“The Battle of Monmouth 2.0"

Many people are surprised at the level of distrust of the health care system held by African Americans. However, fear and distrust of the health care system is a natural and logical response to the history of experimentation and abuse. The fear and distrust shape our lives and, consequently, our perspectives. 2 That perspective keeps African Americans from getting health care treatment, from participating in medical research, from signing living wills, and from donating organs. That perspective affects the health care that African Americans receive. This fear and distrust is rarely acknowledged in traditional bioethical discourse. Some bioethicists question the existence of a "uniquely" African American bioethical perspective. 3 They maintain that since the values and beliefs held by African Americans are also held by other oppressed groups, such as Native Americans, there is no African American perspective. However, these traditional bioethicists miss (or ignore) an important point: perspective is merely a subjective evaluation of the relative significance of something -- a point-of-view. 4 Thus, to acknowledge an African American perspective, it is not necessary that African American values and belief systems be entirely different from others. It is faulty to assume that any group shares exactly the same value system with other groups. For example, Americans do not have one ethical perspective. Rather, race, class, and gender modify the commonality of the American experience. Different groups have had different experiences that, at a minimum, modify the dominant American perspective, if not replace it with an ...

Considering the Revolution

“History is a Luxury”: Mrs. Thatcher, Mr. Disney, and (Public) History Douglas Greenberg (bio) Chicago-based Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. named Paul Hoffman, 41, previously editor-in-chief of Walt Disney’s Discover magazine to the newly created post of publisher. —Crain’s Chicago Business, June 30, 1997 Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts has even sent half its top managers to . . . Disney University seminars to learn “how you move crowds and keep smiles on people’s faces.” —The Wall Street Journal, September 4, 1997 “Public history” is a term of art, if ever there were one. Ask your next door neighbor what public history is, and you will not get much of an answer. Not only is public history a term of art, moreover, it is also a term of art of both recent and American vintage. Edward Gibbon would surely not have had a clue about what such a strange phrase meant, but then neither would George Bancroft. Nor, for that matter, would Frederick Jackson Turner. Richard Hofstadter would have found it a rather redundant usage. That is, public history, as we use it now, describes activities that historians have always undertaken, but have only recently distinguished from the “ordinary” work of teaching and scholarship. Of course, it is also true that the notion of history as being primarily, if not exclusively, the work of college and university professors is also a recent and American idea. Public history is term of art in another sense as well. History is perhaps the only academic discipline to which the adjective “public” can be credibly attached without being either redundant or oxymoronic. Can we imagine “public” chemistry or physics? Or, heaven forfend, “public” literary criticism? While we certainly might describe activities in these areas of knowledge roughly comparable to those undertaken by public historians, I do not think we can imagine that a group of physicists or chemists or critics would distinguish themselves from others in their field by applying the adjective “public” to what they do. No field of knowledge has been so scrupulously, so [End Page 294] torturously self-conscious as history, and no branch of historical study has been so simultaneously absorbed by and dismissive of public concerns as American history. It is a point of some significance that there is a National Council on Public History (NCPH), a distinguished learned group with a fine journal, but there are no National Council(s) on Public Physics, Chemistry, or Literary Criticism. It is equally significant that, judging from its journal at least, most members of the NCPH are Americanists. The rise of public history is an artifact of developments in the discipline that may be quickly reviewed. The great job shortage of the 1970s and 1980s in higher education sent many Ph.D.’s and near Ph.D.’s seeking work in places that would never have attracted their interest when they entered graduate school, hoping to play the game by the rules and land positions in colleges and universities. They found themselves working in journalism, national parks, state humanities councils, museums, libraries and archives, professional associations, state agencies, corporations, and a plethora of other unprofessorial venues. If they taught, they taught in a fashion and to students quite unlike those for which their graduate educations had nominally prepared them. When they undertook scholarship, they undertook it for different purposes and for different audiences than did their graduate school professors or those fortunate few of their own generation who managed to find teaching positions in higher education. They were marginalized by the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the American Historical Association (AHA), and other learned societies, the objects of pity perhaps, but not thought to be doing the real work of history. And, it should also be candidly said, many of them shared this view, hoping to bide their time on the institutional margin until a “real” job opened in a college or university. As time passed, however, several things became clear. First, the possibility of many new professorial jobs opening was negligible. The shortage of jobs for Ph.D.’s in history abated for a brief moment in the late eighties and early nineties, but it never disappeared; it has...

