The Civil Rights History of Baltimore at the MCHC: Part 2

The thing about oral history is that you have the opportunity of learning from different people and hear different perspectives on particular topics and issues of society. Baltimore has a rich history that many don’t know or heard about. The McKeldin-Jackson Project showed and explained the history of segregation during the civil rights movement.

Upon reading and listening to the interviews, I was able to get a better understanding of Theodore McKeldin, the people on his team, and civil rights leaders such as Lily May Jackson and her family. The transcription and translation process of these interviews gave us new perspectives on how African Americans were treated in society and the way Governor McKeldin worked with race leaders to bring change into Baltimore. Not just that but most of the summaries that I was able to create from the interviews were concerns about African American disenfranchisement; education and employment of African Americans; black relations with the police and with Jews; public accommodation of African Americans, black political action, and black women. This opened a doorway for me to learn more about Ford and Lyric theatres in Baltimore; desegregation; restaurant discrimination; the Urban League; Gov. Theodore R. McKeldin's appointments. I think it was truly interesting to see different groups of people come together to fight for a common and rebuild a community that wasn’t getting any respect from society.

I think it was quite inspiring to see a black woman like Lillie May Jackson, working closely with the governor of Maryland to create opportunities and change for the black community. It was amazing to see her support Louise Kerr Hines, who was discriminated against at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, as she wasn't offered a position for a free library training course due to the color of her skin. It was quite significant to see Carl Murphy of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper and Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People suing the library for their discriminatory actions towards the black community.

The most important part of the internship was the opportunity to listen to and transcribe old audio from the 90s. It was a long and difficult process but it was worthwhile for any future historian who was trying to get into the field of transcribing works of others from any time period. Overall, though the internship wasn’t too long of an experience, I still found all the projects and work that we did to be quite interesting and such a contribution to my field of study as a future historian.

The Civil Rights History of Baltimore: MCHC Part 1

 

Public History uses historical skills and getting around communities to learn and study history. I learned public history by making history with people who know and understand the field. From my experience doing a public history summer internship with the UMBC history department, I could fill some gaps in history that I didn’t know about history by doing fieldwork and conducting oral history interviews of those who were a part of the Freddie Gray uprising in Baltimore. The boot camp internship is a history internship, designed as a way for students to practice the work of public historians and the aspect of oral history and why it is essential for us to make history.

The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC) is the internship's location; It was founded in March of 1844.it is an excellent place of history and has a lot of documents that historians can use to conduct a research projects, etc. As the museum was in the process of creating a civil rights exhibition, the translation of interviews done about the history of the Civil rights movement in Baltimore was needed as a way for the public and citizens to learn more about the history of Baltimore.

The internship was designed as a way for students to work on interviews that were done in the past, to create short summaries for the public to see if they have an interest in a specific person. It further taught us how to do the transcription and translation of old interviews as a way for the public to have easy access to information. It was the McKeldin-Jackson Project Oral History Collection that we were working on to create short summaries for the community to have an interest in it. The use of audio recordings to craft a story or a summary can be challenging, and sometimes you might perhaps record information that might not be the truth or not to the extent of what the interviewee said. This internship is an excellent opportunity for history students to practice history and the different ways that historians make history. We tend to associate just being behind a desk with the study of history, but there are many ways that we make history. Fieldwork and the inducting of an oral interview are methods that the internship was teaching us in a sense for us to be great historians in the future.

Tuning Into Baltimore: Internship at the Maryland Center for History and Culture II

 Tuning Into Baltimore II: Internship at the Maryland Center for History and Culture

By: Wyatt Lindsey

From the politically established to the average Baltimorean, the people behind the oral histories I listened to came from a variety of backgrounds. This provided me with a multifaceted perspective of Baltimore in the 1960s, with three main categories of conversation: politics, race/racial tensions, and development of Baltimore.

