How Does Politics Effect Public History?

Politics in Public History

I think that there is no way to separate the fields of politics and public history. One of the key aspects of public history is community engagement, learning the people’s stories, understanding their plights and what they want to tell. Those stories and those people’s lives are political. Two people could tell widely different stories of the same event depending on their perceptions of what it is. The inclusion or exclusion of certain elements in a story reflect those perceptions.

From the text by Faith Davis Ruffins, we get a tale about African American museums. We learn about the history of these museums and how they came to be. How there was so much fight to get these places built despite America systematically making it difficult for these projects to flourish. In the book it says, “These men and women grew up in segregated circumstances, whether in southern towns or northern urban neighborhoods. These men and women were nurtured by historically Black institutions… Above all, these men and women all shared in common deep exposure and dedication to the ‘Negro Canon.’” (pg. 28-29). Doing work in the field of  Public history will require that a person engage with marginalized people to hear those untold stories of segregation, the plight of the reservation, etc.

Another example from a chapter in the book Radical Roots by Lara Kelland. In the chapter the author speaks about the creation of Indigenous American Colleges and the rise of LGBTQ+ activism after the Stonewall riots. I’d like to focus on the latter, in this quote the author says, “Although many LGBTQ researchers began to develop LGBTQ historiography as they learned to work within existing mainstream repositories, other activists began to cultivate separatist organizations, providing community-controlled archival spaces for those seeking to learn more about queer history.” (Pg 508). The interesting thing about this quote is that the LGBTQ researchers had to exist and work within an existing mainstream. The mainstream excludes certain narratives even when those people with those narratives advocate for themselves. The exclusions are inherently political. There is no separation between the people and the politics that govern their lives.