Review: <i>Public in Public History</i>, edited by Joanna Wojdon and Dorota Wiśniewska

Slavery as a Problem in Public History:Or Sally Hemings and the "One Drop Rule" of Public History Barbara Chase-Riboud (bio) This address was originally given at Slavery and Public History: An International Symposium, part of the Eighth Annual Gilder Lehrman Center International Conference at Yale University in November 2006. I have crossed swords with public history as both sculptor and novelist, an accidental historian. As a writer, I backed into issues of slavery and the public by default. I discovered the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings liaison twenty-five years ago and wrote Sally Hemings: A Novel, which, amongst other things, challenged public history and raised the ire of all the Jeffersonians. As a sculptor, this accident led to a whole new literary career of illuminating untold, unknown, invisible subjects left behind by public history. I didn't have the impression when I was writing that I was producing an act of resistance to history. I only said to myself that there were things "scientific history" had overlooked or forgotten, or never written about, or suppressed for political motives, which, for reasons as important as liberation, should be written about. Why is the subject of slavery avoided in the written and oral presentation of the history of the United States? Why is it still taboo, still so painful, still so present? One might even say omnipresent since there was a racial basis for slavery in the Americas, and racism in America remains. Slavery defines American history. It evokes all the contradictions of our national narrative—a national narrative perfectly devoid of any reference to the black presence and what slavery represents. It can be said that there are no errors in history, only consequences. The consequence in this case is the obligatory elimination of any trace of our national secret: the birth of white freedom in the bosom of a slave society with all that that implies—self-delusion, lies, misinformation, guilt, mental acrobatics, and total amnesia—in order to render our American dream, the national image and the idea of a white man's country. Because slavery and the persons who were subjugated to it were necessary to the creation and the survival of a viable United States as a nation and an economic entity—in other words, a raison d'etat—it was held permissible, even defendable, to retain and protect it. In order to do this, a theory of invisibility based upon dehumanization had to be invented. This was done in two ways: by psychological brainwashing and by the invention of racism—the exact opposite of the Patriot's creed of equality, liberty, and independence upon which the national identity was based. A split personality was created to keep the secrets of slavery. To mention slavery at all was to insure discomfort, guilt, and confusion in the minds of both the victims and the perpetuators. The institution was untouchable. [End Page 826] Founding history had to be virgin—without slavery and without the black presence, which in turn, created a rhetoric all its own. A cloak of silence was invented around this untouchable institution, allowing the United States to begin its life an innocent, void of slavery and the ostensibly "contaminating" black presence, which was at the time one-fifth of the colonial population. In other words, this black fifth negated the virginity and the purity of our origins and national myth (the amazing sexual overtones of this are of course present everywhere in racist cant). The myth of a new country born of love and desire for freedom, tolerance, innocence, equality and immigration (Give me your poor, tired, weak etc.) was superimposed on this same new country that still retained chattel slavery, hereditary slavery. Americans have fought three wars over slavery: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights War, each successive war containing the seeds of the preceding one. Of the three wars fought over slavery, the American Revolution or War of Independence is surely the most contradictory and tragic. In 1776, in a country of 10.5 million colonists, one-fifth or two million and a half were black, slave or free, North or South, a fact hardly mentioned in the...

PUBLIC HISTORY encompasses many fields of study--historic preservation, archival management, museum work, editing, archaeology, genealogy, public administration of historic resources-and is one of the fastest growing areas of departmental curriculum development on college and university campuses. Programs in public history are designed to produce graduates who wish to work in history-related occupations outside of teaching. However, many students in history pursuing secondary school teaching certification elect to undertake courses in public history for the valuable hands-on learning experiences they provide, ideas and techniques for them to use in their future classrooms. The purpose of this essay is to describe our approach to public history at Longwood College, and to offer some ideas and materials to assist our colleagues at other institutions who may wish to develop public history concentrations within the history major, or simply use some of the pedagogy of public history to enhance existing United States history courses. Most especially, we wish to emphasize the ways in which public history can be used to reach out to the community, to breach the traditional walls between town and gown and bring all those-interested in history together. Longwood College is one of the state colleges of Virginia, located in an area commonly called the Southside, referring to the region south of

Review: <i>Saving Spaces: Historic Land Conservation in the United States</i>, by John H. Sprinkle Jr.

