From Preservation to Community Engagement in Chrysler Village

On October 6, 2015November 11, 2015 By Rachel BoyleIn Field NotesLeave a comment

In October 2013, Loyola University Chicago public history graduate students launched Public History Lab, a student-driven effort to apply public history skills at organizations and sites of history in the Chicagoland area. This post belongs to a series that chronicles efforts undertaken by members of the Public History Lab.

Spanning several years and spawning multiple course projects, the Chrysler Village History Project offers unique insight into the dynamics of a long-term collaboration between a local community, history graduate students, and faculty. The following account presents the evolution of the project to foster continued reflection on the practice of public history inside and outside the classroom.

The Origin Story

In early 2013, an energetic young alderman from the Southwest side of Chicago reached out to Loyola professor Dr. Theodore Karamanski with a request to nominate the neighborhood of Chrysler Village to the National Register of Historic Places. Located in the Clearing neighborhood just south of Midway Airport, Chrysler Village was one of the few housing construction projects undertaken in Chicago during World War II. It was strategically located near the Ford-Chrysler plant where workers assembled B-29 “Superfortress” bomber engines. Characterized by winding streets and a centrally-located park, Chrysler Village also represents an important link between prewar planned communities and postwar suburban development. As part of a preservation course led by Dr. Karamanski in the Spring of 2013, fellow Loyola history graduate students and I unearthed the neighborhood’s historical significance through extensive research in the archives and on the ground in Chrysler Village.* We continued to develop the nomination in the months after class until the nomination was officially accepted in early 2014 and Chrysler Village was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Aerial photograph of Chrysler Village, ca. 1950, courtesy of Clear-Ridge Historical Society — Aerial view of Chrysler Village, ca. 1950. Photo courtesy of Clear-Ridge Historical Society

Now What?

As satisfying as it was to help put Chrysler Village on the National Register, we couldn’t help but ask how the listing could better benefit the community. At the 2014 Annual Meeting of the National Council on Public History, Kim Connelley Hicks and I joined a roundtable on preservation to discuss how we could build on our nomination to create a sustained, financially soluble, and socially relevant project for a changing community. The roundtable generated a host of great ideas, but as the original core of students moved on in their lives and careers, we needed leaders with a plan to move the project forward.

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“Motoring Through Edgewater”: A Review

On February 24, 2015October 6, 2015 By Rachel BoyleIn ReviewsLeave a comment

The following review evaluates the newest exhibit at the Edgewater Historical Society, located at 5358 N. Ashland Avenue in Chicago. The museum is open to the public from 1-4pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

Housed in a decommissioned fire station turned historical society, “Motoring Through Edgewater” occupies most of the building’s first floor and is bordered by smaller, locally-oriented exhibits. The historical society brims with a strong sense of local pride and history, and “Motoring Through Edgewater” reflects that energy. At its best, the exhibit creatively uses archival materials to connect local history to broader stories of historical and contemporary significance. Although missing rich opportunities to utilize existing scholarship on gender and automobile culture, the exhibit nevertheless epitomizes the value of local history to foster enthusiasm about a community’s past.

The introductory panel represents the strength of the exhibit by connecting a national obsession with automobiles and automobile races to the emergence of Edgewater’s Northside Motor Row. Flanked by a mannequin dressed in the attire of an early woman driver, a chart showing the increase of automobiles in Chicago, and a colorful Oldsmobile advertisement, the panel provides an aesthetically exciting opening to the exhibit. The advertisement contains the first of several references to Edgewater Beach Hotel, a landmark of local pride important enough to warrant its own exhibit in the entrance of the historical society.

Then, a bold, colorful Sanborn Map of Edgewater’s Motor Row (Broadway Avenue) dominates the southern wall. Historical photographs, historical advertisements, and contemporary photographs surround the map, illustrating the changing urban landscape of Motor Row. The historical photographs demonstrate change over time, while the advertisements creatively fill in the gaps where no historical photographs remain of past buildings. The panel also introduces several founders of notable cab companies who started their business on Motor Row. Contemporary photographs display evidence of the past that remains along Broadway Avenue and the labels occasionally reference continuing preservation efforts. This place-based panel jumps around chronologically, reproducing the effect of a contemporary city street with both an invisible and visible past.