Discussion of Baltimore’s politics centered around the second mayoral term of Theodore McKeldin from 1963-1967, as well as the immediate effects of his term. From listening to McKeldin’s son, staff members, and advisors, an image of McKeldin as an honest man who got into politics to be among people. Many who knew McKeldin saw him as a rock, holding together Baltimore through his affable demeanor and through his image as someone who listened to whoever entered his office door. Behind closed doors, he was a big-picture thinker who often yearned to spend more time with his family, with a rage that occasionally got the best of him, causing him to act out. It was rare to hear anyone speak ill of McKeldin, and any criticism was often followed by numerous statements of how great of a person and leader he was, leading one to believe that his reciprocated love for Baltimore was genuine.

One of McKeldin’s proudest accomplishments was the development of Baltimore’s inner harbor. The establishment of the Charles Center saw the area rejuvenated under his successor, Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro III. The inner harbor remained an area that McKeldin was involved with until his death in 1974.

Listening to political actors of the time gives a large-scale view of the changes that were occuring in Baltimore, but a more intimate perspective lay in the oral histories of everyday people. Stories about racial tensions from those who witnessed the era of the Baltimore and Cambridge Riots, including efforts at police reform and the struggle of experiencing integration in public schools. Hearing from many members of the NAACP was also fascinating, especially concerning their retrospective views on the rise of black militancy in the civil rights movement. Throughout all, Lillie Mae Jackson remained a powerful influence, being brought up repeatedly by anyone who talked at any length about the NAACP or its efforts. The admiration demonstrated by those interviewed, even if they had once faced pressure from Jackson in the past, was indicative of her influence in the Baltimore community, especially in regards to race or religion.

Internship at the Archives of the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church #3

    This internship experience at the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church has been not just enjoyable, but extremely enlightening as well. I finished the internship with not only a better understanding of the history of my parish, but also with a new, robust skill set. As a consequence of this internship, I now know how to properly preserve and maintain archival materials. I now possess the tools and training needed to preserve some of my family’s own historical treasures. Yet, most importantly of all, I finally realize what it means to be a historian.
    We all learn in our classes that history is everywhere, but personally I did not quite comprehend the omnipresence of history until after I dove into this local archive. Letters, bureaucratic forms, audio recordings, and meeting minutes might seem unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but put together, these small records weave a rich story of the people who created them. But even in archives, these materials risk being lost or forgotten in storage. As part of my internship, I worked to ensure that would not happen. 

Photo of my work station in the archives.

    During the 160 hours I spent working with archival materials, I worked at two tasks which should help preserve these treasures. The first was an archival catalogue, documenting around three hundred unique items within the church’s archives and creating a system to catalog the rest of the archive’s materials. The second was the successful digitization of over a hundred documents, audio recordings, and vinyl records housed within the archives. In the process of completing these two tasks, I found such treasures as gorgeous letterheads and stunning vinyls, hidden in the little basement room where the archives were stored. I learned so much about the beginnings of my parish and the difficult process of building the stunning church of the Holy Trinity.

Album cover for a vinyl record of songs from the opera Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.

    The items in the archives of the Holy Trinity contain the tales of how a small parish strove to build a church of its own. Were it not for the heroic efforts of the church’s head archivist, these stories would have faded away as parishioners relocated, aged, and passed away. Through the catalogue I filled out and the materials I digitized during my 160 hours in the archives, I hope that I helped these treasures survive for generations to come.

Internship at the Archives of the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church #2

    When I volunteered to work in the archives of the Holy Trinity Particular Ukrainian Catholic Church, I never expected that I would be preserving vinyl records. I didn't even know the church had a vinyl record collection until, one day, I found a box and two paper bags together containing over a hundred vinyl records. A family friend told me that a parishioner had donated their large collection of Ukrainian folk and contemporary music on vinyl records to the church many years ago. These vinyl records, however, were stored for years under a stairwell, where damp conditions provided a wonderful habitat for mold. By the time I discovered them, many of the record covers were absolutely covered in that mold, and required immediate attention.
    While I had never worked with vinyl records before, vinyl records before, I dove into the task at hand undaunted. I set up a special table in my garage and assembled a large stash of Lysol® disinfectant cleaning wipes. I bought the necessary equipment to clean and preserve these vinyl records, including a special brush to clean any spores from the vinyl records themselves, archival-quality plastic inner and outer record sleeves to guard against moisture, and a portable record player which would allow me to create digital copies of the songs.

