History and Heart Can Coexist

By Eric Chaney

Several decades ago, when I was trying to decide what my undergraduate major should

be, I was told that I could do only two things with a history degree – teach or become a lawyer –

so I became a journalist instead. I wish, though, that someone had told me then about public

history. When I told my friends and family that I was going back to school to become a public

historian, I was often asked what that meant, exactly. In my mind, public historians were people

who design museum exhibits, a link between the archivists in the back rooms and the visitors

who walk through the door. And while that is true, it is much too narrow of a definition for

public history, a field so broad that “even practitioners struggle to define it succinctly.”1 As one

of my graduate school professors put it, “Academic history is academic history and everything

else is public history,” including living history performances, smartphone apps, documentaries,

walking tours, historical markers, folk-art demonstrations, books, tv, and movies made for

popular audiences.2 In short, I was partially correct. A public historian is anyone who serves as a

link between the past and the public, someone who combines the scholastic rigor and historical

method of the academic with the creativity and showmanship of a storyteller.

A “Pitched Battle Over Public Memory”

Public historians hold an “awesome power to shape historical narratives” with “an

equally awesome responsibility to create narratives that represent all groups within our society”

and “the conversation about diversity and inclusion within the history field has increased

1
Cherstin M. Lyon, Elizabeth M. Nix, and Rebecca K. Shrum, Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past,
Engaging Audiences (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 1.
2
Ibid, 2.
exponentially in the last decade.”3 Revisiting historic interpretations of slavery, for example, has

led to such efforts as the “1619 Project,” an ongoing digital initiative from The New York Times

Magazine that “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and

the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative,” and the

Whitney Plantation, the country’s first museum to “design the visitor's entire experience around

… ‘the life of a slave from cradle to the tomb.’”4

In How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America,

Clint Smith takes a critical look at the Whitney Plantation and six other sites “that offer an

intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history

and memory.”5 Smith, an author and poet, says that we are at a turning point in our political and

social climate, where there is “a willingness to more fully grapple with the legacy of slavery and

how it shaped the world we live in today.”6 Yet, “it seems that the more purposefully some

places have attempted to tell the truth about their proximity to slavery and its aftermath, the more

staunchly other places have refused.”7

This desire to present a whitewashed view of history is perhaps the biggest challenge

facing public historians in America today, a “pitched battle over public memory” that pits public

historians against the “exclusionary mythmaking of an elite few.” 8 Political leaders in at least 20

states have proposed legislation to limit the teaching of “divisive concepts” which, according to a
3
American Association for State and Local History and the National Council on Public History, “Diversity and
Inclusion,” The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, published June 10, 2019, https://inclusivehistorian.com/diversity-
and-inclusion.
4
The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine,
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html; Debbie Elliott, “New
Museum Depicts 'The Life Of A Slave From Cradle To The Tomb,'” NPR, “All Things Considered,” published
February 27, 2015, accessed July 26, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2015/02/27/389563868/new-museum-depicts-the-
life-of-a-slave-from-cradle-to-the-tomb.
5
Smith, front jacket.
6
Smith, 6.
7
Smith, 6.
8
Jake Silverstein, “The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History,” The New York Times Magazine,
November 9, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/magazine/1619-project-us-history.html.
joint statement from the American Association of University Professors, the American Historical

Association, the Association of American Colleges & Universities, and PEN America,

“These divisive concepts as defined in numerous bills are a litany of vague and indefinite

buzzwords and phrases, including, for example, ‘that any individual should feel or be made to

feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological or emotional distress on

account of that individual’s race or sex,” which, the statement says, is code for “the role of

racism in the history of the United States.”9

We will likely never be able to truly agree “on a single historical narrative within the

confines of a pluralistic society,”10 and indeed we should not expect to. As historian Ari Kelman

notes, “the people of the United States are so various that they should not be expected to share a

single tale of a common past. Sometimes their stories complement one another; sometimes they

clash. Sometimes they intersect; sometimes they diverge.”11

Yet, “Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about

history and the forces that shape our world today,” and I firmly believe that as public historians

we have a duty to examine every thread in the chaotic tapestry that is our past and present them

in a way that is approachable, interesting, and invites civil discussion.12

Rescuing Stories

This may seem like a tall order, but I am inspired by books such as Tiya Miles’ All That

