The Public Origins of Public History

Most stories about the origins of public history go something like this: the brutal job market of the 1970s forced newly minted academic historians to look outside the walls of the academe. They decided to adapt their skills, shifting away from an academic audience of their peers to engage the general public at large in institutions like museums, archives, and other historical societies. This explanation, a wave of young academic historians turned public historians, only tells part of the story. In fact, the traditional telling of the origin of public history discounts decades of public history efforts done at the community level by “everyday” men and women.

In Clio’s Foot Soldiers: Twentieth-Century U.S. Social Movements and Collective Memory, Lara Kelland seeks to correct the narrative by detailing the ways that members of the social and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s created and shared their history, fighting to add the experiences of themselves and their ancestors into the overarching story of the United States and for equal rights in the here and now.

In particular, Kelland highlights the following movements: Civil Rights, Black Separatism, Second-Wave Feminism, Gay Liberation, and Red Power.   

All of these movements have certain endeavors in common. Overall, community organizers took up history work to build a usable past that could propel their movements forward. By creating a shared past, these committed activists intended to forge a political consciousness in their members and allies. It was only later that many community historians looked outward, hoping to make the stories of their lives and the lives of the ancestors known on a national scale. Educating the general public on the many ways that minority populations contributed to the nation in the face of adversity and discrimination would hopefully attack negative stereotypes and ideally lead to equal rights.

Though their goals were much the same, each movement took used history in unique ways to advance their cause. The Civil Rights movement, inspired by the labor movement, adapted traditional spirituals into civil rights anthems. The most famous example of this shifted “I Will Overcame” to “We Shall Overcome.” This collective memory project preserved the music of previous generations and created a songbook that brought the movement together.

Alongside voter registration drives, Freedom Schools placed the history of struggle (e.g. resistance during slavery, the Reconstruction era, etc.) in the context of the present, encouraging activists to channel the strength of their ancestors. The Black Panther Party similarly framed their work in the context of the past. But unlike the Civil Rights movement, they explicitly highlighted moments of Black physical resistance. They saw the past as “inspiration, precedence, and mandate,” (68) urging them forward.

The women’s rights and gay liberation movements both looked to the past for examples of individuals who found success, or in the case of many historical gay, lesbian, or trans men and women, simply lived their lives authentically. Both movements found it important to preserve their history – the stories of the past and the history they were making in the present – in order to make it more visible. The gay liberation movement in particular faced a historical record were gay stories were hidden in euphemism, or at worst, totally expunged. Both movements stressed history’s personal usefulness for activist and allies. Collective memory projects therefore tended to be created only for people within the community and stressed the community’s ownership over that history.

Finally, Red Power collective memory efforts often leaned heavily on the symbolic importance of place. Major protests often occurred in historically significant places, like an encampment that took place at Wounded Knee, the site of a horrific massacre. Another key example is the occupation of the island of Alcatraz. Activists compared conditions on the desolate formal penal island to the historic conditions Native Americans had been forced to endure on reservations for decades. Native American activist groups sought to use history to combat the damage done to their communities as a result of the United States government’s various forced assimilation campaigns. Highlighting stories of resistance and resilience helped give Native Americans back their agency in stories that often claimed that Native American culture had been dominated and destroyed.

While acknowledging the stumbles of community history work – things like overly rosy portrayals of significant ancestors, flashes of presentism, and narrow, non-intersectional narratives – Kelland gives credit where credit is due. The true origins of public history lie within the public, not the professional.