Oral History and the Cultivation of Trust

This week, our Managing History class read multiple works relating to Oral History. I found these works particularly helpful and relevant to my own work. For the past year and a half, I have been fortunate enough to interview numerous American activists who supported the Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and even travelled to Central America to assist with public works projects designed to support the country’s fledging socialist state during the 1980s. Growing up in the Bay Area, a center for this strain of activism, many of these activists happen to be people I’ve known throughout my life in circumstances far removed from historical research. My subjects are not only activists, but also former professors, family friends, and the parents of close friends. I feel very fortunate to have close connections to my research, but this also, in my mind, creates a series of ethical conundrums. As a historian, I have to be critical about the topics and people I research, and occasionally this means shedding light on the movement’s shortcomings and depicting activists in a sometimes unfavorable lens. Unlike archival research, Oral History involves the cultivation of relationships and, in my mind, relies on a certain amount of trust. It’s difficult to balance the trust that your subjects place within you with the desire of crafting important, useful historical narratives and arguments. Yet, it’s important to do so. You need to be fair to your subjects. But, I struggle with exactly how to do that. This week’s readings made the process a little more clear.

In Barbara Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan’s The Oral History Manual, they argue that an important part of the interview process is respect. This, in turn, creates trust. In an Oral History, Interviewers are expected to be sensitive to diversity of opinions that narrators might offer. This means not becoming visibly offended or arguing with narrators if they raise a point that might seem offensive to the interviewer.[1] Furthermore, a good Oral History project makes sure its narrators are comfortable. Sometimes, this level of comfort means pairing a subject with an interviewer that more closely resembles their own ethnic or community background. In arguing for this point, The authors evoke the example of the WPA interviews conducted with former slaves during the 1930s. In these interviews, elderly black southerners gave answers that catered to their white interviewers’ sensibilities, often glossing over the brutal realities and dehumanization involved in the institution. In these interviews, trust between narrators and interviewers remained severely lacking and the project undoubtedly suffered.[2]

Yet, sometimes, trust also means excluding important information from your final product that might reflect a damaging portrayal of a subject. In Sherrie Tucker’s article “When Subjects Don’t Come Out,” she struggles with the question of writing about the queer relationships of 1940s female jazz musicians when her subjects do not explicitly expose their sexual orientations. While Tucker wanted sexuality to be a key component of her project, her subjects felt differently. Reflecting a pre-gay 1960s/1970s liberation attitude towards lesbian identities, these women often discussed sexuality in a secretive manner and often asked Tucker to not disclose the sexual status of friends. Ultimately, these women wanted to be portrayed as musicians, not lesbians.[3] Ultimately, while Tucker arguably had information to historicize all-female jazz scenes as environments that allowed for the flourishing of lesbian identities - an argument she wanted to make – she shied away from such a telling because it would have violated her subjects’ trust and portrayed them in a way that they did not perceive themselves.[4] For me, this story shows that history does not simply involve events in the past, but effects peoples’ lives in the present as well. Historians have a lot of power over peoples’ lives in this sense. We should be aware of that.

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[1] Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan, The Oral History Manual (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2009), 26.

[2] Ibid, 64.

[3] Sherrie Tucker, “When Subjects Don’t Come Out” in Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller, et al. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 295-6.

[4] Tucker, 308.

The Power of Place and Bending the Future Reading Summaries

Dolores Hayden’s 1995 work The Power of Place and Max Page and Martha Miller’s Introduction to their 2006 edited essay collection Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States both examine the potential of the historic preservation of spaces and landmarks to cultivate senses of belonging and cultural citizenship among diverse urban populaces. In particular, these authors recommend a preservation and historic acknowledgement of spaces that represent the lives and experiences of working-class and non-white communities. As these works suggest, a more diversified and inclusive historic preservation will help to communicate the roles of varying communities in shaping and reinterpreting the built environment in order to meet the needs of their changing present.

These works contribute to a larger historiographic discussion on historic preservation and the role of the built environment in creating senses of belonging and collective identity among the populace. One such work that contributed to these conversations is urban planner Jane Jacobs’ 1961 work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. During the late 1950s, Jacobs argued for the vitality and cultural importance of Manhattan’s urban neighborhoods as a means of combatting infamous New York City developer Robert Moses’ massive urban renewal projects that sought to upend many New York neighborhoods. In response, The Death and Life of Great American Cities argued that the role of urban planner should be to use the built environment of city parks and public buildings as a means of fostering collective neighborhood identities.[1] While Jacobs was not a historic preservationist per se, her avocation of urban designs that nurtured senses of communal identities and understandings remained influential upon crafting inclusive urban preservationist designs. In 1966, shortly after the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, various authors published an essay collection entitled With Heritage So Rich. This collection advocated for preservation practices that provided historical understanding though the use of physical sites.[2] Robert Stipe’s 2003 edited essay collection A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the United States in the Twenty-First Century provides readers with strategies to cultivate a more inclusive and expansive twenty-first century historic preservation. Andrew Hurley applied both Jacobs’ theories of the urban neighborhoods and the strategies of previous preservation essay collections to the context of the historic preservation of underserved postindustrial areas. According to Hurley’s 2010 work Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities, historic preservation and other public history projects can cultivate attachments to place and senses of belonging in neighborhoods struggling for economic revenue and city services. Such a process aims to restore the prideful, collective neighborhood-based identities of which Jacobs writes.[3]

            Both The Power of Place and Bending the Future pursue different strategies towards similar ends. Dolores Hayden argues for the use and preservation of urban landscapes as a means of nurturing the collective memory of the city. This process provides a sense of urban belonging to marginalized groups often ignored by historical preservation initiatives. In The Power of Place, Hayden stresses that such a process involves both mapping political and cultural narratives onto architecture and spatializing social history.[4] For Hayden, historic preservation must emphasize sites of everyday working-class life such as housing projects, factories, and union halls.[5] By preserving and historicizing these sites, social histories embedded in urban space that fosters a greater sense of community investment and interest in the past emerge.[6] For Dolores Hayden, the social history of public space is the best avenue towards creating an inclusive and meaningful public history of the urban environment.

