Editor’s Corner: Complicating Authority

04 May 2023 – Sarah H. Case

Editors’ Note: We publish the editor’s introduction to the May 2023 issue of The Public Historian here. The entire issue is available online to National Council on Public History members and to others with subscription access.

This issue brings several articles that explore the concept of authority in public history, an idea that has long shaped debates about how we define our field. Read More

Commemorating the Tulsa Massacre: A Search for Identity and Historical Complexity

04 June 2020 – Alaina Roberts 3

When HBO’s Watchmen aired on October 20th last year, it introduced millions of Americans to the explosive episode of racial terror that gripped the black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma from May 30th to June 1st, 1921. The TV show dramatizes how white Americans used guns and even makeshift bombs to destroy millions of dollars in property and murdered an estimated 100 to 300 African Americans over the course of three days (the “aftermath” of which is pictured here). Read More