Photo of the cleaning station in my garage, along with my feline supervisor Tosia.

   I developed a routine for cleaning these records. First, I would remove the vinyl record from its paper cover, discard any irreparable inner paper sleeves, and put the record aside. Next, I would wipe down the cover, dry it with a paper towel, scan it with Office Lens, and place it into a plastic outer sleeve. Following that, I would carefully wipe any dirt or detritus from the vinyl record, dry it with a paper towel, and place it into a plastic inner sleeve. Then, I would take the vinyl record inside the house, gently clean it with the special record brush, and appraise the physical condition of the record. If there were no serious scratches or dents, I would then place it onto my portable record player, and let my computer make a digital copy of the songs. By the time I completed my internship at the Holy Trinity PUC Church, I had successfully preserved 43 different vinyl records.. 
    I found the experience of caring for these vinyl records particularly rewarding. Not only did I learn a lot about the vinyl medium, I also had the chance to listen to interesting and unique interpretations of the Ukrainian folk songs I grew up with. It also proved a good activity to do on days when I could not drive to the archives due to adverse weather conditions.

Internship at the Archives of the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church #1

    Hello! My name is Danylo Leshchyshyn. This summer, I interned as an assistant archivist at the Holy Trinity Particular Ukrainian Catholic Church at 16631 New Hampshire Avenue in Montgomery County, MD. This church constitutes a parish of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic denomination in communion with the Pope of Rome. The parish of the Holy Trinity P.U.C. Church was one of many churches established by Ukrainian refugees who settled in North America after the Second World War. I grew up in this parish, so I was grateful for the opportunity to serve by helping manage the archives.  

Holy Trinity P.U.C. Church. Photo by Danylo Leshchyshyn.

    The chief goal of my internship was to organize and preserve the mountains of historical data in the parish archives. Organizing meant individually examining each document or item, and determining its origin. This process was made easier by simultaneously compiling an archival catalog, recording where each document was located. Each day I would encounter documents or other historical material which required immediate preservation work. To preserve the items, I learned how to properly de-crease dangerous folds, clean mold, and delicately remove staples and other sources of rust. The pandemic actually did not hinder my job too much, for my role allowed me to work independently in the archive room.

    The main joy of my internship was discovering all the hidden treasures waiting in the archives. During my time in the office, I had a wonderful opportunity to view hundreds of papers documenting the history of the parish, including many missives with beautiful letterhead and hallmarks from the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. There were also architectural plans related to the construction of the Holy Trinity P.U.C. Church in an authentic Carpathian Ukrainian style. In addition, I stumbled upon a rare collection of Ukrainian songs donated by a parishioner some time ago, consisting of over a hundred unique vinyl records.

Ground-level plans of the Holy Trinity PUC Church, by architect Larysa Kurylas.

    While this might not be an ideal place for most UMBC History students to intern, since it requires a strong grasp of the Ukrainian language, it proved a perfect opportunity for me to conduct quiet research and give back to my parish community.

Collections Internship with Save Our Seminary - Part 3: Material Culture

Possibly my favorite part of my collections internship with historic preservation nonprofit Save Our Seminary (SOS) was taking inventory of new acquisitions to the organization’s archives. One of SOS’s board members monitors sites like eBay for paraphernalia related to the school. I was surprised that there would be things sold online related to the school, but that speaks to the wide spread of the girls that attended the school. One yearbook I looked at listed girls from a huge variety of states, some even from overseas. It was rare for a student to actually be from the DC area. And like any college, the attendees had a lot of pride in their alma mater; National Park Seminary had an active alumni network even after the school closed in the 1940s.

A 1920s school yearbook. The girls all sport stylish 1920s bobs and each girl
has a fun, congenial description of her personality written by the yearbook staff. 
Another interesting note: The Yearbook was called "The Acorn" and you may be
able to see the squirrels drawn in on the blocks behind the women’s pictures.

