public history

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• SOURCE: LAist
  9/23/2022
  

  Los Angeles Project Aims to Name Every Interned Japanese American

  The government's rosters of interned Japanese Americans are incomplete and error-ridden. A new project seeks a complete documentation of the missing names. 

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• SOURCE: NBC News
  9/12/2022
  

  The Slave Dwelling Project Pushes History of Slave Rebellions to the Public

  Joseph McGill Jr. links the history of the Stono Rebellion and subsequent slave uprisings to the current effort to suppress so-called Critical Race Theory in schools. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  9/5/2022
  

  Ty Seidule: Confederates Were Traitors

  The naming of military facilties for Confederates was not a project of post-Civil War reconciliation; it was about valorizing and defending segregation in the 20th century, as with 

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• SOURCE: Virginia Public Media
  9/2/2022
  

  New Virginia Governor's Mansion Tour Doesn't Mention Slavery

  "In a shift from a multi-year effort to tell a more complete history of the mansion, visitors won’t be taken to a building next to the mansion where enslaved workers once slept and toiled. And in two tours on Friday, docents made no mention of slavery at all."

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• SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor
  9/1/2022
  

  New Approach at Montpelier: Let All Voices Rise

  After a controversial battle over how to incorporate the descendants of people enslaved by James Madison, Montpelier is beginning to highlight artifacts—and the process of discovering them—related to the lives of enslaved people at the estate. 

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• SOURCE: Associated Press
  8/28/2022
  

  Grant for Public History of Natchez, MS Civil Rights Sites

  “This is great news for Natchez,” Mayor Dan Gibson said in a news release. “These grant funds will help greatly in our efforts to better tell the entire history of Natchez to include commemorating our African American historic sites.”

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• SOURCE: NBC News
  8/14/2022
  

  Airbnb Listings Latest Case of Trivializing, Commercializing Slave Cabins

  Preservationists like Joseph McGill Jr., founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, say the commercialization of plantation sites has been happening for decades. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  8/5/2022
  

  Commission Recommends Change to Massachusetts State Seal, Motto

  Activists and members of the state’s Indigenous population have long objected to the image, which one critic called the “last state flag of white supremacy.”

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/1/2022
  

  Looking Forward to the Semiquincentennial (after Looking Up What That Means)

  by M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska

  Will the observance of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence be a moment of national unity or the moment when a simmering conflict over the nation's history erupts into open conflict? The key lies in using the commemoration to look forward. 

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• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  7/4/2022
  

  Philly Plan for Tubman Memorial Draws Fire: Were Black Artists Excluded?

  The city awarded a commission for a permanent statue to Wesley Wofford, who designed a traveling memorial that had graced City Hall. Local artists, many Black, argued that the call wasn't fair and open. 

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg
  6/10/2022
  

  When Cities Put Up Monuments to Traffic Deaths

  by Peter Norton

  Rising pedestrian and cyclist deaths in American communities are a call to question the primacy of the automobile and stop accepting roadway carnage. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  6/7/2022
  

  The Second Destruction of Tulsa's Black Community

  by Karlos K. Hill

  Photographer Donald Thompson has set out to capture a visual history of Tulsa's Greenwood district, an African American community decimated first by the 1921 race massacre and then by urban renewal in the 1970s. Historian Karlos Hill interviews him about his work. 

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• SOURCE: Virginia Mercury
  6/2/2022
  

  Why the Voices of the Enslaved's Descendants Matter at Montpelier and Other Historic Sites

  by Stephen P. Hanna, Amy Potter and Derek H. Alderman

  Descendant communities have put themselves front and center in discussions of how to discuss slavery at public monuments to the nation's founders, which is vital to ensuring that the significance of slavery is not minimized. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/26/2022
  

  The Monument Controversy We Aren't Discussing

  by Cynthia C. Prescott

  Outside of the former Confederacy, efforts to replace "Pioneer Mother" statues with depictions of Native American women have sparked a backlash including outright theft.

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• 5/29/2022
  

  We Need a National Emancipation Monument at Point Comfort – Where American Slavery Began, and Began to End

  by Steven T. Corneliussen

  While parts of the site are honored as the Fort Monroe National Monument, Point Comfort should be made a national monument to emancipation. 

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• SOURCE: NextCity
  5/23/2022
  

  Virginia's Governor Took Away the Most Important Piece of Protest Art in the Country. What Should He Have Done?

  Outgoing governor Ralph Northam removed the graffiti-covered pedestal of the former Robert E. Lee monument, which has become a site of community gathering and a public forum to express alternative visions of history. Cities should try to encourage such openness (if not spray-painting). 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  5/24/2022
  

  Congressional Commission Unveils Proposal to Rename Bases Honoring Confederates

  West Point historian Ty Seidule was vice-chair of the renaming commission, and sought community input for the proposal. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/23/2022
  

  Facing the Truth in the Land of Lee

  by Laura Brodie

  The controversy over removing Robert E. Lee's portrait from diplomas at Washington and Lee University points to an uncomfortable truth: Lee's historical depiction as handsome has been a visual symbol of the Lost Cause that has contributed to acceptance of the pro-Confederate mythology. 

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• How We Told the Ongoing Story of Title IX

  by Laura Mogulescu

  A curator and her team chose to center the work of activists who pushed to determine the scope and meaning of Title IX's prohibition on sex discrimination in education throughout the law's 50-year history. Their exhibit is now open at the New-York Historical Society.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/16/2022
  

  Inside the Reversal of the Montpelier Board

  The board approved the appointment of 11 members nominated by the Montpelier Descendants Committee, and the resignation of the board chair who led the resistance to the appointments is pending.