Author Archive

David Rotenstein

Looking for Lucille’s story in the 1950 census

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On the morning of April 1, 2022, I was among throngs of remote researchers who visited the National Archives and Records Administration website to access data from the newly released 1950 Census. I had waited thirteen years to answer one research question: Who was the Black woman working in a family home that I had first researched in 2009? Read More

A Virtual Walking Tour in Decatur, Georgia: Linking Race, History, Community

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I teach a seminar on ethnography and community engagement in Goucher College’s graduate historic preservation program. Last year, I took my students to Baltimore’s Otterbein neighborhood, a historic district and one of the nation’s earliest urban homesteading neighborhoods.[i] The COVID-19 pandemic pushed our summer term online and that meant no class field trip to Baltimore, an annual program tradition. Read More

Community-driven mitigation: Murals, canal stones, and a walking tour

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Jack Schmitt has mixed feelings about the way that the Pennsylvania Route 28 project turned out. On one hand, the longtime Pittsburgh historic preservation advocate beams when he talks about how he successfully convinced the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to replicate historic Pennsylvania Canal lock stones in a retaining wall in the urban highway corridor. Read More

My community’s history is racist. How can I correct it?

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This is an exciting and anxiety-producing moment in the United States. It is a time when professional historians are stepping outside their classrooms and consulting practices to push for the removal of Confederate statues and for greater public dialogue about the roles that white supremacy played in the past and how it persists in our communities. Read More

Public art and history: Silver Spring’s Memory Wall

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In the 1990s, Silver Spring, Maryland, was desperate for economic investment and an image makeover. Next door to Washington, D.C., the Montgomery County suburb had suffered from two decades of disinvestment and white flight. Once a thriving community with a booming commercial district and sprawling inner-ring suburban neighborhoods, Silver Spring had become blighted by vacant storefronts and empty parking lots. Read More

A public history role for building bike lanes in cities?

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Gentrification: It’s not just for sociologists and anthropologists any more. Though historians have been making inroads documenting and interpreting gentrification and displacement, there are abundant opportunities for historians to make significant contributions in public policy and planning. One recent kerfuffle involving proposed bicycle lanes and African American churches in Washington, DC, provides a window into how a better understanding of the past could have defused a racially and class charged debate over painted lines in public spaces.

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