10 minute read
Blast from the Past
MTSU professor and state historian’s impact on historic preservation—and on grant funding at MTSU—has been profound
CARROLL VAN WEST
Total funding: $10.01 million
photo by Andy Heidt
by Patsy B. Weiler, Drew Ruble, and Allison Gorman
As a season ticket holder for the Tennessee Titans, the Nashville Predators, and now the Nashville Soccer Club, MTSU History Professor and State Historian Carroll Van West is a bona fide sports junkie.
To some, that’s all he is.
West recalls a recent time when a fellow season ticket holder at Bridgestone Arena brought a friend with him to the game. That friend happened to be a young historian.
“Do you know who this is sitting beside you?” the young historian asked his friend incredulously. “He’s a major Southern historian!”
“No he’s not,” the fellow fan responded. “He’s just Van. He knows everything about every team. He’s just a sports nerd.” Upon reflection, West agrees with the assessment.
“I think that’s right,” he said. “I am a sports nerd.”
But the young historian was right too. West is a major Southern historian, to say the least.
An MTSU History professor since 1985, West has served as director of MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation (CHP) since 2002. The center, MTSU’s first Center of Excellence and one of nine original centers at Tennessee Board of Regents universities, was established by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1982. West also serves as co-chair of the Tennessee Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission and as a Tennessee representative on the national board of advisors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is a member of the National Historic Landmarks Commission of the National Park Advisory Board (appointed in 2019). In 2013, then-Gov. Bill Haslam appointed West as state historian, a position he continues to hold under Gov. Bill Lee.
PLANTING A SEED
Born in Murfreesboro, West had a love for history at a young age and was inspired by his parents’ interest in history—and willingness to drive to see it with their own eyes.
“My parents were the types of middle-class parents that took you places,” West said. “I had parents who liked history themselves and liked to go to places, my dad in particular. He wasn’t too big into reading books, but he liked to go to the places where history occurred and experience that, and my mother was largely the same way.”
Trips the family took included to the Civil War Centennial, to many Civil War battlefields including Gettysburg, and to Colonial Williamsburg.
West graduated from MTSU with a Bachelor of Arts in 1977 (and with a master’s from the University of Tennessee in 1978). After that, he actually moved to one of those historic places—Williamsburg— where he earned a Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary in 1982.
West’s imprint on historic preservation ever since has been nothing short of profound. An author of numerous books on history, West is even better known for known for the work he performs on field projects nationwide through the CHP. The work of the center is vast and continues to expand, administering millions in research dollars and saving history before it’s too late. Projects span not only across the South but throughout the Midwest and into the Southwest. The focus is primarily on properties associated with the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War, rural areas, marginalized communities, and the Southern music industries.
Arguably the center’s biggest impact, though, has been on the communities of Tennessee—large and small, rural and urban—in developing and providing, at no charge in most cases, historic preservation plans, historic structure reports, heritage tourism plans, Main Street program assistance, National Register and survey projects, and a host of other related assistance.
The CHP also provides administrative and planning aid to many of Tennessee’s heritage organizations.
“Our community-anchored work drives everything at the Center for Historic Preservation,” West said.
THE WHOLE STORY
With such a vast portfolio of work and so many lucrative grants, it would be impossible to explore all of them in a single article. (One example would be the $1.75 million grant brought in through the Library of Congress for a Teaching with Primary Sources program focused on the Civil War.) Asked to pinpoint one grant project that he believes had the most significant impact, West points to the work that began in 2001 when the CHP became the administrator of the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area (NHA), a private-public partnership with the National Park Service and the only NHA managed by a university.
During the ensuing two decades, CHP staff and students tirelessly worked to enhance the effectiveness of statewide Civil War interpretation, preservation, education, and heritage tourism efforts, effectively overseeing nearly $8.2 million in funds, including appropriations of $436,000 in fiscal year 2022. The program, housed at the center, is a go-to institution for communities, nonprofit groups, government officials, and property owners who wish to join the NHA's efforts to tell the state’s story of the Civil War.
“That is where we really have practiced what we preached,” West said.
They did so by going beyond battle descriptions and getting to the heart of the war’s impact on communities.
“It didn’t matter if I was in a rural Black community or an upper-class white community, everyone would always come back to the impact of the war on families, the impact on the home front,” West said. “And then, of course, for the Black communities, emancipation is the start of most of their community-building.”
GO WEST, YOUNG MAN
Tennessee has clearly benefitted from the CHP, but the center’s geographic scope has significantly expanded in the 21st century.
