Questioning the Archives
I’ve been thinking about a point that Hilary Green made in my recent interview with her concerning the challenges of researching and writing about how African Americans have remembered and commemorated the Civil War era. Her comments came in response to my question of why we haven’t seen a book-length treatment that focuses broadly on this aspect of Civil War memory?
Hilary’s answer, in part, is that it is very difficult to do this research. The archives itself functions as a barrier to writing about this history. I suspect that this is an issue that isn’t discussed much or even acknowledged outside of academic circles.
We tend to think of the archives as a neutral site, where historians and other researchers go to uncover the past. But whose past is contained in the archives?
What kinds of materials are stored in archives? Whose stories have been deemed worthy of preserving in our largest and most prestigious repositories? Who has had the political and economic power to influence how the past is preserved?
The questions are even more relevant when thinking about the ever increasing access to online databases. Whose stories and what materials are deemed worthy of being digitized? Who has the economic means to digitize and unlock these resources? What are the values and sense of the past that shapes what gets prioritized?
These are essential questions that researchers must ask in any number of fields, but especially for historians who work in the field of Civil War history and memory. While the archives offers a historian like Hilary a rich vein of materials, she has had to look elsewhere for materials that shed light on the story of African-American memory of the war.
In some cases we can see the institutional racism that has shaped the kinds of content preserved in archives across the country. Thankfully, more and more are beginning to acknowledge this institutional bias, including the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery:
Our recommitment includes acknowledgment of these truths.
1. Systemic racism remains a reality in American society, despite belief in racial equality on the part of most individuals. Historically, our governments, our economy, and many private institutions seeded or perpetuated discrimination against racial minorities to the political, economic, and social advantage of whites. The decline of overt bigotry in mainstream society has not erased the legacies of blatantly racist systems that operated for hundreds of years.
2. The ADAH is, in significant part, rooted in this legacy. The State of Alabama founded the department in 1901 to address a lack of proper management of government records, but also to serve a white southern concern for the preservation of Confederate history and the promotion of Lost Cause ideals. For well over a half-century, the agency committed extensive resources to the acquisition of Confederate records and artifacts while declining to acquire and preserve materials documenting the lives and contributions of African Americans in Alabama.
Others institutions have acknowledged the biased and even racist descriptions of materials that have been collected over the years. Acknowledging the limitations of the archives means that historians and researchers must think carefully about how to interpret extant material and cast a wide net in locating evidence in non-traditional places.
This concern should be front and center whenever we talk about public memory and reflect on the gaps in both the archival and written record of the past.
In a related note, historian Daniel Bessner recently lamented the dramatic decline in the number of history majors, research funding, and tenure track positions in the academy. Among his concerns is the very real possibility that historical research will narrow to relatively few subject leaving large swaths of our past unknown.
It’s the end of history. And the consequences will be significant.
Entire areas of our shared history will never be known because no one will receive a living wage to uncover and study them. It’s implausible to expect scholars with insecure jobs to offer bold and innovative claims about history when they can easily be fired for doing so. Instead, history will be studied increasingly by the wealthy, which is to say those able to work without pay. It’s easy to see how this could lead American historical scholarship to adopt a pro-status-quo bias. In today’s world, if you don’t have access to elite networks, financial resources or both, it just doesn’t make sense to pursue a career in history. In the future, history won’t just be written by the victors; it’ll also be written by the well-to-do.
Bessner is certainly not the first person to point out just how dire the situation is. It’s unfortunate because we have the power to change things.
One of the reasons I enjoy talking to Hilary is because her passion for history and her commitment to her research is infectious. It comes from a very personal place. That’s true for a lot of historians that I know and have come to respect.
Academic historians certainly do not hold a monopoly on telling the story of America, but the skills that they bring to its study are essential in broadening and deepening our understanding of our past.
An honest portrayal of our nation’s past is essential for a healthy democracy. We should remove as many obstacles out from their ability to carry out this important task.
Hilary Green is the best. I'll just add two plugs. Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" argues that archives, museums, maps, and a shared language provided the glue for the emergence of nineteenth century nationalism and imperialism. By definition, people not included in the archive were not part of the nation. My grad student Dan Cone's dissertation, which he is turning into a book now, deals specifically with how the founder of ADAH consciously focused on Confederate history while excluding African Americans from the archive and citizenship in the state. Dan's published work and papers actually predated and encouraged the ADAH statement you cite.
I’ve set aside time today to listen to your conversation with Dr. Green and I’m looking forward to it. She moved to Davidson about the time we moved away, so I keep track of the town, as well as her writing, thru her tweets. I share the concerns about history not being studied; perhaps some of the “dilettantes” will want to fund studies of the War of Southern Hate.
On another topic, my husband (you know, the dt loyalist) wants to know what you think about the protests of Faneuil Hall. My uninformed flinch (read the NBC report on the sit-in of Mayor Wu’s office) is that there are other, more pressing evils to address. But since I don’t live there...
As ever, thank you for all the work you do here.