Looking back, I can identify the moment when I began to ask myself, as a scholar and activist, how public historians can build capacity to challenge an exclusive past. This past summer I became involved in an inter-group dialogue organization. As a public historian, I began to notice that the conversations in our meetings about race, class, privilege and advantage were also stories about history; individual narratives that spoke to the painful push of the past and the sweeping changes in rustbelt city. Determined to capture the stories emerging from the group dialogue sessions, I proposed A People’s History of Geneva, a community oral history project which collects, documents, and preserves the experiences of traditionally underrepresented Genevans. However, as I presented my idea to the group, many were skeptical about its chances of success. “Some people already did that” one community member informed me and “nothing happened.” It turns out two years before my arrival in Geneva, a group of community members lead by faculty at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (HWS) and staff at Geneva’s Human Rights Commission had proposed a community oral history project. On paper, the project looked a lot like the one I was proposing, a collaboration between an educational institution and community organization that a focused on collecting the histories of underrepresented groups in the city. As I slowly uncovered the records of this first abandoned attempt I began to ask myself where the earlier initiative had gone wrong. What could A People’s History of Geneva do differently in order to be successful?
History @ Work is full of accounts of inspiring public history projects, projects that activate, energize and inform. Less visible, however, are the stories of the failures–well intentioned projects like the one I came across in Geneva, which never really got off the ground or ran out of steam partway through. Community driven projects are particularly vulnerable. A People’s History of Geneva was born out of the understanding that stories are powerful tools in forging a more cohesive community identity, and sharing the stories of everyday people provides the opportunity for understanding the diversity of the Geneva community and empowering a culture of respect for its citizens. We embody these values through a model of shared decision making and leadership, a concerted effort to share authority with our interviewees and a desire to connect individual histories to salient issues of race, class, gender and other inequalities in the community. At times, however, those values and ways of doing clash with the institutional cultures that support such work and the real world demands in community members lives.
A few examples:
- Our steering committee consists of community members, representatives from the Geneva Public Library (where the oral history archive will be located) and the Geneva History Society. We meet once a month to discuss the project, however we have yet to have a meeting when all members of the committee were present. Kids get sick, pressing events emerge, people’s jobs require them to be somewhere else. How do we practice a shared decision making when not all of the stakeholders can be at the same place at the same time?
- Currently, only two of our committee members have training in oral history techniques. How do we allocate our resources? Do we focus on training community members, understanding that oral history interviewing is a skill that takes time and practice to cultivate OR do we focus on using the trained public historians to collect as many interviews as we can?
- How do we sustain the project? Can we apply for grants as a community organization? Which one of our partners (Geneva Historical Society, Geneva Public Library, Hobart and William Smith Colleges) should administer the grant? Who has the time/energy write the grant?
I wanted to join this NCPH working group because I think the questions it asks about how we can build a more inclusive past are particularly salient in my own work. While I think a “best practices” document will be undoubtably useful, I am also hoping this group might explore ways to foster a community of practice that brings together practitioners, grantees, humanities councils and community members engaged in this work.
~ Elizabeth Belanger, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
It’s interesting to your statement after reading about the model train club as the community you are examining is expansive in scope and the model train club is of a much narrower scope. Maybe when a community is too multifaceted it is too challenging to create enough cohesion around a project like a People’s History of Geneva. It seems to me (without hard data) that local heritage projects gain momentum when there is a specific passion or cause rather than when the community at large is engaged with local heritage.
In the town where I live there is a Human Rights Commission run by the City. They are currently doing ‘listening sessions’ where they have meetings with anyone from the community who would like to air their grievances and make suggestions for change. The two meetings they have had so far were with the Black community and the LGBTQ* community. I bring this up because, though the community they serve is much larger, they are breaking it down into smaller units to make it more manageable. Following the Human Rights Commission model I wonder if focusing on one historically under-represented group at a time would help to generate more interest. You might work first with a group that is particularly motivated to do this type of work and then have that as an example for the next group and so on, you might also ask the two oral historians to train people from the first group to do interviews, and they can be utilized as interviewers for the second group and they can also speak to the wider usefulness of the project and the importance of their involvement. This would help with Andrea’s suggestion that the scope may be too large and the community too multifaceted.
I think the two above comments grapple with the real challenge Public Historians have in defining the scope of project. Often, grand plans are envisioned, but projects and ideas fall through, as the previous Oral History Project alluded to in the case statement shows. I love the model of the humanities council noted in Beaujot’s response, as I think it shows a great way to walk the middle ground. Don’t loose that sense of the big idea/vision (often, that is exactly the Public Historians role), but be sure to break it down into manageable smaller categories/projects that are easier to tackle/get your feet wet.
Our office works principally with state humanities councils and we encourage them to conduct listening tours to both understand and serve the diverse needs of their state. We also want councils to share their failures as a way to help others avoid pitfalls and identify fresh approaches. I think Elizabeth’s suggestion to use the guide as a tool to foster a community of practice is key to developing shared authority and “challenging the exclusive past.”