The center first entered the national arena when forming a longstanding relationship with the National Park Service—celebrating 20 years of working together in 2022. More recently, the CHP tackled the job of identifying and documenting historic buildings associated with the first half of the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail. The Mormon Trail is a continuation of the center’s involvement with the development of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail and the Santa Fe National Historic Trail.
During the first half of 2021, the CHP also took a national leadership role in the preservation of famous sites associated with 20th-century American popular music. King Studios in Cincinnati (where James Brown recorded) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and steps are underway to add Nashville's Exit/In music club. West’s most recent National Register nominations include RCA Studio A in Nashville; FAME Studio (co-authored) in Muscle Shoals, Alabama; and King Studios (co-authored with MTSU’s Charlie Dahan). These projects—both home and away—not only enhance education and economic opportunities in Tennessee. Along the way, M.A. and Ph.D. students in Public History (the MTSU doctorate program is one of only six in the nation) have worked alongside West and his staff, gaining real-world historic preservation experience and a competitive edge in the workforce.
“There is no better way to learn history and develop a passion for it than to go put your hands on it,” West said.
Among MTSU’s most celebrated historic preservation graduates is David J. Brown, chief preservation officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Other alums holding highprofile positions include Blythe Semmer (’98) at the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and Jeff Durbin (’89) at the National Park Service.
FRESH PERSPECTIVE
Students are still the focus of MTSU’s prestigious place in the world of historic preservation and are—and, in fact, steering it in new and needed directions.
“Students today see the world in broader terms than my generation did,” West said. “Not only do they ‘stretch’ us in that their ideas, needs, and goals are different from those of a generation ago, but they also come with that 21st-century skill in communication, research design, and community outcomes.”
Mirroring the new perspectives of those students, the CHP has evolved through the years to better reflect the experience of history by all witnesses— including marginalized communities.
As an example, one of West’s major statewide rural preservation projects is the Rural African American Church Survey, which has engaged congregations large and small in the preservation and heritage development of these extraordinary properties. Additionally, the team has fielded increasing requests for assistance with the African American Civil War story, especially with cemeteries that date to the pre-Civil War period or time of Reconstruction.
HEAD IN THE GAME
It’s projects exactly like these, West said, that motivate him to keep working despite his lengthy history of success in the field. When he first started getting inquiries from Black communities and marginalized groups asking for help, he said, his fire for the profession was relit. It began with groups in Birmingham, Alabama, asking him for help with their Civil Rights story. Later, the Cherokees and the National Park Service came knocking about the Trail of Tears.
“And I thought, well, if you’re going to do history right, you want to tell all of the stories,” West said. “So, that really sort of galvanized me these last 20 years, these community projects.
“I see that as a service. It’s a privilege to be asked, and I thoroughly enjoy it. I learn so much.”
In what he predicts will be his final years of service at the center, West wants to get back to his roots— specifically to working with the state Department of Agriculture on what’s called the Century Farms program, one of the CHP’s earliest initiatives.
Starting in 1985, CHP staff began managing the program to identify, document, and recognize farms that have been in the same families continuously for at least 100 years. The ongoing research has certified more than 1,500 Century Farms scattered across Tennessee’s 95 counties. In addition to honoring these farms and families, the program allows the center to collect information to interpret the agrarian history and culture of the state and provides learning opportunities for MTSU student research assistants. The initiative has become a model for other states.
A PERFECT MATCH
West’s eventual retirement will no doubt be filled with family, music, and sports.
West is married to MTSU Associate Provost Mary Hoffschwelle, herself an expert in the history of education in the rural South in the early 20th century and in Southern women’s history.
Hoffschwelle and West met during the late 1970s in Virginia when she was finishing her master’s and he was working on his doctorate at William and Mary. They actually met at Colonial Williamsburg, where West was giving tours on weekends and in summers and she was working in history site administration.
They married in 1980 and moved to Murfreesboro in 1985 when West accepted the CHP post. Hoffschwelle became director at Oaklands Mansion and earned her doctorate from Vanderbilt.
West and Hoffschwelle enjoy music of all kinds, including MTSU’s WMOT Roots Radio, country, symphonies, and opera. And West loved some punk back in the day. They have season tickets to the Nashville Opera and the Nashville Symphony, in addition to their Titans, Predators, and Nashville SC tickets.
They have a son, Owen, 32, and a daughter, Sara, 25, and became grandparents with the birth of Owen’s daughter, Olivia, now 4.
It seems along the way to preserving American history, West made a little history of his own.
