In a long line of protest -- The Civil Rights Movement and a new collective memory -- Knowledge of self liberation and education through black separatist collective memory -- A history of one's own -- Feminist collective memory in the second wave Women's Movement -- Scripted to win -- Collective memory in the Gay Liberation Movement -- For the sake of cultural survival -- Red power and collective memory
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is most widely known today for the attempted slave revolt led by John Brown in 1859, the nucleus for the interpretation of the current national park. Here, Teresa S. Moyer and Paul A. Shackel tell the behind-the-scenes story of how this event was chosen and preserved for commemoration, providing lessons for federal, state, local, and non-profit organizations who continually struggle over the dilemma about which past to present to the public. Professional and non-professional audiences alike will benefit from their important insights into how federal agencies interpret the past, and in turn shape public memory.
Elite sniper Jody Mitic loved being a soldier. His raw, candid, and engrossing memoir follows his personal journey into the Canadian military, through sniper training, and firefights in Afghanistan, culminating on the fateful night when he stepped on a landmine and lost both of his legs below the knees. Afghanistan, 2007. I was a Master Corporal, part of an elite sniper team sent on a mission to flush out Taliban in an Afghan village. I had just turned thirty, after three tours of duty overseas. I’d been shot at by mortars, eyed the enemy through my scope, survived through stealth and stamina. I’d been training for war my entire adult life. But nothing prepared me for what happened next. A twenty-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, Jody Mitic served as a Master Corporal and Sniper Team Leader on three active tours of duty over the course of seven years. Known for his deadly marksmanship, his fearlessness in the face of danger, and his “never quit” attitude, he was a key player on the front in Afghanistan. As a sniper, he secured strongholds from rooftops, engaged in perilous ground combat, and joined classified night operations to sniff out the enemy. One day in 2007, when he was on a mission in a small Afghan village, he stepped on a landmine and the course of his life was forever changed. After losing both of his legs below the knees, Jody was forced to confront the loss of the only identity he had ever known—that of a soldier. Determined to be of service to his family and to his country, he refused to let injury defeat him. Within three years after the explosion, he was not only walking again, he was running. By 2013, he was a star on the blockbuster reality TV show Amazing Race. In 2014, Jody reinvented himself yet again, winning a seat as a city councillor for Ottawa. Unflinching is a powerful chronicle of the honour and sacrifice of an ordinary Canadian fighting for his country, and an authentic portrait of military life. It’s also an inspirational memoir about living your dreams, even in the face of overwhelming adversity, and having the courage to soldier on.
In Remember Little Rock Erin Krutko Devlin explores public memories surrounding the iconic Arkansas school desegregation crisis of 1957 and shows how these memories were vigorously contested and sometimes deployed against the cause. Delving into a wide variety of sources, from memoirs to televised docudramas, commemoration ceremonies, and the creation of Little Rock High museums, Devlin reveals how many white moderates proclaimed Little Rock a victory for civil rights and educational equality even as segregation persisted. At the same time, African American activists, students, and their families asserted their own stories in the ongoing fight for racial justice. Devlin also demonstrates that public memory directly bears on law and policy. She argues that the triumphal narrative of civil rights has been used to stall school desegregation, support tokenism, and to roll back federal court oversight of school desegregation, voter registration, and efforts to promote diversity in public institutions. Remember Little Rock examines the chasm between the rhetoric of the "post---civil rights" era and the reality of enduring racial inequality.
Each of the Travelers returns home to learn the truth about their origins before being reunited for a final, inevitable confrontation with Saint Dane, whose efforts to control Halla are destroying its very foundations.
La Gente traces the rise of the Chicana/o Movement in Sacramento and the role of everyday people in galvanizing a collective to seek lasting and transformative change during the 1960s and 1970s. In their efforts to be self-determined, la gente contested multiple forms of oppression at school, at work sites, and in their communities. Though diverse in their cultural and generational backgrounds, la gente were constantly negotiating acts of resistance, especially when their lives, the lives of their children, their livelihoods, or their households were at risk. Historian Lorena V. Márquez documents early community interventions to challenge the prevailing notions of desegregation by barrio residents, providing a look at one of the first cases of outright resistance to desegregation efforts by ethnic Mexicans. She also shares the story of workers in the Sacramento area who initiated and won the first legal victory against canneries for discriminating against brown and black workers and women, and demonstrates how the community crossed ethnic barriers when it established the first accredited Chicana/o and Native American community college in the nation. Márquez shows that the Chicana/o Movement was not solely limited to a handful of organizations or charismatic leaders. Rather, it encouraged those that were the most marginalized—the working poor, immigrants and/or the undocumented, and the undereducated—to fight for their rights on the premise that they too were contributing and deserving members of society.
While all history has the potential to be political, public history is uniquely so: public historians engage in historical inquiry outside the bubble of scholarly discourse, relying on social networks, political goals, practices, and habits of mind that differ from traditional historians. Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism theorizes and defines public history as future-focused, committed to the advancement of social justice, and engaged in creating a more inclusive public record. Edited by Denise D. Meringolo and with contributions from the field’s leading figures, this groundbreaking collection addresses major topics such as museum practices, oral history, grassroots preservation, and community-based learning. It demonstrates the core practices that have shaped radical public history, how they have been mobilized to promote social justice, and how public historians can facilitate civic discourse in order to promote equality. "This is a much-needed recalibration, as professional organizations and practitioners across genres of public history struggle to diversify their own ranks and to bring contemporary activists into the fold." — Catherine Gudis, University of California, Riverside. "Taken all together, the articles in this volume highlight the persistent threads of justice work that has characterized the multifaceted history of public history as well as the challenges faced in doing that work."—Patricia Mooney-Melvin, The Public Historian
The first book to focus on the experience of LGBT archival research. Out of the Closet, Into the Archives takes readers inside the experience of how it feels to do queer archival research and queer research in the archive. The archive, much like the closet, exposes various levels of public and privatenessrecognition, awareness, refusal, impulse, disclosure, framing, silence, cultural intelligibilityeach mediated and determined through subjective insider/outsider ways of knowing. The contributors draw on their experiences conducting research in disciplines such as sociology, African American studies, English, communications, performance studies, anthropology, and womens and gender studies. These essays challenge scholars to engage with their affective experience of being in the archive, illuminating how the space of the archive requires a different kind of deeply personal, embodied research.
