public history

Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?

John Dichtl of the American Association for State and Local History says that Americans want "more help navigating these times, which are probably only going to get worse,” portending brutal battles over the upcoming commemoration. 

Juneteenth has Gone National—We Must Preserve its Local Meanings

by Tiya Miles

Juneteenth celebrations have long been couched in local Black communities' preserved rituals that express particular ideas about heritage and the meaning of freedom. While a national commemoration of emancipation is welcome, history will be lost if local observances are swamped by a national holiday.

The Modern Relics in Crow's Cabinet of Curiosities

by Matthew Dennis

Understanding Harlan Crow's collection, including Nazi memorabilia, as a set of relics (and not trophies or investments) helps to clarify the unease Americans feel about his understanding of power and cultivation of relationships with people of influence over the federal judiciary.

Museum Celebrates Sweet Smell of... Failure

The Museum of Failure is a global traveling exhibition that celebrates the signal marketplace flops of capitalism, from the infamous Edsel and New Coke to the obscure, highlighting the vagaries of consumer taste and historical contingency. 

New Hampshire Honored its Native "Rebel Girl"—Until Locals Realized She was a Red

Two weeks after the state installed a commemorative marker near Concord, New Hampshire, the state legislature removed the monument, with Republican members calling the honoring of the labor organizer "a slap in the face" because of her association with the Communist party. 

In Texas, Those Who Don't Know History... Want to Control the State's Narrative of the Past

The growing effort to diminish the power of academic historians on the Texas State Historical Association is being driven by many of the people involved in the "1836 Project" effort to distribute literature praising the white settlers of Texas as mythic heroes. 

Arlington Cemetery Will Remove its Racist Confederate Monument, but Some Won't Let it Go

by Erin L. Thompson

The Arlington Confederate Memorial, according to a Defense Department review, mythologizes history so severely that no contextualizing signage could overcome its embodiment of the Lost Cause myths that justified Jim Crow. Some adherents of that myth are mad. 

Can Colonial Williamsburg Do Living History Better?

Historian Karin Wulf argues that the leadership of Colonial Williamsburg has steered an effective course through the conflicting imperatives of nostalgia, heroic storytelling, and the harsh inequalities of the colonial era.   

Engaging Toxic Nostalgia on Confederate Memorial Day

by Richard Brown

"For those of us who have a visceral objection to Confederate Memorial Day—who are appalled at not only commemorating but celebrating an economic and social system that oppressed a race for over two centuries—how should we engage a worldview that doesn’t see the harm of such celebrations, or that embraces the mythology of the Lost Cause?"

Wealthy Texas Activist Sues President of State's Historical Association

The suit by J.P. Bryan, a retired oilman and the executive director of the private Texas State Historical Association, which produces many important educational materials, claims that the board has too many academics and is too critical of the Anglo settlers of the state. Historian Nancy Baker Jones, the TSHA President, is the principal target. 

The National Trust Must Update its Idea of What Makes History and Speak in Multiple Voices

by Neil MacGregor

Neither preserving sites of national glory nor stripping them of honor represents the true mission of the National Trust as a preserver of British history for the public. 

Preserving the Public History of the Fort Pillow Massacre

by Erin L. Thompson

On April 12, 1864 Confederates under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest slaughtered members of the US Colored Troops after they had surrendered. Until recently, the state of Tennessee has neglected the site, making it difficult for the public to explore that history.

Racist Interpretations of Human Evolution Remain Prevalent in Popular Culture, Museums, and Textbooks

by Rui Diogo

Science has never been immune from the prejudices and assumptions of the society around it. Much of the received wisdom about human origins and evolution rests on flawed assumptions about group hierarchies. 

The Victims of Communism Museum is a Propaganda Machine for Normalizing the Hard Right

by Billie Anania

The museum, which counts numerous Nazi sympathizers among its founders, peddles a spurious notion of "double genocide" that lets fascists off the hook by promoting the number of 100 million victims of communism. How do they get that tally? Including every German soldier killed on the eastern front and every victim of COVID-19. 

Exhibiting the Black Panthers' Ephemera

An exhibition of the radical group's posters illustrates the importance-and difficulty-of documenting political movements that used visual communications through ephemeral media like postering and newspapers. 

Suppression of Public Commemoration is an Early Warning of Authoritarian Abuse of History

by Ruben Zeeman

While several laws pertaining to historical memory have been passed under nationalist regimes in Europe, other authoritarian societies actively use other laws as an excuse to suppress inconvenient historic commemorations, reflecting a broad and growing pattern of subordinating history to power.

AHA's "New" Standards for "Scholarship" are Too Little, Too Late for the Profession

by Donald Earl Collins

The move to recognize forms of knowledge dissemination beyond the scholarly monograph follow the establishment's failure for years to recognize the need for public engagement that has recently been taken up by journalists, novelists, and other creatives. 

Two Brothers Pushed the National Historic Landmark Program to Include Black History

Although there are dozens of dedicated landmarks to African American history today, the activism of the DeForrest brothers to push the National Park Service toward inclusion has been forgotten. 

AHA: Time to Move from the Monograph to Recognize More Public Kinds of Scholarly Work

As historians and humanists seek to demonstrate the public value of their knowledge, it doesn't make sense to make public-facing history work a career-killer, according to the AHA. 

8 Sites Illuminating African American History Show the Need for Preservation

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working against time and redevelopment to prevent the loss of key sites of African American history across the nation. So far the project has helped protect a museum of the Buffalo Soldiers, Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, and Louis Armstrong's house in Queens, among other sites.