Introduction to Special issue

Review: <i>A Nation of Descendants: Politics and the Practice of Genealogy in U.S. History</i>, by Francesca Morgan

Book Review| July 01 1986 Review: Researching Local History, by Mary Reed and Carole Simon-Smolinski; Local History in the Public Library: Starting and Building a Collection of Resources, by Karin E. Ford and Beth Hilbert; Surveying Historic Buildings, by Jennifer Eastman Attebery; A Role for Private Citizens in Historic Preservation, by Ann Swanson; and Using Main Street: Historic Preservation in Your Downtown, by Donald W. Watts Researching Local HistoryMary ReedCarole Simon-SmolinskiLocal History in the Public Library: Starting and Building a Collection of ResourcesKarin E. FordBeth HilbertSurveying Historic BuildingsJennifer Eastman AtteberyA Role for Private Citizens in Historic PreservationAnn SwansonUsing Main Street: Historic Preservation in Your DowntownDonald W. Watts Alexandra C. Cole Alexandra C. Cole Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (1986) 8 (3): 103–105. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377717 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Alexandra C. Cole; Review: Researching Local History, by Mary Reed and Carole Simon-Smolinski; Local History in the Public Library: Starting and Building a Collection of Resources, by Karin E. Ford and Beth Hilbert; Surveying Historic Buildings, by Jennifer Eastman Attebery; A Role for Private Citizens in Historic Preservation, by Ann Swanson; and Using Main Street: Historic Preservation in Your Downtown, by Donald W. Watts. The Public Historian 1 July 1986; 8 (3): 103–105. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3377717 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The second edition of Public History: A Textbook of Practice offers an updated guide to the many opportunities and challenges that public history practitioners can encounter in the field. Historians can play a dynamic and essential role in contributing to public understanding of the past, and those who work in historic preservation, in museums and archives, in government agencies, as consultants, as oral historians, or who manage crowdsourcing projects need very specific skills. This book links theory and practice and provides students and practitioners with the tools to do public history in a wide range of settings. This new edition reflects how much the field of public history has changed in the past few years, with public history now being more established and international. New chapters have therefore been added on the definition, history, and international scope of public history, as well as on specific practices and theories such as historical fictions, digital public history, and shared authority. Split into four sections, this textbook provides approaches, methodologies, and tools for historians and other public history practitioners to play a bigger role in public debates and public productions of historical interpretations: Part I focuses on the past, present, and future of public history. Part II explores public history sources, and offers an overview of the creation, collection, management, and preservation of materials (archives, material culture, oral history, or historical sites). Part III deals with the different ways in which public history practitioners can produce historical narratives through different media (including texts, fictions, audio-visual productions, exhibitions, and performances). Part IV discusses the opportunities and challenges that public history practitioners encounter when working with different collaborators. Whether in public history methods courses or as a resource for practicing public historians, this book lays the groundwork for making meaningful connections between historical sources and popular audiences.

Review: <i>Battle Green Vietnam: The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston</i>, by Elise Lemire

