KEY INSIGHT 1: MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE
Encountering accessibility barriers
When reading about army women for my senior thesis, I continued to encounter the name of one woman: Sarah Osborn Benjamin. Authors seldom give Benjamin more than sentences, and these tend to reiterate the same claim: she "performed domestic work for her husband and fellow soldiers" but "did not
exhibit a new sense of independence,” because she "continued to be controlled by
a husband." I wanted to know more about Benjamin: how did she perceive her
contributions to the war? And what was her life like afterwards? What can her
experiences tell us about army women more generally? To answer these questions,
I turned to Benjamin's seventy-one page pension file. Benjamin could not write
but she appeared before a court in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, to explain why
she deserved a widow's pension. A clerk recorded her testimony. Through his
mediation, we can hear Benjamin's voice. She describes the challenges of being
a mother during the war, especially after her husband abandoned her; the
relationships she forged with other military women; her jobs in camp, both
formal (cooking, washing) and informal (plundering); and the pride she
developed as a military employee. Benjamin's testimony is both incisive and
revealing, but it is by no means exceptional. Indeed, the National Archives
houses 80,000 pension files like it. But the applicants' voices remain silenced by
archival and logistical problems. Most all of the files are not free, transcribed, or searchable. This makes it nearly impossible for researchers to identify and isolate pension files relevant to their specific research goals: for example, isolating files of African American and female veterans, those specific to a region in the United States, those filed by of a members particular religion or occupation, etc. Early in my undergraduate experience, my frustration with this research barrier presented a significant question: how can we make sources more accessible? And how can historians make their research more accessible to the general public? (For my plans to approach this accessibility issue, see "Leadership.")
Sarah Osborn Benjamin. Photo from Wayne County Historical Society, Honesdale, PA
Expanding access with public history
I had the opportunity to tackle my accessibility questions from an archival standpoint as a research assistant for the Pinckney Papers Project. This project studies and digitizes letters of South Carolina's Pinckney family. Its editors publish the papers in born-digital volumes, and are currently publishing the papers of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825), his brother Thomas Pinckney (1750-1828), and their cousin Charles Pinckney (1756-1824). When preparing documents for publication, the editors assign each one of several tags, such as: slavery, friendship, travel, domestic animals, Native American leadership, etc. Users can then sort through documents related to specific topics of interest. We also tag people, places, battles, books, ships, etc. mentioned in the body of each document, then write brief descriptions of them to provide readers with the context they need to fully interpret documents. Working for the Pinckney Papers has taught me now technology can enable historians to make the archives more widely available, thus eliminating the time, money, and expertise needed to travel to and use physical archives. It has also challenged me to more generally consider the historian's responsibilities: to contextualize, to organize, and to make decisions about now to structure bodies of sources as transparent as possible.
Other accessibility challenges that I faced are unique to studying history during a global pandemic. I was at home in Kansas City, Missouri for Spring break when the university transitioned to fully-online learning. Suddenly, my parents’ guest bedroom became my classroom, library, and archive. As I took classes, I also volunteered at the Clay County Museum and Historical Society. This became challenging when, shortly after the university closed, Kansas City and Liberty, Missouri (where the museum is located) imposed lockdowns. The museum is a non-profit and operates entirely on visitor donations. Suddenly, we had no visitors and no income. The pandemic thus immediately challenged the ways I was familiar with researching, discussing history in the classroom, and sharing it beyond the university.
My classes quickly adjusted to the pandemic. In fact, the first course that I started after COVID shutdowns was modeled around the pandemic entirely—SCHC 326, Honors COVID-19: Recording Peoples’ Experiences, Perspectives, and Impacts of a Global Pandemic. To preserve the perspectives of a diverse group of people at the COVID pandemic's outbreak, my class conducted oral history interviews with teachers, students, ministers, and frontline medical workers. They came from the United States, China, Guatemala, and India and shared their initial experiences of isolation, workplace disruption, and political turmoil surrounding pandemic policies. I interviewed a local accountant over the challenges she faced trying to help small businesses stay afloat during the first wave of lockdowns, contextualized her experiences, and shared the interview on a website. (See Artifact 1.) Similarly, in HIST 720, Introduction to the Study of History, students had to define and justify how we would write the history of the pandemic: what perspectives, methodologies, and prices of evidence should we be preserving for future researchers? (See Artifact 2.) Both of these courses challenged me to understand that the historian is not only responsible for making aged documents and events accessible; historians must also preserve artifacts and testimonies from the political and social events that they personally live through, thus making fuller accounts and diverse perspectives accessible to future scholars. In this sense, the historian is somewhat like a journalist: they collect evidence to report on important, present events. Only, they report to generations of unborn researchers.
ARTIFACT 1
In SCHC 326, I created a website portfolio based off of my interview with local Certified Public Accountant Cheryl McCann. You can access the site here. The interview is also available via a website by the UofSC Department of Oral History, which you can access here.
