Black Friday at the National Archives

Friends and I visited the National Archives in Washington, DC on Friday, primarily to see the Cuban Missile Crisis exhibit which was developed in partnership with the JFK Presidential Library (itself part of the National Archives network).

This is an interesting example of discovering new sources as time passes.  The main feature of the exhibit are "secret" recordings that President Kennedy made of meetings in the Oval Office.  The exhibit had six stations where visitors could listen to excerpts of recordings from the meetings of Kennedy's advisors during the crisis.  The Archives did a good job using images to identify speakers as well as providing captioning so that you could read what was being said, and summarizing it on a nearby panel, since there were often too many people to get close to the audio speakers.

I'm not a Cold War scholar so I don't know if these recordings provided information that scholars did not previously have access to, so can't say if our understanding of the crisis changed with their release.  If the information from the recordings isn't new, it could confirms other sources which strengthens our understanding of the events.  In either case, historians and the public now know more.

In an interesting case study in "what is history" - there were six of us in the group.  Four of us, who are in our early 40s (a PhD in military history, a lawyer with an undergrad history major, a historical storyteller, and me), read just about every label.  The other two folks waited for us outside.  I should note that they were 16 and 20 years old during the missile crisis, so lived through it and therefore felt that they didn't need to see the exhibit.

Joseph Priestley and Timelines

I don't know as many historical dates as I'd like.  I didn't have to memorize dates in school.  That said, I do know roughly when things happen - I can put wars in the right chronological order, for example - but I normally would not have been able to tell you that September 17th is the 150th anniversary of the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. 

I'm a big fan of timelines, probably as a result of also being a visual learner.  I've learned something new today, before I even finished my first coffee, that should appeal to teachers in central Pennsylvania.  Joseph Priestly was one of two people to pioneer timelines. 

Here's an article from the Friends of the Joseph Priestley House in Northumberland, PA about Priestley's role in the development of timelines:
http://www.josephpriestleyhouse.org/uploads/extras/The_Man_Who_Drew_Time.pdf

Thanks to Amy Fox and her Trailheads blog at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission for this!  Visit http://patrailheads.blogspot.com/ to read Trailheads and learn more about the historic sites and museums that PHMC administers for the people of Pennsylvania.

I'm curious!

I meant to take my camera with me when I visited my parents' last week in southern Maine.  I've been trying to figure out what happened with the "welcome to" sign in their town, so wanted a photo to illustrate my question.  I once again forgot, so hopefully can describe it instead.

All the signs say that the town was founded "c. 1640."  What's more interesting is that this date is on a wooden block mounted to the sign.  It looks like they changed the date after the signs were put up.

So, what happened?  Did they put up signs saying that the town was settled in 1640, only to have someone dispute that date?  Was the solution to adjust them to say "about"? 

Why might someone dispute a settlement date?  It always reminds me that coastal areas were settled much earlier than those of us farther inland (we had a whole other conversation about whether Maine's Cumberland and York counties were formed before or after Pennsylvania's). 

But what constitutes settlement?  Is it the first time some fisherman decided to land there, because they needed to repair a boat?  The first time someone came up from Massachusetts and built a temporary building?  Is this why it might be in dispute?  In any case, it appears to be an interesting example of historical uncertainty and interpretation?

I'll do a bit of googling to start to answer my question.  Maybe I'll head over to the local historical society the next time I visit.  Maybe I'll find the right person to get the full scoop on the signs.

Another example of changing interpretations

I will eventually have a chance to read and comment on the books our 2012 teachers are reading this summer but I've been caught up in end-of-fiscal year paperwork in the office and classwork at home.  I just wrote a paper about our Teaching American History grant projects, focusing on our 2010 cohort.  It was fun to revisit that year.  We're hoping to turn the paper into a journal article later this year.

Thanks to one of the aggregator emails I receive, I just read an interesting article about the latest findings about when humans first came to the Americas.  While I don't have the background to evaluate these findings or their interpretation, I thought this article was an interesting discussion of how the archaeologists involved did their research..
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-paisley-caves-20120712,0,7874773.story

The Challenge of July 4th

If we think back to July 4, 1776, there's something of a conundrum for us today.  We want to celebrate our forefathers who decided that the best way to secure their rights at British citizens was ultimately to separate from Great Britain and declare independence.  We want to admire the Declaration of Independence and it's goal that "all men are created equal".  Yet, we know that this was not the case in 1776 and it is not the case today.  The President's House in Philadelphia embodies this contradiction - President George Washington lived less than a block from Independence Hall, with household slaves that he periodically rotated back to Mount Vernon so that he would not have to free them under Pennsylvania's 1780 Act for Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

I am a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution but don't make assumptions about my politics from that fact.  I note that while I have a Pennsylvania DAR license plate on  my car, I also have a "civil marriage is a civil right" bumper sticker.  For me, being patriotic is about recognizing the history of those who have fought for our freedoms but also to recognize that we are still striving for the ideal that citizens of the United States are entitled to equality of opportunity. 

To tie this back to reflections on history, here's an example of a historic site grappling with the challenge of 1776.  If you're in Philadelphia, visit Cliveden (http://www.cliveden.org/) to learn not just about the Battle of Germantown but also the history of slavery at its site: "Is it possible to change what a historic site means?"

Have a safe and happy 4th of July!  Stop and remember EVERYONE who has fought for our freedoms, for more than 326 years!

Early American attack ads

I finally had a chance to start watching the results of an experiment in teaching at the college level.  Dr. Patrick Spero, one of the speakers at our upcoming teacher institute, experimented this semester with his American Presidents class.  Students created video ads for presidential campaigns, instead of writing papers.

Here's a link to the first post in the series, which explains the assignment as well as giving links to the first batch of ads:
http://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2012/03/03/what_if_adams_and_jefferson_did_attack_ads_6.html

On my summer vacation.....the Revolution is not inevitable

My husband and I actually went on a vacation for five days last week.  We can't usually make our schedules coincide, but mid-May worked (for the same reason it worked 10 years ago for our wedding).  Being history geeks, we spent three days at  Colonial Williamsburg.  I especially recommend the evening "gambols" at Chowing's Tavern.

Parts of the interpretation are wonderfully complex - we saw a good two-woman show about Oney Judge, who grew up as Martha Washington's slave, escaping to freedom while living at the President's House in Philadelphia.  The show did a great job of exploring Oney's choice to take uncertainty and freedom over luxury and slavery.  You can learn more about this story by visiting the President's House while we're in Philadelphia - it's adjacent to the Liberty Bell pavilion and its interpretation/recreation was a subject of much debate.

One of the interpreters, portraying the printer/publisher of one of Williamsburg's newspaper, was annoying in that he didn't do a good job of engaging people who joined the group during the conversation.  He was very good at making one point though - for this individual, it was 1774.  He could not imagine that the escalating dispute with Britain would result in violence.  In 1774, independence wasn't inevitable. 

It's sometimes hard to remember that history is a series of choices - a choose your own adventure.  At any point, a different choice could have been made.  The constructs of time travel and parallel universes in science fiction often make my head hurt, but there's an interesting idea that we have to remember - every decision is a choice.  I don't know if they lead to the creation of a parallel universes, but it while it is inevitable that there will be a future, what that future is will be the results of many choices yet to be made.

So how can you make history surprising again?