The Burden of Historical Representation:Race, Freedom, and “Educational” Hollywood Film Stoddard Jeremy D. (bio) and Marcus Alan S. (bio) When asked to describe a recent use of Hollywood film in her U.S. history class, one teacher responded, "I use Glory every year to reinforce the role of African Americans in American history." Depending on this teacher's specific classroom practices, this statement is both promising and problematic. On the promising side is the indication that the teacher is including the stories and roles of African Americans in her class. The teacher's use of Glory (1989) also needs to be problematized, however, and forces us to ask several key questions. What else is being reinforced when films portray stories of groups traditionally marginalized in history? What are students learning about the history of African Americans and their role within U.S. history when films like Glory are used as part of the curriculum—and how does this align with one of the core goals of social studies—to develop citizens for a pluralistic democracy? The teacher's statement quoted above was representative of the responses collected as part of a recent survey of eighty-four Wisconsin and Connecticut U.S. history teachers.1 In addition to the open-ended descriptions of classroom practice with film, we also asked the teachers to report which films they were using in their classes overall, how they were using the films as part of their instruction, and why they chose those films and methods. The two films identified as being used most often were the aforementioned Glory, a film about the all Black Massachusetts 54th regiment that fought during the U.S. Civil War, and Amistad (1997), a film about a group of African slaves who revolted against their captors aboard ship en route to a slave market and ended up fighting for freedom in the U.S. Court system during the 1830s. Both films were created by large studios with big name actors during the late 1980s through the 1990s, a period that saw a cultural and economic demand for stories and films about and for African-Americans.2 As the number of days of school is extremely limited, and the time it takes to view a feature length film significant, there is a large burden placed on these films and the manner in which they represent Africans and African Americans and their roles in the history of the United States. Of particular importance is how Glory and Amistad characterize the concept of freedom in relation to Africans and African Americans given freedom's importance in the films' narratives, its prominence in national and state U.S. history curriculum standards, and its status as a fundamental theme in the development of democracy and our nation. Here we consider what students can learn about Africans and African Americans in U.S. history from viewing Glory and Amistad, with a particular focus on the themes of race, racism, and freedom.3 Building off of the survey data, literature from history and film studies, and a new look at the films, this analysis will examine how effectively these two films help to fill the gaps that traditionally exist in the U.S. history curriculum and challenge the dominant historical narrative through including the stories and perspectives of Africans and African Americans and their complex role in the history of the U.S. As part of our analysis we also address the larger issue of what role feature films should have in history classrooms, within the larger goals of social studies education, and explore specific pedagogical practices with film that might help teachers to better fulfill the standards of the burden of historical representation. Glory and Amistad have already undergone significant analysis and critique by historians, film critics, and others. Given the frequent use of these films in the classroom, we seek to draw from and build on this previous work and reflect on the films in the context of the secondary history classroom. [End Page 26] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Purpose for Classroom Use of Glory and Amistad Teacher Practices, the Burden of Historical Representation, and Freedom Fifty...

This chapter examines an initial effort to think in more comparative terms in that it seeks to present, from an African American's perspective, developments in Kenya as they relate to the theological and religious weight of bodies. By 1895, Kenya was recognized as the East African Protectorate of Britain and, twenty-five years after this, Britain claimed most of the area as Kenya Colony. Colonization ripped resources away and altered Kenya and what it meant to be Kenyan in profound ways, and with devastating economic consequences. Clearly, colonial Kenya became a space of existential, ontological, and epistemological warping, where African bodies came to signify less than their true worth and value. As the availability of white slaves declined, and the danger of an end to the trade in black bodies increased, the push to flood the market with black slaves gained momentum.

This paper delves into the pivotal role of oral tradition in Native American culture, as embodied in N. Scott Momaday's seminal work, The Way to Rainy Mountain. By weaving together personal experience, ancestral memories, and verbal narratives, Momaday mounts a compelling challenge to Eurocentric historical documentation, reclaiming Native American identity, culture, and history in the process. Through a critical examination of Momaday's narrative strategies, this study explores how he employs Native aesthetics to transcend the dominant Western epistemological frameworks that have historically marginalized Native American voices. By subverting the traditional boundaries of documented history, Momaday's work offers a powerful counter-narrative that redefines the parameters of historical truth. Furthermore, this paper reexamines the erasure and misrepresentation of Native American culture through Eurocentric documentation, highlighting the ways in which dominant narratives have perpetuated cultural amnesia and historical distortion. By relooking at the intersections of history, culture, and power, this study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics underlying Native American cultural heritage. Ultimately, this research seeks to illuminate the significance of oral tradition as a vital means of preserving cultural memory, resisting dominant narratives, and reclaiming indigenous epistemologies. By centering Native American voices and perspectives, this study strives to promote a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of American history and culture.