In the Classroom: Cheryl McCann Oral History Portfolio
ARTIFACT 2
In the Classroom: HIST 720 COVID History
But historians are not just collectors or reporters; they must advocate for policies that maximize accessibility. We must introduce policy makers to needs of the historical profession. This is exactly what we did in SCHC 425, Museums and Advocacy. In this course, we studied now museums can make conversations about contested histories more accessible: They may offer programming in different languages; partner with local schools, community centers, artists, and parks; create traveling exhibits, etc . But we also learned that financial barriers frequently limit museums’ ability to offer these forms of learning. The pandemic only exacerbated financial challenges: lockdowns put approximately one-third of museums in the United States at risk of permanent closure to advocate for museums, my class attended the American Alliance of Museums' Museum Advocacy Day (MAD). Here, we asked legislators to support increased funding for the National endowment for humanities (NEH), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and National Science Foundation (NSF), which in turn finances grants for museums. We also advocated for tax policy changes to strengthen charitable giving and for the removal of the fixed seating clause of Shuttered Venue Operating grants, which made it difficult for small museums to successfully apply for pandemic aid. (For more on MAD, see Artifact 3.) This experience taught me that to make history as accessible as possible, scholars must actively forge institutional relationships between museums, historical societies, larger funding entities (like the NEH), and state and local governments.
ARTIFACT 3
In the Classroom: MAD Materials
During the American Alliance of Museums' Museum Advocacy Day, I advocated for museums in meetings with legislative aides of Missouri Sens. Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley, Missouri Reps. Sam Graves and Emanuel Cleaver, South Carolina Sens. Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, and Rep. Jim Clyburn. This experience made me aware of funding as a barrier to—or opportunity to expand—accessibility. Below are PDFs of (1) a speech I drafted for MAD and (2) my reflection about participating.
Museums and Advocacy was a particularly meaningful class to me because I could see our advocacy's immediate impact as a museum volunteer. The Clay County Museum received a grant from the NEH, which allowed us to continue operating during the pandemic. It not only covered our utility costs, but also allowed us to invest in needed technology, like a projector and Zoom subscription. With these tools, we expanded our public reach by hosting online lectures. I also filmed short "artifact spotlights": short videos about artifacts in the museum, which we promoted on social media. (See Artifact 4.) Audiences sometimes requested time periods or subjects to learn about. Other times, museum members asked me to discuss their favorite objects. These videos provided us with a way to continue sharing our collections with the public, even as the physical artifacts remained locked behind shuttered museum doors. The experience challenged me to consider now relatively informal modes of communication, like Facebook or Twitter, can engage audiences who may not otherwise be able to visit the museum—or perhaps simply would not have otherwise read about history.
Beyond the Classroom: Clay County Museum Virtual Programming
To expand the museum's outreach during the pandemic, I created a series of short "artifact spotlights." The museum shared these on social media. They are available on our website here.
Our museum also reaches broader audiences by holding video lectures. I have moderated some lectures and provided technical assistance for others, including this video program offered by local historian Michelle Cook on African Americans in Fairview Cemetery (Liberty, MO). You can also access it here.
ARTIFACT 4
Working as an assistant for Dr. Woody Holton has further challenged me to see social media as a tool for education and debate. Dr. Holton has given me the opportunity to write tweets for two projects. The first, titled the Lemuel Haynes Project highlights how abolitionists changed the Declaration of Independence from an ordinance of secession into a statement of rights. The second, titled Countdown to 1984, highlights bills aiming to censor Black history in the United States. (See Artifact 5.) In these projects, we not only engage with professional historians but also with K-12 educators and people who are simply curious about history. Twitter has created a space for these three groups to start dialogue and recommend resources to each other. Dr. Holton and I also suggest further readings in response to viewers' interests and questions. We are careful to suggest articles and sources that are not protected by database paywalls, to ensure even our viewers who are not affiliated with universities can access resources. (This challenge has made me particularly grateful for open access sources, which challenges the pay-barriers keeping so many from engaging with academic research, especially that published by university presses.) In addition to recommending reading, I have also used the American Association of University Professors' list of upcoming hearings on anti-education bills to tweet out hearing dates, livestreams, and testimony forms. By putting all of this information in one place, Dr. Holton and I hope to make it easier for the public to discuss history education with legislators.
My experiences both in the classroom and with oral history, documentary editing, and museums have thus challenged me to identify several barriers to accessibility in history (material, travel, and operating costs; incomplete archival infrastructure; limiting legislation, etc.) and encouraged me to imagine several methods of confronting them, including: by forging relationships between museums, archives, schools, and state and local governments; by leveraging digital communication platforms; and by making research and archival organization methods transparent to non-specialist audiences.
Beyond the Classroom: Lemuel Haynes Project and Countdown to 1984
Historians like Eric Slauter argue that the Declaration of Independence was a primarily diplomatic document, and its authors focused more on grievances against Parliament than rights like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"–this phrase only became popular when abolitionists quoted it to oppose slavery. I confirmed this argument by tracing the phrase "all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights . . ." in two hundred newspapers from 1776 to 1800. To make evidence for this claim available to historians, educators, students, and history buffs, I turned the evidence into Tweets, which Dr. Woody Holton checked and sent out on Twitter. I then compiled them in the below Wakelet for educators. You can also click to access it here.
Dr. Holton and I followed the Lemuel Haynes Project with the Countdown to 1984. This project promotes an awareness of state and national legislative attempts to censor the teaching of African American history. It also creates a space for educators, parents, teachers, and historians to engage in dialogue about ways to oppose the legislation. You can access the Wakelet with these tweets below or at this link.
ARTIFACT 5
Summary