286 Search Results Found for

  • Q: “Sir, would you like a history of this monument?” A: “F**k You!”

    Members of Historians for a Better Future planned to encounter many personalities along the sidewalk when we set up in front of the Women of the Confederacy monument at the State Capitol building in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 8, 2017. During our Free History Lesson, we stood holding banners connecting the monument to white […]

  • Public history and sustainability: An overview and invitation

    Public historians have long engaged with environmental topics and environmental historians to explore the long-term material effects of the decisions, actions, and conceptions of people in the past.  As we move toward the 2014 NCPH conference, with its theme of “Sustainable Public History,” this is a good moment to take stock of some of those […]

  • We were "doing" place (before place was cool)

    The first Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places turned 90 this month. He is well-known professionally and personally among those who worked on behalf of historic preservation in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. William J. Murtagh is equally well-known to today’s generation of preservation teachers and students. He is the […]

  • Statues, national monuments, and settler-colonialism: Connections between public history and policy in the wake of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

    In the past three months, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has made statements about both statues to settler-colonialism and national monuments that protect important indigenous sites. First, in October, he was asked about the possibility of taking down Confederate monuments on federal land. “Where do you start and where do you stop?” he asked, further supporting […]

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

    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 […]

  • Reimagining the history of the (Inter)National Park Service

    On May 13, 1918, less than two years after the National Park Service (NPS) was established, U.S. Interior Secretary Franklin K. Lane wrote to first National Park Service (NPS) director Stephen T. Mather regarding ways in which the new federal agency could interpret and expand its mission. Lane urged Mather: “You should keep informed of […]

  • How I stumbled into preserving history

    As a trade union leader and a political activist, I had occasions to attend national and international events. Often, other attendees would bring posters from their respective organizations. I would usually take one of each because I was attracted to either the graphics or the issue or both. After a few years of this, and […]

  • Project Showcase: Humanities for All

    In recent years, humanities practitioners at institutions of higher education have become increasingly engaged in public life. The National Humanities Alliance Foundation is currently leading a national study called “Humanities for All” to investigate and document this important work.

  • Teachable moments: Lessons to take to heart

    A teachable moment at the 2017 AAM Conference In walking through the expo hall at the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) conference in May, a friend of mine and I came upon one of the vendor displays that showed the figure of an enslaved black man shackled to a pole and a grey (white) auctioneer […]

  • Embodying the archive (Part 2): Lineages, longings, migrations

    The second part of this art and public history conversation series features artist E.G. Crichton.  In addition to being professor in the Art Department at UC Santa Cruz, Crichton is the first artist-in-residence for the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.  Her work, since she began her tenure there, has intentionally pulled the archives into […]