She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake. Miles, a public historian

9
American Association of University Professors, the American Historical Association, the Association of American
Colleges & Universities, and PEN America, “Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about
Racism in American History,” American Historical Society website, published June 16, 2021, accessed July 26,
2023, https://www.historians.org/divisive-concepts-statement.
10
Kelman, 279.
11
Ibid.
12
Joint Statement.
who teaches at Harvard University, became entranced by a simple cotton sack she saw on display

at a plantation museum in South Carolina. Embroidered on it was the story of an enslaved

mother and daughter, Rose and Ashley. When Ashley was sold away from her mother at the age

of 9, Rose, faced with the prospect of never seeing her child again, “gathered all of her resources

—material, emotional, and spiritual—and packed an emergency kit for the future.” The sack

contained a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans, a lock of Rose’s hair, and, she told her

daughter “It be filled with my Love always.”13 In the 1920s, their descendant Ruth Middleton

embroidered the sack with a few lines telling the story and by doing so “preserved the memory

of her foremothers and also venerated these women, shaping their image for the next generations.

Without Ruth, there would be no record. Without her record, there would be no history.”14

I Want to Be Both

As a historian, I want to be both Ruth and Tiya. Like Ruth, I want to be someone who rescues

the seemingly “unimportant” stories from the black hole of the past and puts them in places

where they can be seen, whether that is a museum exhibit, a documentary, a website, a book.

Like Tiya, I want my material to be approachable and gripping and filled with heart. Many of the

books I read during my graduate studies were dense academic tomes that were difficult to read

let alone analyze, but I could not put Ashley’s Sack down. Maybe that’s because, as Miles herself

says, it is “not a traditional history. It leans toward evocation rather than argumentation, and is

rather more meditation than monograph.”15 Miles strikes “a delicate balance between two

13
Tiya Miles, “To Find the History of African American Women, Look to Their Handiwork,” The Atlantic, published
June 8, 2021, accessed July 27, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/history-african-
american-women-their-handiwork/619082/?utm_source=feed.
14
Ibid.
15
Jennifer Szalai, “In One Modest Cotton Sack, a Remarkable Story of Slavery, Suffering, Love and Survival,” The
New York Times, published June 9, 2021, accessed July 27, 2023,
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/books/review-all-that-she-carried-ashleys-sack-tiya-miles.html.
seemingly incommensurate approaches … fidelity to her archival material, as she coaxes out

facts grounded in the evidence; and her conjectures about this singular object, as she uses what is

known about other enslaved women’s lives to suppose what could have been.”16

This is the kind of history that I want to write. Though Ashley’s Sack details a shameful

part of our national history, its themes are near universal – a mother’s love, the loss of a child,

family tradition and memory. These can be entry points for those who might otherwise wish to

forget about this period of our history, personal connections that cross divides of color and

politics. I once heard a history teacher say, “Everyone should be able to see themselves in my

class,” and I wholeheartedly agree. Throughout my graduate studies, I found that the books and

articles I enjoyed the most were the ones I found most approachable, the ones with which I felt

some personal connection. And I have tried, in my writing, to keep that in mind. Nothing is

gained from historical interpretation if no one is reading it, and the more widely approachable

my work is, the more good it may do in starting civil discourse around the “divisive concepts” of

American history.

Bibliography

16
Ibid.
Kelman, Ari. A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek. E-book,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015,

Lyon, Cherstin M., Elizabeth M. Nix, and Rebecca K. Shrum. Introduction to Public History:
Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield,
2017.

Smith, Clint. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with The History of Slavery Across
America. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021.