at Howard University while working fifty or more hours per week at Pride.

Howard University was considered to be the “Capstone of Negro Education.” Some of the nation’s most gifted and talented scholars taught at Howard. Not only was I inspired by men like Alain Locke and Sterling Brown, I also felt fortunate to be in the history department with Dr. Merze Tate, an international authority on diplomatic relations in the Pacific realm; Dr. Chancellor Williams in African history; and Dr. Rayford W. Logan in African American history.

It was not unusual to see Dr. Logan, Dr. Charles Wesley, Dr. Lorenzo Greene, and Dr. John Hope Franklin all attending the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (today the Association for the Study of African American Life and History). It was as a graduate student that I gained enough nerve to walk up to Dr. Franklin and introduce myself. To my surprise, he was very cordial. It was not long after that we became friends. He would eventually participate on every major history project I coordinated.

Dr. Logan became my mentor at Howard. He was so impressed with my research at the National Archives for a seminar paper on George Ellis, Consul to Liberia, that he made me his graduate assistant and later served as my dissertation advisor. Dr. Logan, then in his seventies, had retired, but upon the insistence of my graduate classmates, continued on in the department until 1974 when his last students graduated. It was under Dr. Logan that my writing skills improved as he guided my research. I worked every day, often seven days a week, either at the National Archives

Fleming speaks to a Jackson State University class at the Council of Federated Organizations.

Barbara Fleming, President George W. and at a White House dinner in 2007.

brought me in close contact with a number of leaders in Washington. ISEP was the only black think tank in the nation exploring issues in higher education as they pertained to African Americans. My study of affirmative action, which included four case studies of institutions of higher education, led an official of Harvard University to strongly suggest that we alter our assessment of Harvard’s poor record on affirmative action for staff, faculty, and students. I informed our board, chaired by Clark Kerr of the University of California, Berkeley, I would be willing to change grammar or typing errors, but I stood by our assessment and would not make any material changes. I was gratified that Dr. Kerr and the entire board supported me.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus hosted book receptions for senior fellows when they published the results of their research. U.S. Representatives Louis Stokes, Shirley Chisholm, and William Natcher; Senator John Glenn; and journalist Ed Bradley were among the many dignitaries attending my reception when The Lengthening Shadow of Slavery was released.

I lived in Washington from 1969 to 1980 with my wife Barbara and two daughters. While having dinner with the board of the institute in 1979, Dr. Lionel Newsome, president of Central State (Ohio) University, leaned across the table and asked me in front of everyone if I wanted to start a national African American museum in Ohio. I recalled the last time someone did that to me, when I worked for the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. I had recruited Vernon Jordan to serve as the speaker for our annual college conference. Following the conference, Mr. Jordan asked if I would move to Atlanta to work for him at the Voter Education Project. I did not know if he was serious, but I did know that I already had a job and that my boss was sitting at the same table when he made the offer. I did not accept. I quickly thought of that evening and how my life might have changed. I was not going to make the same mistake. I told Dr. Newsome I would send him a copy of my resume.

A year passed before I heard from anyone in Ohio. In February 1980, I was invited by the Ohio Historical Society to go to Columbus for an interview with interim director William Kenner, State Representative C.J. McLin, and the search committee. The State of Ohio had charged the historical society to develop a national Afro-American museum.

The state legislature passed legislation to establish a national planning council to advise the nearly all-white historical society on developing the museum. I was asked many ques-

Roy Lewis

Finley & Associates

or the Library of Congress. After I passed my French qualifying exam, Dr. Logan started giving me assignments researching French newspapers.

During my years as a graduate student, I began research on my family genealogy. While going through the Erwin/ Sharpe/Avery Papers at the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, I came across a pamphlet of stories published in the old Morganton News Herald.

You can well imagine my excitement to read about the stories my grandfather told us years before, which I now found written down by Colonel William Walton and published by the paper.

My years at Howard University were shared with time I spent at Youth Pride, Incorporated working for Marion Barry. Pride, Inc. was a grassroots organization designed to help the chronically unemployed, ex-offenders, and addicts.

Pride gave me an opportunity to see firsthand how government used the private sector to bring about social change.

I left Pride to work for the United States Civil Rights Commission when Father Theodore Hesburgh was chair.

While the Commission had no enforcement authority, its moral voice resonated throughout the nation as it issued various reports on the status of civil rights in the nation.

During these early years as a resident of Washington, D.C., I witnessed up close the unfolding of the Watergate scandal. Active in the antiwar movement from the time I was a student at Berea College in the 1960s, I was intrigued when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The next year, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex. It was not unusual to see limousines dropping off high administration officials at Congressional hearings and later stop at the District’s federal courthouse. Following a move to impeach him, President Nixon resigned in August 1974, the same month I completed my doctorate at Howard.

One summer evening during the same month, I was walking from the Library of Congress and ran into Senator Sam Ervin who was from my home town of Morganton. I stopped him and introduced myself. I told him that I was the grandson of W.T. Fleming and that I had just completed my dissertation on blacks in western North Carolina. After reading my dissertation, Senator Ervin agreed to write a foreword if the University of North Carolina published my dissertation.

After graduating from Howard, I started work at the Institute for the Study of Educational Policy (ISEP) that

First Lady Laura Bush, and John Fleming

Fleming at a Capitol Hill book signing for his book The Lengthening Shadow of Slavery with Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress (second from left) in 1976.

Harry Belafonte with Barbara and John Fleming at a gala fundraiser in Wilberforce, Ohio, 1991.

HISTORY NEWS 9

Reflections on a Career in Public History 10

tions during the course of my all-day interview, but only one related to museums: “What museums have you visited and what did you like about them?” Fortunately I had visited a number of the museums within the Smithsonian Institution and had many positive things to say. I was offered the job at the end of the day and later learned that out of seventy-nine applicants, they only interviewed one candidate, me.

I had a strong sense that museums were to be my life’s work, even though I did not have any museum experience and could barely explain the role of a curator or conservator.

I had the academic background, and the historical society, with more than sixty-one museums and historic sites, felt it could provide me with the expertise needed to learn museology while on the job. In retrospect, how would I describe the work environment at the Ohio Historical Society?

Restrained racism? Conservative liberalism? The interesting thing is that no one thought much about building an African American museum or that there would be sufficient artifacts to go into the museum. While the staff never volunteered any assistance, they would provide advice or guidance—but only if asked. Security guards regularly transmitted messages to alert guards on the floor to monitor groups of African American students visiting the museum.

During my first few years on the job, I traveled to more than 133 museums around the country, learning from the best professionals in the field. I went to the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York; the museums of the Smithsonian Institution; the Valentine in Richmond, Virginia; Colonial Williamsburg; the North Carolina Museum of History; city museums in Charleston and Savannah; and Drayton Hall plantation, among others. I found all were willing to share information on their collections and interpretive programs.

I learned who had what collections and ended up writing an article on black material culture for History News. When the director of the Ohio Historical Society suggested that I needed to improve my administrative skills, I applied for and was accepted in the Getty Museum Management Institute.

With so few black professionals in the field, I was recruited to become involved with the American Association for State and Local History, the Ohio Museums Association, and the American Association of Museums. It was a constant source of frustration to be the only black on the board or a committee of a national organization. I could not understand why the profession did not leap at my suggestion that we could increase the number of black museum professionals ten-fold if only the larger majority museums each hired one black professional.

In 1980. I attended my first annual meeting of the American Association of Museums. At that time, the African American Museums Association met in conjunction with AAM. There were about nineteen blacks at the meeting, probably representing one-fifth of the total number of African Americans in the field. I quickly understood that if I was to build a staff to plan and develop the museum at Wilberforce, I would have to train them myself, and often this meant learning a skill the night before and passing it on to my staff. I made contacts at the Smithsonian, National Park Service, and other places offering seminars, workshops, and extended training opportunities and secured places for

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my growing staff. The historical society transferred to the project Juanita Moore, a curator who had been branded as “disgruntled.” This young lady eventually became my director of education and went on to become the founding director of the Memphis Civil Rights Museum and is currently President and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. I hired individuals who had the academic background for the job, if not the museum experience. I set aside 3-5 per cent of my annual operating budget for staff development and it paid off.

As we identified, hired, and trained staff, building the collections became the central goal of the project. Not only was the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center to become a collecting institution, its collections were also to reflect our national past. We asked ourselves how to begin what appeared to be such an overwhelming process. The Ohio Historical Society did not have many objects owned or used by Ohio African Americans, much less those from other areas of the country. And as part of the institution, we could not even collect outside of the state unless we developed our own collections policies and procedures that addressed our needs as a national black institution. We were both plagued and obsessed with the idea of having to collect nationally as an unknown institution with limited resources.

Several factors were in our favor. The state’s purchase of the old campus of Wilberforce University provided our first home in the old Carnegie Library, which we eventually renovated. The move also provided the museum with immediate name recognition and legitimacy among black Americans, or at least among the members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination that owned the university. Not having a historical collection, we encouraged staff members to think in terms of developing exhibitions beginning in the twentieth century and working backward in time as we were able to build our collections.

Calling upon a southern heritage of making do with what you have in a segregated society, we knew firsthand the struggle to move this nation from a segregated to a more inclusive society. Coupled with our surveys and formal research, we knew that the 1950s were a pivotal period in our history, both as a nation and as African Americans.

Working with guest curator Fath Ruffins from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, we decided our first permanent exhibition would span the years before the end of World War II and the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Bill. The 1950s seemed to be the critical decade between a legally segregated American society and the promise of a new age in race relations and equal opportunity. The decade offered the museum an opportunity to acquire objects that were still available. We failed to appreciate how difficult it would be to ask someone for an artifact still being used as a household item.

