Public History Commons^™

Mamie Clark Menefield

African American Funeral Programs, Willow Hill Heritage & Renaissance Center, Bulloch County, Georgia

Handwritten note about the death of Mrs. Mamie Clark Menefield. She was a member of Noah's Ark Baptist Church.

Reclaiming Public Space: How Black Portlanders Transformed Irving Park, 1960s-1980s, Ana Bane

University Honors Theses

Although we often take their existence for granted, public parks are imperative for the vitality of a functioning democratic society. Parks are more than just sites for recreation–an important arena for community building in its own right; occupying public space is an inherently political act that takes on new dimensions in resistance movements. This project explores the role that public space played in the history of Black community organizing and resistance in Portland. Irving Park is a sixteen acre park in the heart of the Albina district, Portland’s historic African American neighborhood. Though the area is now heavily gentrified, from …

The Life Of Pioneering Amish Studies Scholar Walter Kollmorgen: Transcript Of The Reschly-Jellison Interviews, Steven Reschly, Katherine Jellison

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

On March 20, 1994, we interviewed Walter Kollmorgen. Reschly also conducted a follow-up interview March 8, 1995. Herein, we provide the transcripts of these interviews, which are of particular historical value since Kollmorgen was one of Amish studies’ first researchers. Kollmorgen was a native speaker of German from having grown up in a Lutheran family in rural Nebraska. He and his younger sister, Johanna, both contracted polio at a very young age. The combination of German and physical limitations enabled both to establish rapport in a short time with the Amish community in Lancaster County for his rural community study. …

Subjectivity In The Lancaster Amish Community Study Of 1940-42: 'Economic Conquest' In Loomis’S Diary And Rosinow’S Photographs, Elizabeth Bennett

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

The American Farm Community Study (1940), funded by the USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics, was a social investigation that sought to determine why some rural communities thrive while others fail. To conduct the Study, the Bureau sent social scientists to six rural communities across the country to investigate and document the most and least “stable” American communities. Geographer Walter Kollmorgen, sociologist Charles Loomis, and photographer Irving Rusinow documented the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, PA, as the “most stable” community in the Study. In Lancaster, the men found a people thriving in the midst of english neighbors still economically …

Myths, Museums, Mothers, And The Power Of Letitia Carson, Hailey Brink

University Honors Theses

Letitia Carson was a trailblazing Black Oregon pioneer woman whose life offered remarkable and unprecedented departures from the white pioneer status quo. Letitia's story presents numerous points at which she could be heralded for her successes; her pregnant journey across the Overland Trail, giving birth in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, cultivating and maintaining two separate homesteads, challenging and conquering two lawsuits against administrator Greenberry Smith, her midwifery and community involvement, and lastly, becoming the first Black woman to own land in Oregon in 1862. And yet, her story fell to obscurity, only to be revived nearly a century …

Bearing Witness To Sacrifice: Death, Grief And Memorialisation In The Collections Of The Canadian War Museum, Teresa Iacobelli

Canadian Military History

This article presents a selection of artworks, archival material and artifacts from the Canadian War Museum (CWM) that illuminate how Canadians—soldiers and civilians— have experienced and endured war. By focusing on the themes of death, grief and memorialisation, these items convey how Canadians have borne the sacrifice of war, and the way in which those losses have been memorialised in ways both public and private.

Cet article présente une sélection d’oeuvres d’art, de documents d’archives et d’artefacts du Musée canadien de la guerre (MCG) qui illustrent la façon dont les Canadiens – soldates et civils – ont vécu et enduré …

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …

Reconciling Genoa: A Historiography Of The Genoa Indian Industrial School, Andrea Huebner

Graduate Review

In 1884, the Genoa Indian Industrial School was established to aid in the assimilation of Native American students. Schools, like Genoa Indian Industrial School, were originally considered successful but as historians uncovered abuse and unsafe living conditions the narratives surrounding the schools changed. This paper builds looks directly at how historians’ interpretation of the Genoa Indian Industrial School has changed over time. This contributes to a deeper understanding of how important it is to continue re-evaluating events throughout history.

The Effects Of Trauma On Holocaust Survivors After The War, Natalie Braker

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper will examine the effects of trauma among Holocaust survivors after the war, including Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), triggers, nightmares, and anxiety. It will review clinical research by comparing it to the range of experiences of Holocaust survivors as described in videotaped interviews during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Upon reviewing existing literature, it becomes clear that PTSD is life-long for Holocaust survivors. PTSD is a mental health condition triggered by either experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event or a series of events. There are four general types of PTSD symptoms: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking …

"The Freedom To Express Yourself": The National Park Service And The African Diasporic Roots Of Black Dance In New Orleans, Ariel D. Roy

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In partnership with the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, my project entitled “African Dance in New Orleans: The Roots of Black New Orleans Dance” exhibit will focus on the African diasporic roots of Black traditional dance practices within New Orleans’ African American community. This project aims to diversify the public and political expressions of Black dance in New Orleans. It argues that the study of dance forms and practices uncovers narratives and fragments of African and African American cultural history in New Orleans that are impossible to glean from other sources. This thesis will support three modes of African …

I Come Creeping: Remembering The Battle Of Blair Mountain In Graphic Narrative, Ellie James

Senior Honors Theses

Between August 24 and September 4 of 1921, approximately 10,000 West Virginia coal miners marched to Blair Mountain in Logan County in a militant stand for their right to unionize. Despite its status as the largest labor uprising in United States history, few know or understand the impact of the Battle of Blair Mountain today, even within the borders of West Virginia. This creative project aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to memorialize this period of the West Virginia Mine Wars through the creation of a 10-page comic, titled I Come Creeping, which depicts and is informed by the …

Visual Representation Of Black Individuals At The Forefront Of Underground Railroad Interpretation, Alison Spongr

Museum Studies Theses

This thesis is grounded in a reflection and analysis of the building of an institution whose foundation and visuals position the narratives of Black individuals at the forefront of Underground Railroad interpretation. In 2018, the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center opened to the public after decades in the making. Its permanent exhibition, One More River to Cross, set in motion a shift in power – of whose stories are represented and shared – generated by visual activism.