            Bending the Future’s introduction takes a somewhat similar stance. Yet, unlike Hayden, Page and Miller advocate for a series of measures that seek to improve upon historic preservation techniques used since the National Historic Preservation Act’s 1966 passage.[7] Yet, as Hayden similarly showed, historic preservationists still struggle with the act of preserving sites relating to the histories of people of color, women, and LGBTQ communities. Scholars like Jamie Kalven argue that such preservationist narratives should directly engage the ways that structural inequalities are often expressed and reinforced by the built environment.[8] Furthermore, Page and Miller argue that historic preservation can simultaneously fight the gentrification-fueled displacement that often accompanies recently preserved neighborhoods. In fact, scholar Graciela Sanchez argues that historic preservationists in communities of color must also be anti-gentrification activists in order to ensure that their historical work does not have adverse effects.[9] Such a conundrum represents an important challenge for preservations in an age where “revitalization” is often synonymous with the displacement of lower-income residents.

            While Dolores Hayden specifically argues for a place-based social history embedded within historic preservation techniques, Bending the Future’s introduction lists a series of points regarding approaches to the changing field of historic preservation. While both authors address concerns over gentrification occurring as a result of historic preservation, neither address such issues in a manner that lists actual tactics for ameliorating these unwanted outcomes. In an age where more urban neighborhoods are rapidly becoming cultural centers for the wealthy, it is worth considering expanding public history concepts of shared authority beyond crafting historical narratives. In an era of gentrification, if historical preservation is to be truly inclusive and beneficial to marginalized communities, it must be accompanied by some organization or legislation designed to ameliorate the harmful effects of capitalism. Historic preservations should not only involve communities in preservation projects, but also be involved in advocating for collectively-owned housing, community land trusts, heightened rent controls, and tenants unions. While both works provide important analysis in terms of creating more inclusive historical narratives through historical preservation, it is important that such inclusivity remains in the neighborhoods that the project represents. This is a task that involves more than simply history, but activism as well.

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[1] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 129.

[2] Max Page and Marla R. Miller, “Introduction” in Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States, ed. Max Page et al. (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 2.

[3] Andrew Hurley, Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), ix-x.

[4] Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995), 9-10.

[5] Ibid, 11.

[6] Ibid, 45-7

[7] Page and Miller, 3.

[8] Page and Miller, 27.

[9] Page and Miller, 31.

Label & Survey

Label on the Context of the Russian Revolution

“Peace, Land, and Bread!”, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin famously demanded. Russia’s journey towards Communism began in February 1917 when thousands of Russian workers flooded the streets of modern day Saint Petersburg to protest their government. These protests eventually led to the ouster of Tsar Nicholas II and the imposition of the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky. While many supported the Kerensky government, some hoped to push the Revolution in a more radical direction and give increased power to worker’s committees known as “soviets.” These politics were realized in the Bolshevik’s October Revolution of 1917, Yet, political resentment still raged in Russia.  As the USS Olympia docked at Murmansk in 1918, civil war raged between the Bolsheviks’ Red Guards and more conservative forces known as the White Army. For the burgeoning Soviet Union, the road to political stability would remain fraught with disagreement and tension.

Works Cited

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Hosking, Geoffrey, Russian History: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007.

Interview Questions

1.     Do you go to history exhibits?

2.     What types of exhibits do you enjoy?

3.     Are familiar with the Spanish Influenza Outbreak of 1918?

4.     Do you think the public should be informed and educated about disease prevention measures?

5.     Would you be interested in learning more about the Spanish Influenza Outbreak of 1918?

For my survey, I interviewed three Philadelphia residents ages twenty-three to twenty six. All three of these individuals stated that they rarely go to history exhibits. One indicated that they simply don’t go to such exhibits and two stated that they occasionally go to history exhibits. Anticipating a lackluster response regarding history exhibits, I also asked what these individuals what types of exhibits they enjoy in hopes that we might be able to incorporate aspects of other exhibit types into our own and attract a larger audience. All recipients enjoyed art exhibits. However, one individual also stated that they enjoyed exhibits with old artifacts. Another person I interviewed stated that he specifically enjoyed art exhibits with large paintings and displays. This same person also enjoyed exhibits that provided good context to their displays.

While all three people I interviewed thought educational programs around disease prevention remained important, only one recipient expressed familiarity with the history of the Spanish Flu. One person even said they knew “absolutely nothing” about the pandemic. However, while few knew anything about the disease outbreak, two interviewees expressed some interest in visiting an exhibit on the outbreak. Only one person remained uninterested. It is my belief that if our group incorporates some of the survey results regarding what aspects of exhibits these persons enjoy, we can attract a diverse public to our eventual exhibit.