Four points about presentation of African American History in the context of Black History Month | reprint with an addition about the US Civil Rights Trail (versus the Dixieland Trail)

February is Black History Month

-- "Transit equity day, Sunday 2/4/24, in honor of Black History Month, Rosa Parks, and the significance of transportation history to African-American History," 2024
-- "Three ideas about presentation of African American History in the context of Black History Month | reprint with an addition about the US Civil Rights Trail (versus the Dixieland Trail)," 2024

The first two sections were published last year and are reprinted.

1.  Creating state-wide and regional history networks for African-American cultural interpretation.  One of the problems with creating African-American history museums is that while it is supported politically, once a museum is created they tend to not be well patronized.  Many have had serious budget problems.

When I was doing work with some people in Cambridge, Maryland--where Harriet Tubman lived, and there is a small museum in Cambridge and more recently, the National Park Service created the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park--I came to the conclusion that rather being satisfied with creating one off museums; local history trails; and the like, why not, using the example of the multi-state Civil War history trail, create regional and multi-state African-American history trails, incorporating existing assets.

The Civil War multi-state trail program includes more than 1000 sites in Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia--six states.  (In fact, DC should participate too.)

But states could create statewide African-American trails of sites, museums, places, etc. too.



I wrote about this in more depth in "6Ps and cultural planning and the failure to create a network of African American historic sites across the DMV" (2016) in response to articles spurred by the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Many local culture professionals argued it would be a boon to other African American history sites and facilities in the area, whereas I thought that it wouldn't happen on a trickle down basis, that an overt network of such assets, facilities, and sites needed to be created.

Local DC does have a history trail, Baltimore has a variety of relevant sites, Richmond has a Slave Trail, there is the Alexandria Black History Museum, among many such resources across the region.  Just think how much stronger and more powerful these trails could be linked up as part of a broader system.


2.  How about a month long "Doors Open" event during Black History Month.  "Doors Open" events were pioneered in Europe, and are when a community's culture organizations band together to provide a coordinated schedule of events, usually over a weekend, where people get free access to various cultural sites and events, many of which are not normally open to the public.

In North America, Doors Open Toronto is probably the biggest.  The Toronto Star even publishes an event guide. (2011 Doors Open Toronto Guide)

But Open House New York Weekend  is increasingly a big deal.  Pittsburgh created Doors Open Pittsburgh.

In DC the Dupont-Kalorama Museums Consortium has had a district-specific Doors Open event for many years, as do the art galleries on Upper Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, but including the participation of AU's Katzen Center for the Arts and the Kreeger Museum.  It's not exactly the same, but Georgetown Glow, an outdoor sculpture walk in December and January is growing into a great event.

My latest idea is that during February, Black History Month, community cultural organizations should organize a common calendar of events, along the lines of "Doors Open" events, where a community's cultural organization organize a weekend, week, or month of related activities.

In the DC context, ideally federal assets like the NMAAHC, the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, and the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site would also participate as well as the area PBS stations, etc.

A regional example from Southern California, Pacific Standard Time, a cross-museum program promoting California arts, spearheaded by the Getty Museum, shows how this can be done across jurisdictions.

3.  US Civil Rights Trail and historiography/critical race theory.  I didn't realize that such a multi-state history trail had been created along the lines, until I was doing some ephemera research ("Travel the U.S. Civil Rights Trail," AAA World).

Long before white supremacists got worked up over "Critical Race Theory" ("What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?," Education Week) I've been interested in the issue of historiography, especially the interpretation of Civil War in terms of "the Lost Cause."  

-- "Monuments as public art, historiography, and change," 2020

-- "National Archives photo "retouching" is another example of the tension between National Ideology and Memory and Inquiry in the funding of national museums, archives," 2020

-- "You don't gotta have art," 2010

-- "Dancing with the one that brung ya and challenging the dominant narrative," 2008

Often this idea of National Myth/National History is termed "civil religion" ("Can America's 'Civil Religion' Still Unite The Country?," NPR).

I was sad that President Obama didn't avail himself of the opportunity to give a major speech at the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Where this comes up with the US Civil Rights Trail is that I came an earlier form of the trail, but of Dixieland, and the Dixieland Trail and the promotion of "the unique culture of the South."

The Dixieland Trail was an automobile route organized and promoted by the travel divisions and state development boards of Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. This map, featuring artwork by Logan Bleckley dated 1962, was issued by the Tennessee Department of Conservation and shows the manufactured highway meandering about the five participating states. Sixty-five different locations of interest are numbered and labeled and a variety of illustrated vignettes highlight important industries, recreational opportunities, and the natural beauty across the region.

Another version of the brochure, probably dating to the 1970s.

By contrast, the Civil Rights Trail covers 15 states, and should include more, like DC and Maryland.  But talk about different approaches to historiography, and the need to discuss it.

4. Some DC stories.  I lived in the H Street neighborhood starting in the late 1980s.  I followed urban issues but I wasn't involved.  Around 2000 I decided if I didn't get involved the neighborhood would continue to languish.

Sometime in 2000 or 2001 I went on a road trip with a college friend from Ft. Lauderdale to New Jersey and we stopped in cities known for historic preservation like Savannah and Charleston.  I came back thinking my neighborhood was no less beautiful then those, just different.

Eventually I got roped into running "a history study" for the neighborhood, with the idea that would lead to creation of a historic district.  Instead, I got diverted in Main Street historic preservation based commercial district revitalization.  But the study was detailed enough that in some academic treatise I am criticized as a gentrifier.  At the same time, I got more interested in DC's local history.

The Front Page Restaurant, Dupont Circle.  Shut down when WeWork bought the building.  It's decorative claim to fame was a bunch of newspaper pages posted throughout the restaurant, mostly from the now defunct Washington Star.  One of the pages was classified ads from WW2, organized in some categories--housing and jobs--by race.  I was floored, because at the time that was less than 50 years before.

Uline Arena, E.B. Henderson.  One of the buildings I helped save was the old Uline Arena, site for professional hockey, basketball and other events. 

In the process of documenting the building for preservation, we learned that local civil rights activist (and DCPS official) E.B. Henderson coordinated an every event protest for almost two years in the late 1940s, to get the building desegregated ("Civil rights, public accommodations laws, and religious belief exceptions," 2016).

Carter Woodson home.  Woodson taught at Howard University and was the founder of the Association for the Study of African American History and African-American History Month.  

His house was owned by Shiloh Baptist Church which let it rot ("Losing my religion: Shiloh Baptist Church and Neighborhood Destabilization," 2005).  The church otoh wanted plaudits for "saving" the building. Eventually the National Park Service bought and restored it.

I was talking about it at a community meeting in Shaw once, and made the point that it was a shame that the building was in its sorry state, because that building is significant to American History, not only to "black history."  The person was surprised: "I never thought of it that way."

This company had restaurants in DC and other major cities.  It was party to a public accommodations lawsuit that was decided in 1953.

Public accommodations protesting and organizing in DC.  In the early 1950s, activists like Mary Church Terrell led campaigns against department stores and restaurants over segregated spaces.  Howard University students even led a "counter strike" at restaurants in the 1940s, although it's not well known ("How One Woman Helped End Lunch Counter Segregation in the Nation’s Capital," Smithsonian Magazine).

These were among the battles that pushed nondiscriminatory public accommodations laws forward.