The rest of the exhibit is arranged thematically, with section titles like “Off to the Races,” “See You at the Auto Salon,” “Women on the Road,” and “Edgewater on the Road.” Adjacent panels on “The Parking Nuisance” and “License and Registration!” emerge as one of the strongest sections. It connects artifacts from Edgewater to early city policies regarding parking and registration, while also referencing contemporary life in Chicago. A collection of license plates from each decade of the twentieth century also visually demonstrates change over time.

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Resource Roundup: Historical Perspectives on Race, Police, and Crime

On December 4, 2014September 9, 2015 By Rachel BoyleIn Contemporary Issues9 Comments

Mike Brown. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. The deaths of young black men–and the lack of indictments for the policemen who killed them–have ignited outrage and urgent conversations on the structural racism of the criminal justice system and the fraught state of race relations in the United States. The following list links to articles that utilize historical perspective while participating in contemporary discussions of racism and police violence.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, writes about the historical relationship between racial fear and violence in the wake of the grand jury decision for Darren Wilson’s shooting of Mike Brown.
On the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Democracy Now! compiled historical footage in their report on “The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.”
Sarah Kendzior discusses Ferguson’s racial strife in the context of 250th anniversary commemoration of the founding of St. Louis.
Responding to the death of Eric Garner after being placed in a chokehold by police, Mother Jones points to a 1983 Supreme Court case in which “Thurgood Marshall Blasted Police for Killing Black Men With Chokeholds.”
Invoking the title of a 1951 petition to the United Nations, Chicago activist group “We Charge Genocide” recently presented a report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture on police brutality in Chicago.
A months-old but persistently relevant #longread by Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic: “The Case for Reparations.”

This brief list only contains only one article by academic historian. Why aren’t more historians contributing to the national discussion on race, police brutality, and the criminal justice system? Please post additional links in the comments of any articles that employ a critical historical perspective in addressing these current events.

Preservation and Ephemerality in Public History: Reflecting on NCPH 2014 from a Mile High

On March 23, 2014March 23, 2014 By Rachel BoyleIn Features2 Comments

This post is part of a series from Loyola public historians attending NCPH 2014.

I am currently sitting in the Denver airport on my layover to Chicago after a fantastic annual meeting of the National Council on Public History. I was reluctant to leave sunny Monterey for the snowy Midwest, but as always I feel invigorated the conversations with other historians committed to engaging and serving the public. Two panels in particular remain fresh in my mind as dynamic counterpoints that framed the conference’s theme of sustainability: one on preservation, the other on ephemerality.

People > Things

It occurs to me that the title of the panel on “Sustaining Historic Preservation Through Community Engagement” should’ve be swapped around to read, “Sustaining Community Engagement through Historic Preservation,” as it became clear through the course of the panel that preservation should be used in the interest of community engagement and not vice versa. In other words, people are more important than buildings. This theme was echoed by Sheila Brennan in the “Ephemerality in Public History” panel, who suggested that public historians should resist hoarding objects for prosperity and instead focus on digitizing objects for greater access or allowing the public to touch and use objects for a full transformative tactile experience. (Check out the notes and slides from her presentation here.)

Rethinking Sustainability

Another recurring question in the panels: how should—or shouldn’t—a project be sustained after the public historian has concluded their involvement? Approaching the end of her dissertation work, Abby Gateau is currently mentoring a successor, while also having successfully aroused a strong and energetic community base who can carry forward the public history work she instigated. Mark Tebeau reinforced the value of thinking about the end from the beginning, suggesting that recognizing ephemerality of products and projects can lead to better best practices. Finally, Thomas Cauvin, from the audience, reminded us that archives are not the only repositories for saving the past and documenting public history projects—people preserve memory.

The panels on preservation and ephemerality, and the NCPH Annual Meeting as a whole, served as a refreshing reminder to base our public history work in the contemporary community.