Lonnie Bunch, George McDaniel, and Fleming on a fishing trip in Charleston Harbor, with Fort Sumter in the background.

John E. Fleming

and earned income, the institution did manage to contribute to and carve out a place in America’s cultural heritage.

With limited resources, the museum opened From Victory to Freedom—African American Life in the Fifties. Then we went on to develop two other national exhibitions—one on African American folk art and another on the impact of African/African American dance and music on American culture, When the Spirit Moves. The museum staff constantly complained that mainstream funding sources only gave the

“I had a strong sense that museums were to be my life’s work.”

Patsy Leggett

While we hired Selean Holmes as our acquisition curator, none of us realized that collecting would become part of all of our job descriptions. Being raised in the South, we quickly learned that people donate to people they know.

Hence we were most successful in those communities where our families, friends, and colleagues resided. Utilitarian artifacts that people were still using did not seem as valuable to potential donors as objects handed down from one generation to another. Within a year we had gathered more nineteenth-century objects than objects from the 1950s.

People pulled artifacts from basements and attics and shared their family histories, as these stories were an integral part of their material culture. One donor spoke of an iron pot that a slave ancestor had used to “catch the noise” from their late night forbidden dances, ceremonies, and religious services.

There was the slave-made quilt, now tattered from over approximately 100 years of use, that one donor insisted now belonged in the museum. An aging North Carolina family historian brought out a child’s high chair her ex-slave grandfather had made for her father, born into freedom.

We gathered an entire house of items from a North Carolina man who had sealed up his home after his wife died in the 1950s. We knew we had to be innovative and creative in approaching donors, so when a man agreed to give us his linoleum floor covering in exchange for new carpeting for his living room we jumped at the offer. There were the first edition signed books by noted black authors donated by a Columbus, Ohio, man moving to Hawaii. Among the papers he was discarding was an American Automobile Association brochure, Vacation Without Humiliation, listing various restaurants and motels willing to serve blacks in the West. This brochure became my favorite artifact on display because it helped us explain to young people what blacks had to endure during the age of segregation and Jim Crow.

During the unbearable heat of July and August, we traveled to the black belt areas of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama searching for objects in unventilated attics, crawl spaces under houses, and wet basements full of jumping spiders and other unidentified multilegged insects, and rats of various dimensions. During this year of collection, we lived with families and friends and drove U-Haul trucks thousands of miles. By the time the museum exhibit was ready for installation, we had collected more than 5,000 objects and hundreds of manuscript collections. But even more, we had collected the stories of a people that had been carefully nurtured by family griots until it was time to pass them on to those of us undertaking this new public trust.

Two years from now, 2018, will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center. While we did not develop a 250,000 square-foot national museum and cultural center, we built a national institution, not bound or limited by its 55,000 square-foot structure.

Congress, for various reasons, did not fulfill the implicit obligations in Public Law 96-430 to establish a National Center for the Study of African American History and Culture at Wilberforce. Operating on state appropriations, grants, donations,

—John Fleming

museum (and other black museums) what we called “Negro money”—just a token amount but never enough to accomplish our goals. When the National Endowment for the Arts gave the museum 10 percent of our $100,000 grant request, I returned the $10,000 check, calling it just enough money to assure failure. But we did not fail and the following year, the NEA awarded the project 80 percent of our grant request.

While enjoying life and feeling very comfortable at the museum in Wilberforce, my longtime friend Dan Hurley of Cincinnati came to Wilberforce with a delegation from the nucleus of a board for a planned National Underground Railroad Museum to be constructed as a legacy of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. I thought the museum it was a great idea, told them if I could be of assistance to call, and wished them well, giving no thought to the idea of becoming the director of the project. Certainly I was intrigued by the idea of using the lessons of the Underground Railroad to help bring about racial reconciliation in the twenty-first century. I was less convinced that the museum experience, no matter how great, could bring about transformative change in visitors. By 1997, I was serving as a consultant for the project on a regular basis and consented the following year to become the director and chief operating officer. It was not long before the project had emerged into a $110 million project with a national board and an international advisory board.

We assembled an impressive group of consultants, scholars, architects, engineers, and staff. Exhibits would be based on sound scholarship that would be continued through HISTORY NEWS

11

Reflections on a Career in Public History

John E. Fleming

a research institute where scholars would be invited to the museum profession has been marked by a deep concern research and publish monographs on issues of freedom over diversity or the lack of diversity in the field. Prior to and racial reconciliation. The center and the University the 1960s, one could easily count the number of African of Cincinnati Law School would publish a freedom jourAmerican museums and museum professionals on two nal jointly. Community rooms would be available for use hands. Certainly the Civil Rights Movement spurred the by groups throughout Cincinnati, and a theater would be development of black museums to the point where there developed to house a resident theater company. The Center were enough of us in the field to organize the Association of would tackle the critical issues facing both this community African American Museums. By 1980, AAAM was holding and the nation in the area of racial reconciliation and the regular meetings with the American Association of Museums. expansion of freedom and justice.

While progress has been made, certainly it has not been Not all of these plans came to fruition. Why did I leave far or fast enough to bring about substantial change in the what I originally considered my perfect job? And why was field. One can find the occasional African American curathe Freedom Center not successful initially? Decisions were tor, registrar, or director in a mainstream museum. There made that differed from my vision still remains a tendency to hire for the museum. Maybe it spent blacks in non-curatorial positions too much money and emphasis as opposed to staff in other areas of on an expansive infrastructure. the museum. The new Smithsonian Attendance was grossly overesNational Museum of African timated. There was not enough American History and Culture has changing exhibition space to keep certainly built a staff of profesvisitors coming back, and the instisional blacks drawn from academia, tution lacked an innovative educaAfrican American, and mainstream tional program to appeal to a wider museums. cross-section of the community.

The American Association for The Center did not successfully State and Local History has made it reach out to the African American a point of being inclusive at the govcommunity. And finally, the corerning board level. AASLH offers 2009 annual convention of the Association for porate community failed to really programs, workshops, webinars, the Study of African American Life and History understand how to develop and etc. that could directly benefit the in Cincinnati during John Fleming’s presidency operate a nonprofit organization staff of small to moderate size black of the organization. L to R: John Fleming, John Garland, Betty Thomas, keynote speaker Eugene with a central mission of bringing museums, yet for various reasons we Robinson, and June Powell. about social change. do not see many African Americans As I wrestled with the idea of participating in these programs. If leaving the Freedom Center, Doug McDonald joined the the larger museums would each hire one African American, staff of the Cincinnati Museum Center as its new president. the number of African American professionals would increase He did not waste any time inviting me to join him on what ten-fold and our professional organizations would have he envisioned as a new venture in museum work. He kept the greater diversity. offer open for nearly a year, and I accepted when I realized I close by challenging museum professionals to ask what that I could no longer be effective at the Freedom Center. In is the vision they have for the future of the field. Many of 2001 I joined his staff as Vice President of Museums—during our most prominent museums are located in large urban the same week that riots broke out in the city. areas surrounded by minority populations who feel their Formally trained as a historian, I learned a lot from stories/histories are not being told. As America and the administering three quite different museums at the Museum world become more diverse in the twenty-first century, I Center. From the children’s museum, I learned how importwonder how museums will respond to this diversity and why ant play is for children in various stages of development. they should care that these populations are not represented Working in the history museum, I learned how important it on their staffs and boards. This, I believe, is a most salient is to know history and the role of the past in the lives of the point. If museums, especially mainstream museums, are to present. Working on the Civil Unrest exhibition, we all garhelp future generations to make the world a better place in nered a sense of why people would protest or riot when they which to live, they must start by making their own institufeel their voices are not being heard. History can be a very tions more inclusive and reflective of American society. t effective tool in helping us navigate the present. Working with the science staff and the educators in the natural history Upon leaving the Cincinnati Museum Center, John E. museum was most enlightening and was where my greatest Fleming was the executive producer for the nationlearning occurred. I have been fascinated by exhibitions al traveling exhibition, America I AM: The African relating to the creation of the universe nearly fourteen bilAmerican Imprint. He also served as director for the lion years ago to the impact of climate change on our enviInternational Museum of African American History in Charleston ronment today. and later senior advisor for the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in From my early involvement in the Civil Rights Movement Jackson. He is currently director of the National Museum of African to my work with several civil rights agencies, my career in American Music, scheduled to open in Nashville in 2018.

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Linda A. Cicero, Stanford University

Why Historical Thinking

Is Not about History

1

By Sam Wineburg

E d i t o r ’s N o t e : This is an adaptation of Sam Wineburg’s keynote address to the 2015 AASLH annual meeting in Louisville.

For full audio of his talk, go to http://on.aaslh.org/Wineburg2015.

T David E. Knapp

he point I want to make today might sound peculiar for those of you familiar with my work. My claim is that historical thinking is not about history.

To illustrate, let me tell you a story about a news item that appeared back in October 2010. The Washington Post broke a story about a fourth-grade textbook in Virginia called Our Virginia, Past and Present. The book contains a description of the role African Americans played in the Civil War.2 Now, if you are a movie aficionado, and have seen Glory and the stories of the 54th Massachusetts and the 180,000 African Americans who served the Union forces— constituting over 10 percent of the Union forces—then you might expect that to be the focus of this section.

