NHC Zoom Session

“Today’s panelists all work to amplify the voices of traditionally marginalized communities and to challenge the historical narratives that excluded or minimized their experiences.” “Crossroads to Shared Authority: Amplifying Voices” session introduction

 

Instead of convening in Indianapolis, as originally scheduled, the National Humanities Conference was a virtual affair.  As our session’s “fearless moderator” (Allison Schuette’s phrase), I requested those who joined us to describe the nature of their humanities work and where they were located.  The large group hailed from all parts of the country. Then I introduced the speakers- Northwestern grad student Emiliano Aguilar, Indiana State Museum curator Kisha Tandy, and Valparaiso University Welcome Project co-directors of the “Flight Paths” initiative

Emiliano Aguilar 

Aguilar focused on a 1970 student walkout at East Chicago Washington, sparked by an assistant principal’s alleged comments about Mexicans being lazy and stupid. When demonstrators rallied at Mayor John Nicosia’s residence, he evidently punched one, adding fuel to the fire. Tandy dealt with preserving the history of Bethel AME Church in Indianapolis, founded in 1836 by an itinerant preacher and a barber. During its early years Bethel was part of the Underground Railroad and recruited black soldiers for the Union cause during the Civil War. Located beginning in 1869 on Indy’s downtown canal, the church offered a full range of social, educational, and religious services.  Vacant since 2016, the historic building is being restored for use as a hotel. Kisha played excerpts of an interview of church historian Olivia McGee Lockhart and showed illustrations from the Virtual Bethel Project coordinated by the Indiana Historical Society. 

The overall goal of the Flight Paths initiative, Schuette and Wuerrfel explained, is to collect oral testimony about the history and unfolding of white flight from Gary as well as black empowerment in Gary and Northwest Indiana. Told from the point of view of those who fled to the suburbs, it is a story of declension that accompanied the election in 1967 of Richard Gordon Hatcher as the first black mayor of a significant-sized city. One push factor was fear – of black neighbors moving in and the resultant decline of property values.  Adding to the individual biases were legacies of systematic racism, such as redlining by government agencies, block busting by realtors, and inadequate funding of public schools and city services.

 

Panelists intentionally kept presentations brief to allow ample time for questions and comments.  Initially none were forthcoming, so I stepped into the breach and asked Emiliano about bilingual education (one of the Concerned Latins Organization’s main goals), inquired of Kisha whether the proposed hotel would exhibit Bethel church artifacts and memorabilia (it will), and solicited Al and Liz’s opinions on how interviewers should react if a narrator stated something that was palpably false.  Allison claimed she took her lead from Studs Terkel, who while interviewing unapologetic racists in a Mississippi barbershop maintained a friendly demeanor, even promising to return the next day for a haircut. “Kind of like Borat,” I interjected, referring to the Sacha Baron Cohen film persona who plays along with all types of weirdos.

 

The questions that started arriving in the chat room were rather theoretical, such as Ken Dinitz from Pennsylvania Humanities asking what we thought the difference was between public memory and public history.  Traditionalists commonly define history as the written record of change over time, while memory is often meant to be synonymous with the oral tradition, as with pre-literate societies preserving their culture through legends, stories, and folklore. To a contemporary oral historian, public memory suggests a variety of divergent voices while public history, incomplete without such input, implies some degree of consensus.

2017 Chester/Gary cultural exchange

Afterwards Ken Dinitz sent this email: “We've been thinking about those issues for a long time at PA Humanities, so it is always fascinating to see how others are approaching these unanswerable questions. That you are working with Gary is so interesting to me and to Pennsylvania Humanities. We facilitated artist and activist exchanges between Chester, PA and Gary a few years ago.”   I  emailed back that I’d be happy to send Ken a free copy of “Gary’s First Hundred Years.” 

 

I emailed Oral History Association heavy hitter Michael Frisch, author of the acclaimed book “A Shared Authority,” that I participated in a National Humanities Conference zoom session with Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel, whom he mentored at the 2019 OHA conference in Salt Lake City.  I wrote: “They named our session “Crossroads of Shared Authority: Amplifying Voices.”  Wonder where they got “shared authority” from.