Unfortunately, many of these alumna are passing away and their estates are being sold. The majority of the acquisitions I went through were from the collection of one particular woman who attended NPS in the early 1920s. Interestingly enough, my supervisor and I discovered through some archival detective work that this woman and her sister both went to National Park Seminary…and must have married two men who were brothers!

A note from one student to another asking to meet at one of the sorority buildings.

It was amazing how much stuff these women kept: playbills, ticket stubs, notes from friends and faculty, postcards, letters. One thing I found particularly amusing were these short notes that I dubbed “early twentieth-century text messages.” Sometimes these were warning notes from school faculty regarding money owed or dorm rooms that needed to be cleaned. Other times they were notes from sorority sisters asking the girl to meet them at a certain place later that day. It was interesting to see how people communicated before email and text.

A scrapbook featuring playbills and other paper ephemera.

A whimsical name plate pasted into a scrapbook. These name plates with characters
were common and some of the paper decorations in the scrapbooks are quite elaborate.

I also had a chance to look at yearbooks, school catalogs sent out to advertise the college to potential students, and scrapbooks made by students of their time at the school. It was fascinating to see fashions and hairstyles change over the years but also to get a sense of what it was like to be a student at NPS. Since I scrapbooked my own college experience, it was interesting to see the change and continuity between scrapbooks (and college life) in the early twentieth century and today. In fact, I decided to use the scrapbook collection as the source base for my senior thesis. All in all, after spending so much of my internship focusing on the buildings of the school, it was enlightening to get a glimpse on the lives that were lived within those buildings. 

Giving life to buildings: The field hockey team sat in front of the stone arches below

 for this picture. I found this photo interesting because school sports teams still take photos like this one.

 

• Read the first and second posts on this internship.
• For more information on National Park Seminary historic district, visit www.saveourseminary.org.
• Find public history internship opportunities.

Collections Internship with Save Our Seminary: Post 2

The newly renovated Greek Revival gymnasium, which now houses 

condominium units, greets visitors when they enter the National 

Park Seminary historic district. Not too long ago, the 

magnificent building was decaying from neglect. (Rebecca Gale)

As I relayed in my last post, I have been completing an internship with the historic preservation nonprofit Save Our Seminary (SOS), based in Forest Glen, which is responsible for the rescue and restoration of the historic National Park Seminary campus. SOS maintains an archive of objects important to the seminary’s history, and I’ve had the chance to aid with organizing parts of the collection to make it more accessible. 

While my first task was filing slides in archivally safe sleeves, my second project was sorting and filing an extensive set of photos depicting the gradual decay and long-awaited restoration of the historic buildings over the course of two decades. The bulk of the photos were taken by my internship supervisor, a historic preservationist and the executive director of SOS, who has been documenting the state of the campus since before most of us undergraduates were even in existence.

The end result of my project: Two and a half feet of binders
filled with hundreds of photos! Each binder houses photos of
a specific building or sculpture, placed in chronological
order to show change over time.

This collection has amounted to hundreds of photos and dates back to 1990. My job has been to sort photos into categories based on what building or object is pictured and place them into archival sleeves in chronological order so that it will be easy to trace the development of each building over time. Going through the photos has been fascinating, and their existence is a testament to the dedication of people who care about the stories that historic spaces tell, even when they no longer showcase their beauty as originally intended. I remember driving past the seminary campus when it was a tangle of weeds; it’s easy to forget the horrific state of the place looking at its pristine, glowing stucco today.

Some of the photos from the collection, depicting one building (a dorm during
the school era) before and during restoration. You can see the historic fireplace
that was preserved throughout the process. (Photos by Bonnie Rosenthal,
courtesy of Save Our Seminary)

This photo collection is a reminder of the victory that has been won in saving one American treasure and restoring it to life. Whenever I set foot on the seminary campus now, I think back to the mind-boggling images of decay – floors falling down, entire walls sagging, stones buckling, roofs caving in, fires being put out – and my heart warms to see a dream realized in front of me, the dream of a group of people committed to a place that spoke to them. The seminary is a reminder to keep fighting for the preservation of historic places because their story deserves to be told and they are meant to be a site of life once again.