Wrong. Our Virginia, Past and Present presented Virginia fourth graders with little known historical information: “Thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson.” Now this had to be at the

height of the Civil War because, as y’all remember, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died from friendly fire by his own troops on May 10, 1863.3 It has long been known that the Confederate army forced slaves into service as cooks and laborers who provided backup for weapons-bearing troops. We know of dozens of cases like this. We even have some scattered photographs of slaves suited up in uniform sitting next to their masters.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. We are talking about the formal mustering of thousands of black soldiers under Jackson alone, and by extension, thousands more under other generals, who trained them in weaponry and taught them to fight for the South. All at a time when the North was still debating the issue of enlisting black troops.

What evidence supports these claims? The only document that we have from the Confederacy about drafting African American soldiers comes in the waning days of the war, a last-ditch effort less than three weeks before the surrender at Appomattox. If thousands of blacks were already bearing arms for the Confederacy, why did the South have to enact General Orders 14, on March 23, 1865? The proposal was so controversial that its drafters felt compelled to issue a disclaimer: “Nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners.”4 Where would Our Virginia, Past and Present find backing for a claim rejected out of hand by every reputable Civil War historian we could think of? There is no documentation for these claims, no record; none of the sources we would expect make mention of them. We can find no evidence for claims HISTORY NEWS

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Today, when practically everything has changed about how we get our information, what does informed citizenship mean? that so contravene common sense and, I might add, human nature. What would slaves be fighting for, anyway? Their “right” to remain shackled?

When the Washington Post asked author Joy Masoff for her sources, she reported that she turned to the Internet for research. Her publisher, Five Ponds Press, sent the Post three of the links Masoff used, all of which traced back to the same source: the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, “A patriotic, historical and educational organization, founded in 1896, dedicated to honoring the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier and sailor and to preserving Southern Culture.”5 Our first inclination might be to have a little chuckle at Masoff’s expense. And I don’t think any of us would dispute that it’s unfortunate that her assertions ended up in a textbook for fourth graders. But I want to strike a serious note and suggest that Masoff is not so different from you and me.

We live in an age when going to the library means turning on our laptops and making sure that we have a wireless connection. Being on the Web and searching for information is radically different from how anyone who learned to do research a generation ago went about it.

Back in the uncomplicated pre-Web days, libraries and archives were places of quiet stability and authority. At age ten, when I did my first research paper (a report on the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle), going to the library meant being inducted into a sacred order where one learned hieroglyphics in order to decipher the Readers Guide to Periodic Literature.

It was obviously never the case that just because something was printed meant that it was true. At the same time, we often ceded authority to established publishers. We relied on them to make sure that what we read was accurate, that it had gone through rounds of criticism before it reached our eyes. Only a small number of us were actual authors. Most of us consumed information that others had produced.

The reality we inhabit, that our children inhabit, that those kids who come on field trips to our institutions inhabit, is a very, very different reality. The Internet has obliterated authority. You need no one’s permission to create a website. You need no papers signed to put up a YouTube video. You need no one’s stamp of approval to post a picture on Instagram. You can tweet to your heart’s content—some of you are doing so this very moment. We live in an age when you can practice historiography without a license. Go ahead—be an author! What determines whether you go viral is not the blessing from some university egghead, but from the digital mob.6

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Think back to claims that our president was born in Kenya.

This was a claim embraced by many prominent figures, including a current Republican candidate for president. And there on YouTube was an actual tape, a tape of Sarah Obama, the president’s grandmother, being interviewed by an American cleric about the circumstances of our president’s birth.7 So I wanted to do an experiment with the generation often referred to as digital natives. I was asked to give a talk at a highly regarded independent school. The administration had assembled their sophomore and junior classes, over 100 students. I asked these kids how many of them had heard that President Obama had been born in Kenya. Sophisticated and well-heeled, they looked at me as if I came from outer space.

But then, knowing teenagers as I do, I appealed to their bravado. “I assume,” I said, “that if you are so certain, you all must have examined the evidence. I assume all of you have heard the tape of Sarah Obama, the president’s paternal grandmother, talking about being ‘present’ at her grandson’s birth. Just so I can be sure, please raise your hand if you’ve listened to this tape.” No hands went in the air. “Soooooo,” I taunted them, “you’re judging a claim without looking at the evidence?” And then—those of you who work with teenagers will recognize this move—I asked, “Are you open- or closed-minded?” I’ve yet to meet a teenager who admits to close-mindedness.

I played the tape. Sarah Obama, a woman who had never left Kenya, claimed that she was “present” at her grandson’s birth. Someone’s a liar. Either an eighty-six-year-old woman or the President of the United States. Now, with a little bit of nudging, students started to motivate some questions. Had the tape been doctored? No, it had been examined forensically. It was authentic. What about the material that comes before and after the part I played—a lovely question, very pertinent to historical thinking. Another wanted to know if the translation into English was correct, an astute question because Sarah Obama was speaking Swahili, not her native language. What happens to this word “present” as it moves from Luo, Sarah Obama’s native language, to her broken Swahili and then into English? Does it mean she was physically present? Or, that she merely heard of her grandson’s birth?

“What else would we want to know about the tape?” I pressed on. But it seemed that I had exhausted the bank of student questions. Despite the fact that many of these digital natives were headed to top colleges, they were still babes in the woods when it came to asking rudimentary questions of historical thinking: Who authored this tape? How did it come to be? Who was this Bishop Ron McCrae, the head of the Anabaptist Church of North America, the man heard speaking to Sarah Obama’s interpreter? How would we find out? Such questions—the ABCs of historical thinking—were anything but intuitive to this group of bright teenagers.

Let me suggest, then, that it is one thing to be a digital native and quite another to be digitally intelligent. Long before the Internet, Thomas Jefferson argued for the wisdom of the yeoman farmer, a person who would think, discern, and come to reasoned conclusions in the face of conflicting information. Today, when practically everything has changed about how we get our information, what does informed citizenship mean?

The most critical question facing young people today is not how to find information. Google has done a great job with that. We’re bombarded by stuff. The real question is whether that information, once found, should be believed.

And according to some recent studies, young people are not doing so well in that department.

The most extensive work on this question has been done

by Eszter Hargittai and her colleagues at Northwestern University. Hargittai engaged dozens of college students— her total sample was over 100—in a study of how young people determined the trustworthiness of information they encountered on the Web. She gave college students a series of questions and sent them surfing, recording their screen shots and comments as they searched.8 The upshot of Hargittai’s work was that students ceded to Google questions of credibility. The higher up in a Google search, the more credible the entry. Sometimes students remarked that they considered the qualifications of the author before believing what they found, but in no instance of the screen captures could the researchers find evidence that author credibility steered students’ decisions.

The first thing that historical study teaches us is that there is no such thing as free-floating information. Information comes from somewhere. And if you think I’m exaggerating the gravity of the situation, let me tell you about an incident that happened in May 2014 in Rialto, California, a community outside of San Bernardino. It is not an incident about students. It is about an assignment put together by their teachers.

Teachers gave their middle school students a written exam inspired by the new Common Core State Standards.

Teachers went on the Internet and culled what they believed were credible documents, each one presenting a different view. The issue under debate was the Holocaust. Students were told to review a set of historical interpretations and to compose an essay arguing whether the Holocaust was real or whether it was a “propaganda tool” concocted by world Jewry for “political and monetary gain.”9 One of the “credible” documents teachers put into children’s hands claimed that the Diary of Anne Frank was a fake; that piles of corpses from Auschwitz were murdered Germans, not Jews; and that there are are “compelling reasons why the so-called Holocaust never happened.”

Dozens of eighth graders found this document the most compelling. As one wrote, “The Holocaust is a propaganda tool. So Israel can make money for Jews. The Holocaust is a hoax because the gas chambers in concetration [sic] camps were faulty. Another reason why this event never really happened becuase [sic] the Diary of Anne Frank is a hoax too. This is why no Jew has ever been gassed to death in these gas chambers.”10 When an investigative reporter for the San Bernardino Sun contacted the school district, officials said that this type of essay was an exception. But through California’s version of the Freedom of Information Act, the indefatigable Beau Yarbrough, who won an award from the Associated Press for his muckraking, obtained the essays that students wrote. It turns out that dozens of middle school students became Holocaust deniers through their teachers’ efforts.

When the story got out, the Rialto school board held emergency meetings and decided that students and teachers should visit the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and receive sensitivity training to ensure that an incident like this never happened again. But in my humble opinion, this is a gross misdiagnosis of the problem. I don’t believe these teachers were racists or prejudiced or bigoted or benighted or living in sin. I do not think that they needed mandatory sensitivity training. I think that they—like their students, like Joy Masoff, like us—are living in an age where technological changes of how information is disseminated and distributed far outpace our ability to keep up with them.

The tools we have invented are handling us—not us them.

Throw in for good measure Common Core, and the fact that a few years ago we were telling teachers to write standards on the board and to quiz students on facts, and now we are telling them to give students multiple documents representing conflicting positions (but providing little or no professional development for new ways of teaching), and you have the recipe for a perfect storm. That’s what happened in Rialto. A perfect storm with the ingredients amply supplied by the Internet.

That’s where we’re at. Captives to the machines we have built. And when we pause to gather our thoughts and ask, how in the world do we get up to speed, we can again turn to the Internet. There we can download thick PDFs packed with dozens of activities to teach information literacy. These materials come with extensive checklists that list rows of questions for students to ask every time they surf a website.

If we had all of the time in the world, I’d applaud. Let’s use these PDFs; let’s do scores of classroom activities. But our situation is dire. We’re the guy on the emergency room floor, hemorrhaging profusely, blood spilling on the linoleum, and the nurse comes in and instead of attending to our wound asks us to examine a booklet with thirty-seven possibilities for how to stanch the bleeding. By the time we figure it out, we’re goners.

