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  • Fighting for a better memorial?

    Editor’s note: This post continues a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a past article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation.  In this latest post in our series on the National Historic Preservation Act, Mary Rizzo, former co-editor […]

  • Responding to Baltimore: A role for public historians? (Part 2)

    Editors’ Note: Readers can find Part 1 here. This post continues a short list of what history, public and otherwise, as well as allied disciplines, can do in the face of events like those that have engulfed Baltimore. Third, beyond documentation, history can support change in the present. History is rarely a direct catalyst for […]

  • Responding to Baltimore: A role for public historians? (Part 1)

    Events in Baltimore during the last couple of weeks following the death of Freddie Gray apparently after a questionable arrest have precipitated a great deal of commentary, ranging from the thoughtful to the bloviating. Likewise, interest in a more activist, civically engaged public history has been generating considerable discussion, both descriptive and hortatory. In an […]

  • The NCPH meets in Baltimore next year. We shouldn’t ignore what’s happened there this week.

    While researching at the LBJ Presidential Library over the last ten days, I’ve read numerous memos on the use of federal troops and National Guard units to quell the urban rebellions of the late 1960s. It was jarring to turn on the television Monday night and learn that Maryland’s governor had declared a state of […]

  • Long Range Plan: Stewardship

    […] on and mutually reinforce one another. Over the past few weeks, members of the committee have shared posts exploring four of the new plan’s five pillars: Community, Advocacy, Diversity, and Practice. This post looks at the final pillar, Stewardship and Sustainability, which ties the other four together and works to make NCPH a more […]

  • Around the Field January 10, 2024

    […] their 2024 conference ANNOUNCEMENTS This is the final week for NCPH members to participate in the organization’s 2024 election, cast your ballots by January 15, 2024 Museums Advocacy Day 2024 will take place in Washington, DC, US, February 26-27, 2024, register by January 19, 2024, to participate in person or check out resources to […]

  • Chile's complicated commemoration of 1973

    This September Chile celebrated its 200th birthday. And not unlike other nations that have marked this monumental milestone, the Southern Cone country rolled out the proverbial red carpet to celebrate the event. Throughout the long, thin country festive festivities flourished: fiestas patrias, national dances and dishes, declarations and speeches. In addition to the bicentennial celebrations, […]

  • Another case for museums as public forums

    I have always thought of public history as a tool to assist us in mediating unchartered territory. More specifically, museums can serve as public forums to tackle persistent forms of oppression that have escaped clear resolve. This vision seems particularly relevant today.  There is a wide gap between understanding the inaccessible civil liberties and rights […]

  • Glimpsing new possibilities

    This short clip of actor Tim Robbins reading the words of historian and gay activist Martin Duberman on the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion is taken from a collection of videos from the “Voices of a People’s History” project, a performance-oriented offshoot of Howard Zinn’s iconic work “A People’s History of the United States” (Zinn, who died […]

  • Hardball history: Knowing the people's history requires being on their side

    On May 30, 1995, wearing an orange construction helmet, I stood behind a makeshift barricade on E. 13th Street in New York City. Hundreds of squatters faced off against larger numbers of riot police who were armed with a tank and supported by snipers on the surrounding buildings. They had come to evict people from […]