• Read my first post on interning with Save Our Seminary.
• Visit Save Our Seminary's website to learn more about the site's history as well as upcoming events, tours, and lectures.

Preserving History: Collections Internship with Save Our Seminary

The seminary built each campus sorority a meeting house 

designed to look like the architecture of different countries. 

The Japanese Pagoda was the Chi Psi Epsilon sorority clubhouse 

at NPS. The exterior was restored by SOS volunteers in 2000. 

(Photo by Rebecca Gale)

This summer, I volunteered with Save Our Seminary, which is a nonprofit organization in Forest Glen, MD that was formed to fight for the preservation and restoration of the historic National Park Seminary campus. National Park Seminary was a women's secondary school that was known for its whimsical architecture. The school was a popular choice for the daughters of prominent Americans until the U.S. Army took over the campus to serve as a medical rehabilitation center for returning soldiers in World War II. By the 1990s, the buildings had fallen into disuse and disrepair.

Shocked by incidents of theft, water damage, dilapidation, and even arson, preservationists and local community members formed Save Our Seminary (SOS) to pressure the army to take better care of the property. After a long, hard-fought battle, they were able to arrange for a developer to restore the historic campus buildings and convert them into condominiums, apartments, and single-family homes. Today, SOS continues their preservation work by archiving the site’s history, providing educational programming, and preserving the site and its sculpture.

Athletics, including horseback riding, were an important part
of academics and student life at the National Park Seminary.
Here students are on horseback in front of the Dutch Windmill,
another sorority clubhouse that is today a restored single-
family home. (Photo Courtesy of the Historic American
Building Survey and Save Our Seminary)

My internship has involved working in the SOS archive to help organize its collections so that they are easily accessible to researchers. My first project was sorting through an extensive collection of slides featuring pictures from the seminary’s extensive history. Some of the photos dated back to the 1890s and it was fascinating to see images of the campus in its glory days, with smiling young women in Gibson Girl shirtwaists with bouffants piled high posing for the camera with friends.

While the work of archiving – housing, dating, categorizing, and sorting into chronological order – can get tedious at times, I always treasure the intriguing glimpses into the past that often serve as a reminder that history was lived by people not so different from us. And even though the tasks we perform as interns can seem insignificant, each small task contributes to a larger cause: preserving the stories of the past to inspire the people of the future. 

For more information on Save Our Seminary and the National Park Seminary, visit the organization's website at http://www.saveourseminary.org/. 

An Archival Conundrum

I am nearing the finish line. At least, the finish line of uploading our backlog of photographs onto the baltimoreuprising2015.org website. When the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) originally put out the call for photographs, they received an overwhelming response, but they had nowhere to put the astounding contributions. Contributors were instructed to send images to MdHS via dropbox. When I arrived on the scene, the Historical Society dropbox had over a thousand images shared to their account. The first things I had to do when I began my work, was download the files off dropbox to a physical hard drive and catalog each person's contributions and corresponding metadata. In a couple of days, I was able to do this. The Hard drive contained every contribution and were organized into files for each contributor. Once all of the images were stored offline and documented, I had to start uploading those images to the baltimoreuprising2015.org website.

The baltimoreuprising2015.org site is built using Omeka. Omeka is a Content Management System (CMS). Collections, series, and exhibits can all be constructed through Omeka, but it all starts with a digital archive of “items” stored on the Omeka site. For each photograph on the hard drive, I had to upload it to the website and provide the necessary metadata such as description, title, creator, date, etcetera. Making sure each image, audio file, or video is uploaded correctly, has the correct provenance information, and is organized within the archive in a way that it can be retrieved by users has been my most time consuming task.

I am pleased with the number of contributors and the magnitude of the contributions. The size of the archive is larger than my most optimistic projections at the start. It is not enough, however, for the archive to simply be large. It also must be usable. Most descriptions, titles, and subjects for items that were provided by contributors were vague and confusing. There was little continuity from one collection to the next, which made it difficult for the whole archive to be searched. Although we wanted to preserve the artistic intention of the content creators, we also want the site to be a resource. Our compromise has been to keep the title and description of photos how the creator indicated, but to limit the subjects of items to a controlled vocabulary. Now, when users contribute to the archive, they have to select from a limited list of subjects. What this means for researchers is that they can click on the subject of any one item, and be able to see all the items with that same subject.