So here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine you’re a carpenter and you have to go to a work site where you will find plenty of wood. But you have no idea of what you will be asked to build. You can only bring two tools. Not power tools. Hand-operated. Which tools will you choose? A saw?

A hammer? A chisel, perhaps?

What’s in our digital toolbox? What are two—not four or six or twenty—but two tools that every student and every middle school teacher should have before we let them loose on the Internet?

I’ll make it a bit more concrete. Say we’re doing a webquest with our students, researching Adolph Hitler.

We put “Hitler” in the search bar and up comes the “The Adolf Hitler Historical Museum.” Since we know that students assess credibility by how far up an entry is on a Google search, we see that this one is way up there.

Moreover, the URL is not a dot-com site—which our guidebooks say is bad—but a more respectable dot-org site. Our students press on the link and find this explanation of Hitler Museum.

“The teaching of history should convey only facts and be free from political motives, personal opinions, biases, propaganda and other common tactics of distortion. Every claim HISTORY NEWS

15

We teach students how to evaluate sources by asking questions about the author and the context, and by raising questions about other supporting evidence. that is made about history should also be accompanied by documentation proving its basis.”11 Not a bad start, I’d say.

I recently showed this site to a group of college students in a U.S. history survey class. It was in one of those old-style amphitheater lecture halls, where the professor stands in the orchestra pit and looks up at rows of students. I saw a sea of baseball hats turned three quarters to the side and laptops open at nearly every seat.

I showed the students the site of the Hitler Museum.

“How many of you use the Internet for research?” I asked.

All hands went up. “Keep your hands up if you can come down here and in one click, one, show me who owns this site.” Like the wave at a sporting event, the hands collapsed (including those of the faculty in attendance). My crooked baseball hat-wearing college students, all with laptops open—probably grazing Facebook, Twitter, and ESPN as I was talking—were rendered click-less.

The answer is not a mystery. “Whois,” which can be reached by circumventing your browser and using your computer’s terminal (or can be accessed via a variety of sites, like whois.net), provides a quick answer. In this particular instance, Whois leads you not to some big organization, but to a Gmail account and a post office box in a strip mall. In short, a fly-by-night operation.

That’s my hammer. What about a saw? The next question I asked students was the same question my mother asked me when I was seventeen and going out on weekends. Mom, “Where are you going?” Me, “Out.” Mom, “Out with whom?”

Me, “People.” Mom (about to scream), “Which people?!”

My mother wanted to know “which people” because we are known by our associates. In a digital world, we’re known by our digital pack: who links to our site. I asked the students to tell me how I would find out who links to the Adolph Hitler Historical Museum. I waited. For Godot. (A simple Google query, www.website.com, solves the problem.

In this case, the digital pack includes sites associated with Aryan hate groups.)

Simple questions. Who owns a site? Who links to it?

Forget about power drills and pneumatic nail guns. Can we start with a hammer and a saw?

As some of you might know, my colleagues and I have a free digital curriculum that we distribute at sheg.stanford. edu that focuses on ways of reading historical sources that we call Reading Like a Historian. The curriculum, which to our amazement has been downloaded three million times, poses legitimate historical questions and provides teachers

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and students with original sources that shed light on these questions from different perspectives. We teach students how to evaluate sources by asking questions about the author and the context, and by raising questions about other supporting evidence.

But it’s time for me to come clean about the real intention of the Reading Like a Historian curriculum. Our materials have nothing to do with preparing students to be historians.

If our curriculum has any pretense of career preparation, it is for the vocation of citizen.

Back in the analog Stone Age we could rely on factchecked newspapers to stay well-informed. Watching the news at night, we could rely on the major outlets and their anchors to save us from error. Peter Jennings. Tom Brokaw.

Brian Williams. (Okay, maybe not Brian Williams.)

What once fell on the shoulders of editors, fact-checkers, and subject matter experts now falls on the shoulders of each and every one of us. But there’s a problem with this new reality. As the journalist John H. McManus reminds us, in a democracy, the ill-informed hold just as much power in the ballot box as the well-informed. The future of the republic hangs in the balance.12 Reliable information is to civic intelligence what clean air and clean water are to public health. Long before the Internet, long before blogs, before Instagram, before Twitter and Yik Yak, James Madison understood what was at stake when people cannot tell the difference between credible information and shameless bluff. “A popular government,” Madison wrote, “without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”13 t Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and a professor of history, by courtesy, at Stanford University, where he directs the doctoral program in history education as part of the Stanford History Education Group. He can be reached at wineburg@stanford.edu 1 Talk given to the annual meeting of the AASLH, Louisville, KY, 17 September, 2015.

2 Kevin Sieff, “Virginia Fourth Grade Textbook Criticized over Claims on Black Confederate Soldiers,” Washington Post 10 October 2010.

3

Ibid.

4

See www.freedmen.umd.edu/csenlist.htm.

5

See the fact sheet at www.scv.org/documents/edpapers/blackhistory.pdf.

6

Karen Nahon and Jeff Hemsley, Going Viral (Polity: Cambridge, UK), 2013.

7

See www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGWcD5OHm08.

Eszter Hargittai, Lindsay Fullerton, Ericka Menchen-Trevino, and Kristin Yates Thomas. “Trust Online: Young Adults’ Evaluation of Web Content,” International Journal of Communication, 4: 468-494.

8

9 Beau Yarbrough, “Rialto Unified Defends Writing Assignment on Confirming or Denying Holocaust,” San Bernardino Sun, 4 May 2014.

10 See s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1274350/rialto-usd-document-prod4-of-4.pdf.

11 I am indebted to T. Mills Kelly for this example. See his important, Teaching History in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013).

12 John H. McManus, Detecting Bull: How to Identify Bias and Junk Journalism in Print, Broadcast and on the Wild Web (Sunnyvale: CA, Unvarnished Press, 2012).

13 James Madison, writing to W. T. Berry, 4 August 1822, downloaded from The Founders Constitution, press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35. html.

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Learn more: iup.edu/history “I liked the hands-on options the MA in Public History program offered. It was a small program, so you were able to get beneficial work experience, preparing you for the workplace.”

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HISTORY NEWS

17

BY DAVID A. JANSSEN

D

etroit, Michigan, has a long, proud, and remarkable history. Just as the Detroit River connects great lakes, the city has linked great societies. For more than

Above:

Postcard “Aeroplane view of Detroit Water Front.”

Right: Circa

1916 postcard of the Ford plant in Highland Park and its 12,000 employees.

three centuries, its promise of opportunity and its legacy of innovation drew countless traders and tradesmen, entrepreneurs and entertainers, inventors and industrialists, laborers and leaders. Administered at various times by French, British, and American governments, Detroit remains one of the busiest international crossing points in the United States. Today, the rich heritage of the oldest city in the Midwest offers a timely setting to consider the relevance of our past in shaping our future.

While the backstory of the city is impressive, the contemporary challenges faced by Detroit’s citizenry are daunting.

In both practical and symbolic terms, there may be no other region in America in greater need of choosing a road forward. The ways in which experience and identity may inform those choices is pertinent to any discussion about the relevance of history. Public historians hoping to validate that connection may point Detroiters to their past for ideas, examples, and inspiration. However, gathering on the banks of the Detroit River is also a chance to turn that lens back on ourselves. As a field, we may also be at a bifurcation point.

Competing with loosely vetted information streams, appealing to distracted audiences, in the midst of social shifts of both local and national proportions, we too need to define our path. In that endeavor, Detroit is a source of inspiration for us as well.

Detroit is a study in change and adaptation. Each century brought with it a new set of challenges and opportunities.

Human occupation of the area dates to 9,000 BCE. By the time French traders pushed into the Great Lakes region of the continent’s interior, there were already an estimated 10,000 native people—Potawatomi, Ottawa, Ojibwa/Chippewa, Miami, and Huron—living in what is now Michigan.1 The name Detroit (for both the city and the river) stems from the French reference to the “strait of Lake Erie,” or, le Detroit du Lac Erie. In 1701, with permission from the French government, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, began laying the groundwork for Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit to secure an outpost between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. The settlement grew based on farming and trade with Native Americans and by 1751 the village counted 483 residents, including 33 enslaved people.2 In the second half of the eighteenth century, warring factions vied for command of the strategic settlement. Great Britain took Fort Detroit during the French and Indian War, validated by the 1763 Treaty of Paris, and fought off subsequent attacks led by Ottawa Chief Pontiac. Although the United States formally won control of Detroit through the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the English lingered until the Jay Treaty in 1796 settled the matter.

Detroit’s nineteenth century began inauspiciously when fire all but destroyed the village in 1805. The territorial government of Michigan secured Congress’s permission to expand the town as part of their rebuilding plans. In 1806, the city incorporated, three decades before Michigan was

The name Detroit (for both the city and the river) stems from the French 18

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formally admitted to the Union. By midcentury, Detroit grew to a city of 21,000, who secured a prominent role for the city in that generation’s overriding issue: human bondage. Through the efforts of black and white residents like George de Baptiste, Seymour Finney, Dr. Nathan Thomas, and countless others, Detroit served as a terminus on the Underground Railroad for enslaved people fleeing the South. With the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Detroit’s international border with Canada transformed it from safe haven to throughway for people no longer legally protected from being returned to slavery. The city thus served as the doorway to freedom for thousands of enslaved people.

By 1900, Detroit boasted a population of more than 285,000. In the next fifty years, that number doubled an astonishing six times, surpassing 1.84 million people by the end of World War II. At the heart of that expansion was the automobile. Led by Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T in 1908, Detroit transformed into an industrial juggernaut that turned an expensive novelty into a middle class rite of passage.

