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  • Hardball history: On the high road without any shoes

    “You know who has money to help you.” I responded to this truth by listing three millionaires from whom I would not accept funding for Museo Urbano, the public history project housed in the Department of History at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). The response hit hard. “You know you’re walking the high […]

  • Fragile history in a gentrifying neighborhood

    Over the past few years, I have been writing about gentrification and how it intersects with history in an Atlanta, Georgia, suburb. Twenty-five months and more than 50 interviews after I started talking with people and documenting neighborhood change in the Oakhurst area of Decatur, I met playwright Valetta Anderson, who works at Atlanta’s Woodruff […]

  • The History Relevance Campaign moves to the next step

    Having laid the groundwork, the History Relevance Campaign (HRC) is ready to take a big step forward and needs your help. The HRC started a little more than two years ago, with early conversations taking place at the annual meeting of the National Council on Public History in Ottawa and continuing at last year’s annual […]

  • “APUSH” in the right direction

    As public historians, we like to think we know something about narrative. We know that human beings construct meaning through stories, and that history is the art of constructing compelling stories from the traces of the past. Psychologists have demonstrated the emotional and inspirational power of “hero’s journey” narratives in which protagonists overcome great odds […]

  • History without vision: A struggle over art at the City Museum of New York

    Muralist and activist Mike Alewitz has finished his tribute to the labor and social justice movements, an imposing four-panel painting titled The City at the Crossroads of History–but the museum it was commissioned for doesn’t want it. The Puffin Foundation, a grant maker that frequently supports politically left artists, engaged Alewitz to create the mural […]

  • Keeping the faith: Political cartoons in and out of the archives

    The killings at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris this week have prompted a passionate defense around the world of political cartoons as free speech, a form of journalistic expression that exemplifies (and occasionally pushes the boundaries of) a free press’s role as critic and gadfly. In thinking about historical precedents and comparisons for the […]

  • Invoking history in voter registration law

    Last Thursday, the US Supreme Court and a federal district court issued separate rulings striking down voter ID laws in Wisconsin and Texas. The Texas ruling should be of particular interest to public historians because of the extent to which history is at the center of US District Court Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos’s decision. 

  • Practicing public history on Wikipedia

    Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of reflections from winners of NCPH awards in 2022. Madeline Hellmich is the winner of a graduate student travel award.  The online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which launched in 2001, is the seventh-most visited website in the world. While Wikipedia has arguably become the universal place to go […]

  • Join Us in a Dream: A National Museum of Disability History and Culture

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    It is time for a Smithsonian National Museum of Disability History and Culture. Considering the fact that one in four Americans, or approximately 61 million people, is disabled, a national museum would acknowledge disability as an essential component of American life. This is the largest minority group in the United States. The disability community consists […]

  • Who Should Tell the Story? The Pennhurst Haunted Asylum and the Pennhurst Museum in Public History

    The Pennhurst Haunted Asylum and the Pennhurst Museum, operated by Pennhurst LLC in collaboration with the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance (PMPA), exist side-by-side on the grounds of the shuttered Pennhurst State School and Hospital in Spring City, Pennsylvania. The sites might seem to have opposite goals: one to frighten and entertain, the other to […]