“Between the American Revolution in 1776 and the end of the Civil War in 1865, thousands of freedom seekers escaped slavery …

An Exhibition Of Women's United States Air Force Uniforms, Michelle Robinson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

The new Women in the Air Force exhibit under development at the Hill Aerospace Museum, located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is long overdue. The exhibit is set to replace the existing display in order to more accurately and comprehensively represent women’s continuing legacy of service to our nation. The uniforms in the Hill Aerospace Museum collection constitute the focal point of the new exhibit. Material culture methodologies form the foundation of this exhibit work; seeking to provide greater understanding of women’s military experience and history through the analysis of their uniforms. This approach therefore utilizes uniforms, the museum’s …

A Pelican's Journey To Flight: A Louisiana National Guardsman, The Development Of The United States Army Air Service, And The Human Cost Of Military Innovation, James H. Smith

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

George E. Dicks deployed to the Mexican Punitive Expedition and World War I with the Louisiana National Guard. He recorded his experience in writing and photography, which reside in the Jackson Barracks Military Museum in Chalmette, Louisiana. His memorabilia reflect an officer’s perspective on early military aviation and parallel to the United States military’s experimentation with aviation. Through experimentation, Dicks became an aerial observer in World War I.

This thesis explores George E. Dicks’ memorabilia and how it both represents the development of the American Air Service and the human cost of military aviation with photographic evidence. By representing aviation’s …

A Queer History Of Seattle Pacific University: Reconciliation And Recovery In Oral History Management And Special Collection Creation, Rebecca Cavanaugh

Honors Projects

In order to deconstruct the process and product of the two-year long SERVE Grant funded research project, “A History of Queer Student Presence and Activism at Seattle Pacific University: 1990-2019”, I analyze it through the acts of knowledge recovery and reconciliation. As an act of knowledge recovery, this project sought to uncover the unacknowledged history about SPU’s queer community through the use of The Falcon and oral history interviews as primary sources. To properly commit to this act of recovery, the project also created a historical narrative, timeline, Special Collection, and website to preserve these findings and make them available …

The Media Intervenes: Tulsa's 1921 Massacre And The Destruction Of The Greenwood District, Maclain M. Wheeler

ATU Research Symposium

This scholarly presentation and research paper focuses on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, specifically the ways in which the media progressed and intensified the events the Greenwood community faced. A vibrant community filled with opportunity and promise, Greenwood welcomed any African American who accepted its warm embrace. Ransacked and burned to the ground within two days, Greenwood residents were forced to reckon with the destruction. Greenwood became unrecognizable. Properties and possessions that had taken people many years to acquire were gone within a matter of hours. The framing put forth by the Tulsa Tribune provoked much of the white public …

The Sound Of The Civil War: Examining The Intersection Between Music And Emotion In America, 1861-1865, Christina Cannon

Campus Research Day

The topics of the history of music and the history of music intersect in the Civil War in fascinating ways. Both religious music and “secular” music were seen to have great power over their listeners, potentially with the power to alter the directions of lives or their salvation status. Music was used both as a mode of rebellion against the antagonizing army and ideal and a rebellion against unnecessarily violent acts. Each side used it against the other, but a select few also used it against the war itself. Soldiers marched to music, set camp to music, and fought to …

Still Lending You The World: The Toledo Lucas County Public Library In The 21st Century, Cade Clem

Honors Projects

This research paper focuses on how the Toledo Lucas County Public Library (TLCPL) has adapted to the 21st century, with an emphasis on the impact of digital materials and the Internet. This paper looks at these changes primarily through three lenses: official policies, services and programs, and internal culture. This paper uses quantitative data to determine if TLCPL has maintained overall growth in areas such as number of cardholders, customer counts, circulation, computer usage, and program attendance. These numbers show that, while not always maintaining growth, TLCPL has adapted quite well to the 21st century, bringing in record high numbers …

Remembering Wenonah: Colonialism And The Power Of Representation, Adam Gaffey, Monica De Grazia, Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair, Jill Ahlberg Yohe

CLASP Lecture Series

This panel explores how the lover’s leap narrative and its representation of Native American figures has been used to forge distinctive visions of public memory both in and beyond Winona, Minnesota. For most, details of the lover’s leap are reduced to Wenonah’s fatal action, specifically how she protested her family’s rigid customs of arranged marriage by jumping to her death from a bluff atop the Mississippi River. The goal of this panel is to offer a fuller account of the purposes this story has served in popular memory and the implications of its persistence for different audiences, past and present. …

'Gave His Life For The Empire': Memory, Memorials, And Identity In The British Empire After The First World War, Bryan Mcclure

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the construction of personal memorials after the First World War across the British Empire nations of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, to understand how individuals sought to make their own memorial to remember their loved one killed in the conflict. In comparison to other studies on the construction of national or other community memorials, this dissertation explores how individuals accepted or rejected dominant discourses in creating their own memorials that spoke to how they remembered the war. It is based on a large database of more than 2,000 private memorials to individuals that …