Ford Motor Company doubled its production every year between 1909 and 1919, when it produced over 535,000 cars.

Across Detroit in 1910, 5,304 people were directly employed in automobile manufacturing. Ten years later, that number jumped to over 35,000, and by 1929 Detroit employed over 158,000 in automobile factories. In 1929, the region cranked out over 5.4 million cars.3 Those factories heralded the onslaught of industrial modernization and drew hundreds of thousands of people to the urban workforce. The automobile transformed American society in incalculable ways, and Detroit’s combination of revolutionary innovation and a blue-collar work ethic made it a manufacturing epicenter. When World War II erupted, its industrial leadership and workforce transformed factories into war production mode. That shift happened so quickly and effectively, it is easy to underestimate the herculean effort it required. A year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt had called upon the United States to become the Arsenal of Democracy. Detroit’s populace assumed that role like no other community. By 1944, Ford’s Willow Run plant alone was producing a B-24 bomber every hour.4 The latter half of Detroit’s twentieth century was far less inspiring. The auto industry eliminated more than 300,000 jobs beginning in the 1940s. Property values fell by 77 percent. Riotous violence in 1943, and again in 1967, uncovered troubling racial divisions. Today, Detroit presents social scientists with a model for postindustrialization in the United States.

In his seminal study, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, historian and 2016 keynote speaker Thomas Sugrue distilled the complex interplay of forces that define contemporary Detroit. Sugrue argued persuasively that the loss of employment opportunity in the wake of deindustrialization, discrimination for the remaining opportunities, and racial segregation in the neighborhoods and suburbs all combined to undermine the once booming city. From its peak of nearly two million people in 1950, he city served as the doorway to its fall below to freedom for thousands of three-quarters of a enslaved people. million sixty years later, Detroit can no longer claim a spot among the likes of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, or Houston as a major urban center.5 Today that reality is illustrated by the abandoned factories, classrooms, theaters, and homes that have become a favorite subject for guerilla photographers. The cottage industry—referred to as “ruin porn” by Detroiters—presents gratuitous, haunting metaphors of urban decline. Already battling very real socioeconomic issues, the region bears the additional burden of an image problem. Detroit frequently served as a punch line, its complex story reduced to oversimplified explanations and blame. The perils of accepting an elementary understanding of Detroit’s story is not limited to the future of southeast Michigan.

The implications, as Sugrue underscored, are much more broad. “Urban America,” he wrote, “continues to be shaped by processes that have their origins deep in the mid-twentieth century. Coming to grips with that history is not a mere academic exercise. History is a process, ongoing, that at once opens up possibilities and constrains our choices in the present. To come to grips with the problems and promises of our cities, we must grapple with the past as a means to engaging with the present.”6 Overcoming these currents and forging a new course has forced Detroit’s citizens to negotiate the competing interests of its past to reimagine a bold future. In doing so, the region is once again working to craft a new identity.

In 2013, Detroit declared bankruptcy—the largest American city ever to do so. The path forward from that historic low held significant implications for museums. The state-appointed emergency manager called for an appraisal of city-owned collections at the Detroit Institute of Art. The prospect of selling collections to pay off the massive debt and fund city pensions raised enormous concern within the museum community. Ultimately, multiple foundations, the DIA, and the State of Michigan donated $816 million to reduce the impact on retiree pensions and establish the DIA as an entity independent of the city. With the “Grand Bargain” in place, the city emerged from bankruptcy in 2014.

As Sugrue documented, proponents in the wake of that agreement have offered visions of a new Detroit relying on a range of disparate strategies: farming and agricultural cooperatives, a resurgence of its industrial might, a white-collar

T

reference to the “strait of Lake Erie,” or, le Detroit du Lac Erie.

HISTORY NEWS

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Detroit Historical Society

F

ord Motor Company doubled its production every year between 1909 and 1919, when it produced over 535,000 cars.

Yet within the contemporary public history profession, we are familiar with the concern that too many Americans don’t know their history. Statistical and anecdotal evidence abounds. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in five surveys spanning twenty years, “A substantial majority of children in the assessed grades failed to demonstrate proficiency in U.S. history.”

In a 2012 study by Xavier University’s Center for the Study of the American Dream, one in three native-born U.S. citizens failed the naturalization test given to immigrating An assembly line at the Ford Motor Company factory, citizens. Though purposeful in circa 1920. Printed on the back: “Here, on a moving its provocation, former Tonight conveyor, Ford cars are completely assembled, from Show host Jay Leno regularly chassis to finished car, and driven off the line under their own power.” aired segments of the comedian asking people on the street basic U.S. history questions.

Meant for comedic effect (and still available via a simple business hub mindYouTube search), the segment is gratuitously depressing to ful of Pittsburgh’s those of us in the history field.8 poststeel rebirth, and This apparent deficiency is especially significant in the the gentrification of context of the current national climate. Angry histrionics its historic districts within American political discourse are not a modern phewith artists. The nomenon. Still, the increasing polarization of the electorate city has also worked in the post-9/11 United States is notable. A clear, reasoned to foster economic Two women operating pug mill equipment at the understanding of historical context would seem most development Champion Spark Plug Company in Detroit during important as a stabilizing element during anxious debates through professional World War II. about the future. In that context, a March 1, 2016, exchange sports and casinos. between CNN political analysts Van Jones and Jeffrey Lord In Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an is illustrative. In their heated exchange, Jones characterized American City, John Gallagher underscored the importance the Ku Klux Klan as a terrorist organization that he felt of human geography in the equation. Gallagher pointed presidential candidates should rebuke as lustily as they do out that Detroit’s sprawling footprint is larger than that of other violent extremists. Lord interrupted to assert the Klan Boston, San Francisco, and Manhattan combined. With a “leftist terrorist organization” that “is part of the base of responsibility for such a massive infrastructure and a simulthe Democratic party,” admonishing Jones, “For God’s sake, taneously dwindling population and tax base, Detroit found read your history!”9 itself trapped in a vicious cycle. Gallagher advocated strateCandidates who seek elective office and the pundits who gic downsizing that looks to Baltimore rather than Chicago support them regularly reference history. But what role do for aspirational model.7 we have in providing context and interpretation, without While the solutions for charting its future are still fragnecessarily taking sides? Do we have the capacity as a profesmented, it seems clear Detroit is in another pivotal chapter sion to inject ourselves formally into contemporary debates in its story. Just like the city’s roles in previous eras, Detroit’s or do we cede that role to our colleagues in academia? navigation of its post industrial existence has implications Another example—one that historical organizations have for the rest of the country. As a nation, we too are constantly indeed worked to address—is the debate over Confederate evolving, embracing new opportunities, and reacting to iconography. In the aftermath of a horrific shooting in 2015 forces beyond our control. Understanding these contempoat Mother Emanuele African Methodist Episcopal Church rary challenges and facing an unpredictable future require in Charleston, South Carolina, the long-simmering debate periodically rethinking our direction. In doing so, we rely on came to a boil. A national discussion ensued on the approthe past for context. The role of a public historian is espepriateness of Confederate symbols and monuments in public cially critical during times of transition.

The generational shift and the increasing diversity of the 20

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or government spaces. Defenders of the symbols point to the Confederate imagery as acknowledgment of a people’s heritage and preservation of the past. The countervailing argument, of course, is that much of the monuments and iconography emerged in direct response to swelling civil rights sentiment among African Americans, invoking the worst legacies of that heritage. Both sides use history as justification for their argument.

There is clearly an intersection between public history and contemporary politics. It is a concept championed by the History Relevance Campaign. Among the ways it is essential to our future, history “can clarify misperceptions, reveal complexities, temper volatile viewpoints, open people to new possibilities, and lead to more effective solutions for today’s challenges.” The significance in contemporary American society of knowing our past seems clear. Historical knowledge is a matter of the complex vs. the simplistic; diversity of perspective vs. divisiveness of intent; contextual breadth vs. immediate reaction.10 If historical knowledge is a vital tool during times of transition, it follows that local history organizations have a role to fill. To the extent that “all politics is local,” there must be a corollary for history as well. While these debates play out on a national stage, they resonate locally. Like Detroit, the public history profession must take into account a changing reality.

Statistics on historic site visitation compiled by the National Endowment for the Arts are indicative of the challenge. As people aged they were less likely to visit a historic site. In each of the three cohorts for which the most complete data are available, the drop-off in historic site visitation over the life course is at least 25 percent The data reveal generational differences with respect to Americans’ tendency to visit historic sites. With each birth cohort, Americans of all ages have been less likely to visit historic sites. For example, those born from 1938 to 1947 had a 45 percent likelihood of having visited a historic site in the previous year when they were in their thirties and forties, while those born between 1968 and 1977 had only a 23 percent likelihood of having visited a historic site when they were the same age.11 As we advocate for the relevance of history, we must also assess our capacity to fulfill its potential—as individual organizations and as a broader profession. There are a number of issues to consider. Are the standard vehicles for disseminating our messages—tours, exhibits, lectures, articles, school programs—sufficient in the twenty-first century? There are some exciting things going on at many institutions addressing the differences in generational communication styles and the increased availability of technology, but those seem to be the exceptions rather than the rule.

Are the messages we send truly pertinent to our diverse audiences and conducive to a shared understanding? Despite decades of talking the talk, we aren’t yet walking the walk on integrating the experiences of all people into an inclusive, accurate narrative. The generational shift and the increasing diversity of the American populace impacts our appeal and relevance. Data show that our audiences do not reflect

the more heterogeneous America. Moreover, how are we truly involving communities in the development of inclusive narratives and programs? This simple precept may often be overlooked in our zest for inclusion.

