A few years ago, as a student at Valencia College I had the opportunity of listening to the story of a Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor at a talk at the Downtown Sanford Public Library. I was invited by my history professor, who knew that I was interested in WWII and while I was excited to have this once in a lifetime chance to bear witness to someone’s story, I was also terrified and ashamed. During WWII, my grandmother worked on the Manhattan Project underneath the football field at the University of Chicago. I went to the exhibit and listened, and sat there the entire time confronted for the first time, with the face-to-face reality of the evil that my own family members had been involved in. Walking away from the experience I was able to reflect on the importance of seeing history outside of the triumphant view my family has always had when it came to the atomic bombs.  

Confronting difficult history is difficult in any context, but especially when historical events and people are given space within a public-facing display that has so many emotions and individual interpretations and narratives attached to it. In national museums like the Smithsonian it is understandable how there could be concern from within and outside the museum about how a museum as large as the Smithsonian should display a “national narrative” when interpreting history. However, the balancing act described in Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt’s History Wars focuses on the different tensions and the give and take that has to occur within museums to present history in such a way as to make it available to the public and make those consuming the history “presentable.” Within this balancing act comes the inevitable resignation that no interpretation of history, regardless of how it is presented, will please everyone.

Particularly in the case of difficult histories, no one wants to be told that they were “the bad guy” of history. While I do believe in presenting real history, I can also understand the need to adjust narratives for public consumption in such a way as to not traumatize museumgoers. In Living History museums I believe this can be a true challenge simply because of the human element. Interpreters and volunteers in smaller organizations may rely on individual research rather than on uniform training for all costumed individuals and this can, and in my experience has, allowed for incorrect and sometimes inappropriate interpretations of history to be shared with the public, to the detriment of the organization.

Despite this, I do believe it is critical for public historians to be a part of presenting difficult histories to the American public. Especially in this current climate where history being taught in classrooms is continuously being weaponized by politicians, public historians have an opportunity to utilize the platforms they have access to whether through the digital realm or historic sites/museums. According to James Oliver Horton, the presentation of historical education at historical sites and museums is considered by American so be “real or true history” (Horton, 43). This avenue to educating the public to share the histories of minority communities is already being done by historians like Michael W. Twitty, a Black Jewish culinary historian and demonstrator who writes about the contributions of enslaved people in the American South to Southern cuisine. From his book, The Cooking Gene and his appearances across social media sites like Instagram, Michael W. Twitty has engaged in conversations directly with the public encouraging them to examine the history they’ve been taught and learn more about the history of minority communities and chattel slavery. Twitty encourages readers to step outside of the comfort zone of history as they know it, and while he is sharing difficult histories.

Bibliography

Cauvin, Thomas. “Collecting and Preserving People’s Stories: Oral History, Family History, and Everyday Life.” In Public History. 89-105. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Linenthal, Edward T. “Anatomy of a Controversy.” In History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past. Editors Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, 9-62. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996.

Horton, James Oliver. “Slavery in American History: An Uncomfortable National Dialogue.” In Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. Edited by James O. and Lois E. Horton, 35-55. New York: The New Press, 2006.