Call For Participants: Social Justice, Sustainability, and Activism in Public History

On October 15, 2013 By Rachel BoyleIn Events & Updates, Roundtable1 Comment

Public History Roundtable: Social Justice, Sustainability, and Activism

Saturday, November 9, 2013

2:45pm – 4:30pm

In Conjunction with the 10^th Annual Loyola University Chicago

History Graduate Student Conference

LUC Water Tower Campus

You are invited to participate in a roundtable designed to foster discussion about the active roles of historians in promoting social justice as well as social and ecological sustainability. The roundtable features Dr. Paul Schadewald of Macalester College, graduate student conference participants, and public history professionals from the Chicago area.

Mundelein College Civil Rights Students Mobilization, April 1968
Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University Chicago

How to participate:

Follow the conference blog or the Lakefront Historian to view a detailed introduction to the roundtable, consider pre-circulated case statements, and offer your comments and contributions.

Attend the roundtable prepared to discuss your experiences with social justice and sustainability in public history as a patron, staff, or stakeholder in an institution that engages the public over historical topics

Attend the roundtable, and be willing to informally engage participants and fellow audience members about the topic.

Simply attend the roundtable and listen.

For more information or if you have any questions, please contact Rachel Boyle at rboyle1@luc.edu
Follow the conference Twitter hashtag #hgsa2013

Guardians of the Past or Advocates for the Present?

On March 11, 2013March 8, 2013 By Rachel BoyleIn Features9 Comments

At the risk of blaspheming as a historian, I declare that I dislike old stuff. I am growing impatient with public history’s traditional fetishization of physical objects and buildings. Certainly manuscripts, objects, and buildings serve a critical role in the historical record as access points for dynamic historical inquiry. Yet I maintain a strong aversion to the esoteric enjoyment of looking at and talking about old stuff. Distaste occasionally turns into outrage when I exit a classroom or museum and encounter the very real products of systemic poverty, historic racism, and structural oppression.

The suffocation of a static, object-oriented past dramatically contrasts with the invigoration of engaging with the public. The most thrilling conversations originate when I tell someone that I study history and they inevitably share their passionate, personal version of history. A retail coworker enthusiastically discussed history as a series of major local events happening in real time, like the construction of rapid transportation. A restaurant waiter wanted to know more about international history, particularly the historical relationship between the Philippines and the United States. Anyone who takes the time to listen to the public’s interest in history will find intense personal investment in the intersections between past and present.

Listening to the public ought to be the first step any public historian takes. Only when we take the time to find out what a community wants and needs can we respond in our fullest capacities as public historians. If we treat communities with respect, then they might allow us to respond and even push back with our perspectives as trained historians.

Present-day communities, rather than historical resources, ought to be our departure point for the work of public history. Old stuff does not have objective or intrinsic value; in fact, the old stuff we save and adore often reflects the values of a dominant culture responsible for historic oppression. The work of the public historian can be so much more powerful when we choose instead to advocate for historically oppressed communities. Public historians can embrace a socially relevant and provocative role beyond serving as guardians of old stuff.

A public-oriented concept of history is not new or even that radical. But as I navigate the worlds of academic and public history, I am increasingly convinced that the civic responsibility of public historians needs to be better emphasized. I would even like to envision a future where the primacy of community is an assumed foundation of public history.

Lincoln Review: Rachel Boyle

On November 19, 2012November 27, 2012 By Rachel BoyleIn Reviews, Roundtable2 Comments

In this five-part series, Lakefront Historian contributors respond to the critically acclaimed blockbuster Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day Lewis.

Spielberg’s Lincoln

The opening shots were so promising. A pan of Civil War carnage preceded any mention of Abraham Lincoln. African American soldiers stood before The Great Emancipator and called him to task on the problem of wage inequality. Then Lincoln subdued them with a charming anecdote, thus setting the tone of the rest of the film. In the subsequent two and half hours, a thoroughly endearing Abe ambled through a world of rhetorical and ethical dilemmas, mesmerizing everyone with his storytelling and lawyering skills. Indeed, Spielberg’s Lincoln succeeded as a comedic drama of white politicians debating slavery while effectively silencing other nineteenth century voices.

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The Lakefront Historian

Author: Rachel Boyle