We also need to do better at reaching audiences outside the walls of the museum. Many of us are still relying on quantitative attendance data without good qualitative measures of our success. We know we compete with social media and the Internet as go-to sources of history. How do we maximize our platform to disseminate good history to our publics?

The most salient question of our era may be whether we can we provide historical perspective while avoiding political advocacy. How do we address timely and controversial topics without deterring visitors and donors?

Ultimately we need to ask ourselves two essential questions: Are we serving our profession well? Are we serving our publics well?

Barge pilots on the Detroit River must navigate with a dual focus on the controls in front of them and the changing waterway in the distance. There is a time to concentrate on the task at hand. There must also be a time to assess the progress you are making, and the strategies you are using to further that journey. In the spirit of Detroit, we gather to celebrate our achievements, but with an eye on changing current questions, old models, and outdated strategies. t David A. Janssen is the Executive Director of Brucemore, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He has twenty-five years’ experience in museum and historic site leadership, with a bachelor’s degree in history from Dartmouth College; a master’s in history from Duquesne University; and an M.B.A. from the University of Iowa. He is also a 2008 graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration and the 2016 AASLH and MMA Annual Meeting Program Chair.

1 Peter Gavrilovich and Bill McGraw, The Detroit Almanac (Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 2001), 29.

2 Ibid, 33. The site of Fort Ponchartrain, the original French settlement of Detroit, is currently the Crowne Plaza Hotel, headquarters for the 2016 AASLH and Michigan Museums Association Annual Meeting.

3 Ibid., 71, 139, 289; Scott Martelle, Detroit: A Biography (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, Inc., 2012), 71.

4

Ibid., 140.

Details are from Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

5

6

Ibid., xliv.

See John Gallagher, Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010).

7

8 U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress, The Nation’s Report Card: History 2014: Achievement Levels. Sam Wineburg points out the weakness that these studies rely on the one element of historic knowledge—the retention of basic facts—that is most readily available through objective tests. He also argues that the design and content of these tests are in the hands of statisticians, not historians. See Sam Wineburg, “Crazy for History,” Journal of American History 90: vol. 4 (March 2004): 1401-1414.

9

See http://on.aaslh.org/Jones-LordCNN.

History Relevance Campaign, “The Value of History: Seven Ways it Is Essential,” www.historyrelevance.com.

10

11 National Endowment for the Arts, Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (1982, 1992, 2002, 2008, 2012). Estimates generated using the National Archive of Data on Arts and Culture.

American populace impacts our appeal and relevance.

HISTORY NEWS

21

Historical Thinking

Unnatural Is an

National Air and Space Museum

I

was surprised at a recent conversation with two noted curators/historians at my organization who told me they weren’t familiar with the term “historical thinking.” Of course they use the skills associated with historical research every day. As a museum educator, I have been using the term for a number of years and particularly embraced Sam Wineburg’s 2001 book Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Dr. Wineburg gave the keynote address at the 2015 American Association for State and Local History annual meeting in Louisville, (see pages 13-16) and I took the opportunity to lead a conversation afterward about the intersection between historical thinking and public history. Wineburg’s book focuses on formal learning, but what about the informal learning arena? What is our responsibility or obligation when it comes to teaching historical thinking? I believe history organizations have fallen short in this area. This article attempts to summarize my session and the ensuing lively discussion.

I began the session with two very different quotes: • “ History is real simple. You know what history is?

It’s what happened.”

• “ History teaches us a way to make choices, to balance opinions, to tell stories, and to become uneasy—when necessary—about the stories we tell.”

The first is by Rush Limbaugh, the second, by Sam Wineburg. Obviously the second one gets at the complexity of what we do, while the first implies that history is just the facts. In Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, historian Eric Foner compares the basic differences between a historian’s understanding of his work and the broader public’s. “Historians view the constant search for new perspectives as the lifeblood of historical understanding.

Outside the academy, however, the act of reinterpretation is often viewed with suspicion, and ‘revisionist’ is invoked as a term of abuse.” He adds, “History always has been and always will be regularly rewritten, in response to new questions, new information, new methodologies, and new polit-

22

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ical, social, and cultural imperatives….But the most difficult truth for those outside of professional historians to accept is that there often exists more than one legitimate way of recounting past events.”1 You haven’t worked in the history field long before you encounter people who insist that history doesn’t change.

This frustrates every historian. But what are we practitioners doing to help change that mindset?

Any discussion of historical thinking needs to begin with a common definition. Here are five key elements: 1. Multiple perspectives. There are always several ways to look at a story.

2. Analysis of primary sources. Thinking critically about their validity.

3. Sourcing. The why’s related to a source; considering a source’s origins to make sense of it.

4. Context. What else happened at the time to impact the story?

5. Claim/Evidence Connection. Historical arguments are based on evidence.

Sam Wineburg writes: “Historical thinking, in its deepest forms, is neither a natural process nor something that springs automatically from psychological development. Its achievement actually goes against the grain of how we ordinarily think, one of the reasons why it is much easier to learn names, dates, and stories than it is to change the basic mental structures we use to grasp the meaning of the past. The odds of achieving mature historical understanding are stacked against us in a world in which Disney and MTV call the shots.”2 The debate between historical thinking and “just the facts” history is not new. During our session, participants spent time discussing the arguments for and against these approaches.

Those focused on facts put forth several arguments: it’s easier to grasp; the public lacks basic historical facts, which necessitates focus on facts; “why” is not measurable, but “who, where, what, when” are. Teachers are evaluated on the facts.

Advocates for historical thinking recognize history’s value beyond the facts. They understand that if you teach the strategy of historical analysis, the result is students who can analyze any content thrown their way. They also believe that anyone has the potential to practice historical thinking. Someone offered the example of two national history contests for students. The National History Bee and Bowl focuses on rote memorization of facts; National History Day

Above: Travel agent setting in the America by Air exhibition, National Air and Space Museum.

with thanks to Conny Graft and Max van Balgooy for their review and input

promotes original research, critical thinking, and drawing conclusions. Which of these approaches teaches a skill set that will prepare students for the complexities of life?

The History Relevance Campaign, a three-year-old initiative to raise the profile of history in society, recently published its impact statement. “People value history for its relevance to modern life, and use historical thinking skills to actively engage with and address contemporary issues.”3 Why did the group’s steering committee, of which I’m a member, decide to directly refer to historical thinking? The committee held many discussions about the value of history and the skills that the research process teaches. It grappled with the intersection of history relevance and citizenship.

Ultimately, it recognized the importance of history in teaching critical thinking and the potential for this leading to better informed citizens. Historical thinking is vital to teaching history and needed to be at the core of the impact statement.

Historical thinking and current issues demonstrate history relevance. One audience member shared that in Rockville, Maryland, there’s a debate over the presence of a Confederate statue and whether it evokes a racist ideology or not. So on his community blog, he evaluated it as a primary source—asking about the meaning of the symbology, language, and sculpture of the memorial and what it says about the Confederacy or the Civil War. And in context—what was going on locally and nationally when it was installed, what were the perspectives of the time? He noted he’s continually trying to get people to think more deeply about issues and how they started and evolved over time.

But what about teaching in informal learning environments, museums, and historic sites? Most acknowledged we should have an active role in teaching historical thinking. It is our responsibility to teach historical thinking within exhibitions, programs, and tours. And more often than not, we haven’t done such a great job. Do we use photos and objects primarily as illustration, but not as evidence? Far too many historic house tours can be given in the parking lot because they don’t use the house and its furnishings in any meaningful manner.

Imagine a scenario where every visitor leaves a site understanding that history is complex and that interpretations change over time. Think of how many people we would be educating about the historical process. What if every visitor also understood that all events have multiple perspectives and that often those perspectives conflict?

History can be uncomfortable, it can be controversial, it can

Shake table interactive, America by Air exhibition, National Air and Space Museum.

Chances are

HISTORY NEWS

National Air and Space Museum

Act

By Tim Grove

and should change over time. Why do historic sites start talking about history stories they haven’t discussed in the past? Why did Mount Vernon construct a slave cabin to tell a new story? Why did Montpelier take the radical approach of returning Madison’s house back to its original state? Why did the developers of the national Lewis and Clark bicentennial exhibition look at the expedition’s journey through the cultural landscape, instead of the natural landscape? Why have controversies erupted over the telling of history? In part because people don’t understand historical thinking. The controversy surrounding the proposed Enola Gay exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum in the mid-1990s showed that even U.S. senators and others at the highest levels of power don’t always understand that history is about differing interpretations of historical evidence.

But how do we teach historical thinking? Too often we present the amazing research of historians, perhaps telling inspiring stories and featuring stunning artifacts, but with a passive approach to learning. We present conclusions our historians have drawn from the evidence they’ve pored over.

Ultimately, most of us are in the field because we like digging into source materials, learning multiple perspectives, making comparisons, evaluating sources. We satiate our curiosity in the process. But we don’t do a good job of showing how we arrived at our conclusions and asking tough questions that challenge assumptions. I propose that we teach historical thinking by inviting visitors to roll their sleeves up and dig into the sources and compare evidence.

As a young historian, I was privileged to manage the Hands-On History Room, an activity-based learning center and international model of museum education at the National what drew you into the Museum of American History. history profession was It featured thirty-five hands-on activities for all ages that allowed asking questions and visitors to do rudimentary digging into historical detective work and sort through sources. One activity was titled, evidence. Why don’t we “You be the historian.” Visitors offer the public more of loved it. Quite often they would an opportunity to do the write in the comment book, “I never knew history could be so same? Encourage others fun!” I propose that the key was to stoke their curiosity the active learning experience.