Our decision to limit subjects at first might seem minute, but it actually represents a continuous struggle for archives both digital and physical. What is the right balance between preservation and accessibility? In one sense, the item subject could be seen as an important interpretive component that needs to be preserved to reflect the contributors complete artistic vision. On the other hand, the purpose of preservation is almost always to ensure long term usefulness for future generations. Consistent categories and labels are the only way a repository of almost 2,000 items can be made searchable for future users. Ultimately, we tried to find a balance between the two ideals, but tended to favor access.

Baltimore Uprising Project

I have had the good fortune to work on the Baltimore Uprising project this summer. The project is a digital archive of photographs and stories from the Baltimore Uprising, www.baltimoreuprising2015.org. The website is built using Omeka, a free platform developed and supported by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

Some readers might not be familiar with the Baltimore Uprising, at least as a term. I am linking a thorough explanation of the term here. In brief, after Freddie Gray, a 25 year old Baltimore man, died in police custody, many people took to the streets in protest. They spoke out against systemic racism and police violence. Media coverage monikered the events the Baltimore riot, but on twitter, the hash-tag #baltimoreuprising arose to counter the inappropriate national characterization of events transpiring in the city.

All too often, the history of events can only be accessed through the lens of bureaucracy and official reports. This is problematic to say the least. Michel Rolph-Trouillot spoke to this struggle in his book Silencing the Past.  Trouillot proposed that power, in the form of silence, influences the production of history at multiple stages. Although historians can alter the power dynamics in the historical record through source selection and interpretation, they are usually limited by the kinds of sources that exist. In her article “Seeing Yourself in History”, Michelle Caswell equates a communities absence in the archives as “symbolic annihilation.” With this in mind I am sure, Dr. Denise Meringolo quickly responded to the Baltimore Uprising by creating an Omeka based website where people could upload their own photographs and stories from the Uprising as primary sources for future researchers to access. The site could be a digital repository, recording the grass-root voices of the social movement. The Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) had a similar idea and eagerly made a public call for photographs. They were flooded with submissions, but did not have a prepared infrastructure to handle the submissions. Fortunately, the Historical Society heard about the Baltimore Uprising site and proposed a partnership between Meringolo and the Society. So, like any inspired Public History venture, the project grew.

Next, I was brought on as an intern to process the backlog of photos that MdHS already had and upload them to the website. I was also enlisted to collaborate on developing the website as an archive and a useable resources. So far, the site has over 1,500 items and is still growing. The number of institutional partners has grown and the project is still thriving and expanding nearly 3 months after the most tense moments of the Baltimore Uprising.

Michel Rolph-Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).

Michelle Caswell, “Seeing Yourself in History: Community Archives and the Fight Against Symbolic Annihilation” The Public Historian, Vol. 36, No. 4 (November 2014), 26-37.

Documents, objects, and sites: Considering a moving public history career

Over the past few weeks I’ve been contemplating a question for aspiring public historians: How would you best understand—and feel connected to—a historical figure? For example, you’ve no doubt read extensively about Honest Abe in history books and other popular literature over the years. To more deeply appreciate Lincoln as an individual, however, would you rather see his penmanship on original documents, stand before his famous top hat, or visit the place where he lived as a child? Which would move you the most? Now, beyond your personal preference as a visitor, consider your role in helping the public discover the Lincoln. If you would like to create a moment of inspiration for the public to truly understand him, what tools would you use: documents, artifacts, or sites?

From left to right: Lincoln's boyhood home at Knob Creek, Kentucky, now part of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park; his July 22, 1862 draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, now held as part of the Robert Todd Lincoln Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; the top hat he wore to Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, which has been part of the Smithsonian Institution's collections since 1867.