The room’s developers packed may just lead to new the activities with all manners of generations of history primary sources and guided visilovers. tors through exploring them.

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I

n the years since I worked in the Hands-On History assumptions about these popular historic figures about Room, I’ve had the opportunity to develop a variwhom much has been written. The exhibition’s historian ety of large, highly visited museum exhibitions. provided her conclusion, and visitors could compare their Granted, some content experts continue to write conclusions with the historian’s. a book on the wall, but gradually there have been Do we challenge assumptions on a regular basis? One converts to making exhibitions more active. attendee told of working on a program about women’s One part of the active learning approach is inquiry. This suffrage with students. The kids were shocked to hear that topic resonated. Historical thinking is based on questions. there were women who did not want suffrage. Another told Should our institutions be posing more questions to visiof students being surprised to hear of black slaveowners. tors? A lively discussion ensued as members of the audience Yet another working at a historic River Road plantation in disagreed. Some said our visitors want and expect to be told Louisiana told about a video they produced that looks at content. Others said visitors want to think. Yet others said evidence for and against trying to escape slavery and poses the problem is us. Maybe we are too quick to assume visitors the question “Would you run?” The evidence offers a more don’t want to think critically or aren’t willing to keep an open nuanced perspective on assumptions. mind when confronted with new interpretations. But maybe And historical thinking is, in part, about challenging visitors don’t know how to ask quesassumptions with evidence. This is precisely what connects tions, to challenge what they see. history with the present Most agreed that critical thinking and why it is relevant. In to think like should start with children, teaching the the context of multiple historians may not be easy, but it may pay off process at a young age. People are natperspectives, Wineberg in the end with new generatio urally curious. “Aren’t museums where talks about why the study ns who see the you can go to ask questions?” asked of history is so crucial to and have learned one person. Someone mentioned the our present day. “Coming to to think more critically about their world.

Right Question Institute (rightquesknow others, whether they tion.org), which was started with live on the other side of the low-income parents who do not tracks or the other side of r experiences with We need to share ou know how to teach their kids the millennium, requires the thinking al ic or st hi ng hi how to ask questions. Its mission education of our sensibilities. This ac te onding to it. sp re e ar rs ito vis now is to teach people how to ask is what history, when taught well, w and ho better questions. But on the other gives us practice doing.” 4 side, someone acknowledged So what does it look like to incorporate historical thinking museums are considered an authority, and wondered if we into our work? I shared a few examples from exhibitions I’ve should teach them to question that. Another person asked if worked on. An exhibition about the history of commercial we shouldn’t ask questions and leave them unanswered. To aviation included a travel agent’s office environment from do this, we need to provide primary sources with answers. the 1930s and posed two scenarios. Flying was new for most Based on many curriculum materials I’ve seen while interpeople in this period. People traveling long distances either acting with teachers, I’ve noticed that many teachers don’t took the train or a ship. We asked visitors to imagine travknow how to write deeper questions about primary source eling from Chicago to Southern California. They are used materials. They will ask the who, what, where, and when to taking the train, but friends have encouraged them to try questions. But they are not as quick to ask the “why” quesflying. We presented a wall of advertisements promoting tions, such as “Why is the sender writing this, and what do train travel versus air travel to California and asked which you think his underlying message is?” mode of transport is faster, cheaper, and safer? Obviously The crux of historical thinking is asking questions. Our airlines were playing up the safety factor since at this time institutions should be about questions, should they not? We the public questioned the safety of flying. (Hollywood star should incorporate inquiry into all exhibitions. But do all contracts, for example, often included a clause prohibiting exhibitions need to end with a neat conclusion? One session them from flying during filming.) Which mode of travel participant gave an example about an exhibition in Michigan would the visitors choose? Another scenario imagined a trip where staff could not agree on the conclusions and gave up on from New York City to Bermuda: ocean liner or airplane? “museum voice” and presented several different perspectives.

Again, a comparison of competing ads held information to Should we go so far as asking our visitors to question us, help the person make an informed decision. This exercise is to challenge our conclusions? Many content experts might no different than visitors do today with travel decisions. find this threatening. But what happens if we give visitors In another example from the same exhibition, what develthe evidence and encourage them to draw their own conopers built a shake table that simulated the bumpy ride on a clusions? My colleagues and I on the national Lewis and Ford Tri-Motor, the first airplane to popularize commercial Clark bicentennial exhibition team acknowledged the scant air travel in the 1930s. Of course, surrounding quotes and evidence that exists about the Indian woman Sacagawea, and photos offered a feel for the experience. But the shake table, Clark’s slave York. We gathered evidence and challenged attempting in a small way to recreate a feeling, added to the visitors to draw their own conclusions about these two peoexperience. A photo showed happy Tri-Motor passengers ple’s lives. In many cases the evidence challenges common seated with full meal service in front of them on a white

Helping the public

value of history

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tablecloth. The label stated museum experts thought the photo was staged and asked why? Visitors pressed a button, the floor vibrated, and a coffee cup rattled on a saucer nearby. The answer was obvious and memorable. It also questioned a piece of photographic evidence by getting at the intent behind the photograph.

These two examples just begin to scratch the surface of historical thinking. Ultimately, to teach historical thinking means to ask questions and to admit to visitors that we don’t have all of the answers. This may be a huge step for many organizations. Sure we are an authority, but historical thinking teaches us there should always be room for other interpretations. A whole range of questions uncover the historical process. Offer examples of the questions that historians asked when studying your content. Ask visitors what they would do in a situation. Have visitors make conclusions about the result of a situation. Give them options based on the sources. All of these scenarios promote active learning.

After a lively conversation, our collective resolve was to be more proactive about incorporating historical thinking into our work. Ultimately, if we are serious about history education, we can’t afford to just teach content. We must work to teach the historical process. If we believe one of the values of studying history is the skills the research process teaches, then we must demonstrate those skills in practice. We must share why we know what we know, how we reached our conclusions, and how we weighed the evidence.

Our colleagues in the science fields have perhaps been more ready to demonstrate process, but they also recognize

they must do more to help their audiences think critically about science information in the news every day. History is no different. If we agree that the public needs to be more adept at thinking critically about the present and how it connects to the past, we need to do our part to teach those skills.

We can’t rely on formal education. In the end, incorporating historical thinking not only teaches skills but provides for a richer visit, because it automatically promotes active learning. As any educator knows, an active learner is more likely to remember the experience and to build on it in the future.

Helping the public to think like historians may not be easy, but it may pay off in the end with new generations who see the value of history and have learned to think more critically about their world. We need to share our experiences with teaching historical thinking and how visitors are responding to it. We can learn from each other along the way. t Tim Grove writes the “History Bytes” column and works at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

He’s active in the History Relevance Campaign and chronicled his history career in A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History. He can be reached at grovet@si.edu.

1 Eric Foner, Who Owns the Past? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), xvi-xvii.

2 Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 7.

3

See www.historyrelevance.com.

4

Wineburg, 23-24.

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Vashon Island’s Native People: Navigating Seas of Change

T

On display from June 2014 through March 2015, the exhibit focused on the history of the sxwobabc, a band of the Puyallup Tribe and the inhabitants of Vashon Island for thousands of years.

Exhibit curators revealed this rich, to-date unwritten history through the personal story of Lucy Gerand. Gerand was born in a Vashon longhouse in the 1840s and spent most of her life on the island. Museum volunteers used testimony Gerand provided in 1927 in the U.S. Indian Court of Claims to tell the story in her voice and lend a depth to the exhibit. As one reviewer of the project stated, “The historical research that recalled Lucy Gerand from obscurity to the foreground is exemplary, and one of the strongest assets of this project.”1

A Partnership

A close working relationship between the museum and the Puyallup Tribe made the exhibit possible. The Puyallup people have lived in the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years, inhabiting areas from Mount Tacoma to Puget Sound, and the many islands along the shore, including Vashon Island.

To produce the exhibit, tribal representative Brandon Reynon met with exhibit curators weekly for a calendar year. The

Images of Vashon Island’s Native People: Navigating Seas of Change.

Vashon Island Heritage Museum

he Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum and the Puyallup Tribe in Washington State collaborated in 2014 to develop the exhibit, Vashon Island’s Native People: Navigating Seas of Change, for the museum creating a great partnership to tell this important story of the island’s native people. The exhibit and the collaboration with the tribe earned the VashonMaury Island Heritage Museum the 2015 Albert B. Corey Award.

relationship between the museum and the tribe continues, as components of the exhibit have moved into the permanent exhibit at the museum. The institution also created a smaller traveling exhibit for the tribe and other institutions in the area.

The Exhibit

The curators identified three objectives for Vashon Island’s Native People: Navigating Seas of Change: 1. Find more information about the sxwobabc, whose history had never been written.

2. Present this story and Lucy Gerand’s life accurately and effectively, demonstrating respect for the Puyallup Tribe’s perspectives.

3. Debunk the misconception that native people only used Vashon Island for summer food harvesting, rather than year-round dwellings.

Vashon Island’s Native People: Navigating Seas of Change not only created a strong partnership, debunked myths, and illuminated an untold story, but offered many interactive experiences. One very popular interactive was an iPad with a Twulshootseed language app that showed the Twulshootseed alphabet. When visitors pressed a particular letter, the iPad displayed a photograph of something that

uses that sound in its name. The visitor could hear the name spoken, and then choose to hear a full sentence employing the word in context. This effort to preserve the sxwobabc tribal language was, as one reviewer noted, “Especially noteworthy for its ready acceptance of a century of linguistic scholarship.” 2 Tangible objects in the exhibit included models of a traditional seagoing canoe, a cedar longhouse, and a fish club and herring rake. An eight-foot-tall cedar slab highlighted the importance of the cedar as the Tree of Life to the sxwobabc.

Artifacts also connected to the core story of Lucy Gerard and included a watertight cedar root basket made by Lucy Gerand’s mother. This was one of the most poignant artifacts on display.

The exhibition’s crowning piece was a sculpture by Puyallup artist QwalsiusShaun Peterson. Peterson created an octopus out of yellow and red cedar, metal, and glass to represent the tribe reaching out across the Salish Sea, HISTORY NEWS

27

JANICE McCORD

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SPRING 2016

Photo Credit: middle ©Nicole Rupersburg

The sun-soaked Rivera Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts is one of many masterpieces in the world-class collection. Beyond the museum, Detroit has a growing collection of culinary treasures, too, including great ethnic food, renowned master chefs—even world-famous Coney dogs. More than 100 new restaurants opened across Detroit over the last two years, and Zagat dining guide named The D the third-hottest up-and-coming food city in America. With pop-ups, distilleries, urban farms and talented chefs around every corner, Detroit has deliciously staked its place on the foodie map. Discover Detroit, America’s great comeback city, for yourself at visitdetroit.com.

touching all nations and also welcoming back descendants who have scattered.

The sculpture became a visual and mythic symbol for the exhibit.

In a letter evaluating the exhibit, Laurent Dubois, a long-time humanities teacher at Vashon Island’s McMurray Middle School, wrote, “In my experience, most Vashon Island residents give little thought to the first inhabitants of our little island. The modern development of the island has shifted the residents’ focus inland. Most people see our shores as scenery with access limited by the prevalence of waterfront homes. Our vague notion of Island history doesn’t go much beyond legends… Of course, we know that Native Americans lived in our area, but the common belief holds that local tribes visited our little island only seasonally. Perhaps that is how we assuage any guilt we may feel as inadvertent usurpers of the native’s birthright…. By developing the exhibit…[we are] disabused of that erroneous notion. [The] synthesis of research and Puyallup oral tradition revealed a great deal about the original inhabitants—year round residents—of

Vashon Island’s Native People: Navigating Seas of Change on display at the Vashon-Maury Island Museum.

our island and the cultural forces that disturbed their ‘peaceful sea.’” 3 Visitors came away from the exhibit and the additional programming with a better understanding of the history of the sxwobabc. More than 500 people attended public programs exploring Vashon archaeology, Coast Salish art, treaty fishing rights, basket weaving, artifact identification, Puyallup youth dance and song, and traditional storytelling. In the first six months of the exhibit, more

than 2,000 visitors came to the museum.

This is more than twice the museum’s typical annual visition.

Not only was the exhibit a success from an attendance standpoint, it provides a model for the field because of the partnerships formed, how it approached exploring untold stories, and its shattering of common perceptions about the history of Vashon Island for residents and visitors.

The history and culture of the sxwobabc is acknowledged for the first time and the collaboration between the museum and the Puyallup Tribe continues. t Brandi Burns is the History Programs Manager for the Boise City Department of Arts & History.

She is currently serving as a Regional Chair of the AASLH Awards Committee for Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. She can be reached at bburns@cityofboise.org.

1 Lorraine McConaghy to AASLH Leadership in History Awards Committee, February 2015.

2 Jay Miller to AASLH Leadership in History Awards Committee, January 2015.

3 Laurent DuBois to AASLH Leadership in History Awards Committee, 2015.

HISTORY NEWS

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Book Reviews > Imperfect Past: History in a New Light

By Charles F. Bryan, Jr. (Manakin-Sabot, Virginia: Dementi Milestone Publishing, 2015), 286 pp.

Reviewed by Dwight T. Pitcaithley

M

any of us who labor in the field of public history know Charlie Bryan as the longtime president of the Virginia Historical Society, as a friend, as a colleague. More recently, through his columns in the Richmond Times Dispatch, we have come to know a related, but different, Charlie Bryan—as a thoughtful observer and writer, as a humanist, as a consummate scholar, and as a probing citizen.

Imperfect Past is a compilation of articles Bryan has written for the Dispatch on a wide range of subjects including the Civil War, education, demagogues, greatness, and the craft of history, to name only a few. (A personal note: it is a bit daunting to review a book that contains glowing endorsements from the likes of David McCullough, David Hackett Fischer, and the Honorable Douglas Wilder!)

An eclectic collection of essays, Imperfect Past is a feast for the mind.

Bryan’s career as a student, historian, administrator, and scholar informs every page of this book. Beginning with sixteen essays on the Civil War, with provocative titles such as “Yes, Slavery Caused the Civil War” and “How the Confederacy Ruled by Big Government,” Bryan displays his ability to bridge the abyss between scholarship and public perceptions of the war. In a moving section titled “Health and Lifestyles,” he revisits the haunting military cemeteries in Europe, muses on the plight of homeless veterans, and recounts his own struggle with Parkinson’s Disease.

For readers of History News, Bryan’s fifteen essays on history education in classrooms and public spaces easily justify reading and rereading the book.

“Teaching History with All its Warts” tells us much about Bryan’s philosophy about the august craft of pedagogy as do his thoughts on the seven characteristics of successful teachers. Being creative,

knowledgeable, vibrant, trustworthy, and relevant are all characteristics of successful educators in the public arena as well as in the classroom. Indeed, relevancy is a major part of these essays.

Bryan concludes many of his commentaries with a tagline that encourages the reader to pause and contemplate the subject’s contemporary implications. In a wonderfully crafted piece titled “Whose Side Was God On? Civil War Religion,” Bryan relates how churches throughout the Confederacy shipped their bells to Richmond to be recast as cannon. Since the 1960s, he notes, organized religion has become much less enamored of war than that earlier generation and doubts that churches today would think of donating a bell for military purposes. Then he adds, “Or would they if exhorted by a persuasive political figure?” (29).

Whatever the subject, Bryan’s essays provoke a response in the reader; a shared memory of yesterday or perhaps a call to action. In a poignant piece titled, “I Once was Blind: Growing Up in the Segregated South,” he relates his obliviousness, at the time, to the injustice of segregation. With the passage of time and the study of history, Bryan’s horizons broadened. “My mind opened to other viewpoints,” he writes. “I wonder what injustices and wrongs I am blind to today? Worse yet would be to see them and do or say nothing” (75).

Imperfect Past has something for everyone whether the reader be a scholar, museum professional, or concerned citizen. Bryan writes with clarity and directness about the past, both his and ours.

His insights are thoughtful and provocative, and always resonate with larger meanings. Thank you, Charlie. t Dwight T. Pitcaithley teaches history at New Mexico State University. Between 1995 and 2005 he served as chief historian of the National Park Service. He can be reached at dwightpitcaithley@comcast.net.

New Land, North of the Columbia: Historic Documents That Tell the Story of Washington State from Territory to Today

By Lorraine McConaghy (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2011) vi+154 pp.

Reviewed by Ann Toplovich

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avishly illustrated, New Land, North of the Columbia: Historic Documents That Tell the Story of Washington State from Territory to Today uses selected archival material to tell the history of Washington State in a tour de force by public historian Lorraine McConaghy. McConaghy visited three dozen archives across the state in search of “documents that would concentrate a great deal of Washington history in one page; documents that were easily legible; documents that were beautiful, amusing, powerful, or even dangerous” (vi). A large-format book resulted, with more than 330 documents and images illustrating more than 130 entries—covering 150 years from territorial days to 2010.

Those familiar with government archives will find many of the “usual suspects” used to illustrate the development from territory to state, such as the act of the U.S. Congress creating the territory in February 1853. But a large variety of other material illustrates the state’s history too. Among the beautiful we find a lustrous bunch of deep purple grapes against bright red leaves, on the cover of a 2000 issue of Good Fruit Grower magazine (143), a reminder that Washington has hundreds of wineries, a multibillion HISTORY NEWS

31

dollar industry. Samuel Greene amuses the reader in “A Sketch of My Life,” recounting his visit to Seattle in 1873.

He observes summer visitors arriving “dressed in their white suits—to find the fleas from the sawdust [in the streets] nearly covering the lower parts of their clothing…. There was certainly no place a flea could jump quicker and farther: they were the athletes of the community at that time” (16).

A child’s letter from 1942 conveys a powerful message about the displacement of people as a result of intolerance, as young Dick Codani writes to his teacher in Washington about his forced move— along with 13,000 other Washington residents—to a Japanese internment camp in California. He says, “The soldiers and porters were very nice and polite,” and “I have lots of fun with the other boys.” But, sadly, “I wish I was back home” (87). The danger of bigotry reveals itself as well, in a series of documents on anti-Chinese hate crimes in 1885-86. One terrorist’s note threatens those who would oppose plans to drive Chinese workers away, “I got 25# of dinemite [sic] within one mile off Seattle” (22).

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Museums and libraries in recent years have mounted exhibits of disparate objects chosen to tell many stories about a single theme. The seemingly arbitrary selections allow the viewer to draw her own conclusions about the history of an event. Traditionalists may question the usefulness of such an approach, but increasingly students are encouraged to use primary documents and original objects to think critically about the past.

A book such as New Land must be especially useful to teachers of Washington state history.

New Land, North of the Columbia provides a thought-provoking selection of documents lending insight into the nature of Washington. Perhaps most of all, it pays tribute to the work and vision of archivists and curators who saved a motley assortment of material in the hope of providing an understanding of the past. t Ann Toplovich is Executive Director of the Tennessee Historical Society. She served on the AASLH Council from 2008-2012. She can be reached at atop@tennesseehistory.org.

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