The relative power of these three main mediums of public history seems to be truly personal. Of course, there are many factors that influence how you perceive each encounter, including how clearly the information is presented (whether in person or on paper). Your background, interests, and prior knowledge certainly shape your experience with each as well. As Freeman Tilden reminds us in his classic text Interpreting Our Heritage, visitors respond differently to content and thus interpretation should be customized based on their interests.

It took me 3.5 years of professional experience, a year of graduate school, and a month and a half of interning at the Smithsonian to realize that public historians also have inherently different interests. This is probably a strikingly obvious observation to many, but it’s a new concept for me to articulate. As a consumer of history—someone who loves soaking up history in any form on weekends—I consider museums, historic sites, and archives equally interesting. I certainly believe these three types of history institutions are equally important. However, as an emerging public history professional, it has occurred to me that I do not find documents, artifacts, and sites equally engaging to work with.

Personally, papers do not speak to me in the way objects do. Although Michael Johnson (based on his Denmark Vesey findings published in the William & Mary Quarterly) would likely disagree, I feel that digital facsimiles can sometimes reveal even more than original documents can with the ability to zoom, search, and hyperlink with other rich content. I find sharing a space with original objects that were held, owned, worn, or used by historical actors to be extremely poignant. Objects, however, do not cast the same sense of awe that I feel when visiting a historic building or site. While objects and papers can feasibly be transported, historic sites simply cannot. Instead, they serve as vehicles to transport visitors from the present to the past.

I have long been enamored with visiting battlefields and historic house museums. It recently dawned on me that my attraction stems from the simply matchless power of place. Standing on the very same floorboards as a historic figure almost literally allows you to walk in their shoes. These sites offer an opportunity to become part of where history happened. Historic sites touch all the senses, and they can be deeply affective regardless of age, ability, or language.

Of course, questions of authenticity complicate historic sites. What about buildings that are reconstructed to appear historic or have been significantly modified to come up to code? Structures that have been removed from their original context? Settings that have changed so significantly they would be unrecognizable to the historical actors? Teresa Moyer and Paul Shackel raise all of these questions in their book, The Making of Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park. Although these issues can complicate the interpretation or presentation, I don’t believe they take away from the power of a historic site. The story of a building or site’s preservation can be incorporated into the interpretation to form an engaging and unique narrative. 

Again, these insights are likely obvious to others—but they only clicked with me once I had hands-on experience in each of these main practices of public history. I fully intend to visit archives and museums wearing my “history consumer” (or, graduate student) hat. Moving forward in my career path, however, I will be aware of why my interests lie with historic sites and will seek opportunities that allow me to share my passion for place with the public.

Interning at the Holocaust Museum

For my internship this summer I will be at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at their collections management branch in Linthicum Maryland. My work has primarily revolved around the condition assessment of pending collections cartons that need an updated condition report on file and then I add them to the data base for quick access if anyone needs to find the location, description, and condition of these specific items in the future. For condition reports I must take the object and give measurements, identification of possible afflictions effecting the objects, and identify the afflictions in a picture of the object. When it comes to the process of adding these pending collections into the data base I use a module database program called EMU and I use a legacy number to identify the collection, if it has been registered in a previous database I update the location, if it has never been added to the database I create a new file for it. I have dealt with several interesting objects while interning, a few things that stand out have been the pictures and documents that are apart of collections that deal with the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, there has also been a number of childrens books that were used as propaganda during the Second World War.  Aside from my primary duties I have helped out a lot with the proper packaging of out going loans from the museum. Recently, last week, the museum had to return a barrack to Poland that consisted of over 1000 items. I help with taking pictures, condition report, and proper placement in shipping boxes, this was an enormous project that I was glad to help with. To better understand the nature of collections management and the context of the objects I am working with I have created a reading list that consists of a textbook about the history and practices of collections management at museums, a collection of articles and oral histories of soldiers who were involved in the liberation of concentration camps, and a study of research on the nature and practices of what happened at these concentration camps so I can better understand what I am looking at. In addition the the Holocaust Museum my supervisor took us on a tour of the Peabody Library and Museum in Baltimore city to understand how their collections management process functions. This internship has been exhilarating and very interesting so far and I can not wait to see what is in store for the rest of the summer.