National Council on Public History

Segregation academies continue to receive state funding. ProPublica’s latest in their ongoing investigation into Southern private schools founded in the 1960s and 1970s as state-supported efforts to evade federally-mandated desegregation, called segregation academies, shows that those schools continue to receive significant funding from state voucher programs. Most of these schools remain de facto segregated, a reminder that “school choice” remains an instrument for enforcing racial segregation in defiance of law to this day. Read the report by Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon here: https://lnkd.in/gztVQW5V Photo illustration by Emily Scherer for ProPublica. Source images: Library of Congress, Princeton University library, Wikimedia Commons. #ncph #publichistory #publichistorians  #ProPublica

Attention #NCPH2025 attendees! The deadline for most NCPH 2025 Annual Meeting Awards is Sunday, 12/1/24. For guidelines and application details visit: https://lnkd.in/d4CJUe5p. Questions? Email our Membership Coordinator, Stasia, at atanzer@iu.edu. Earlier this year we highlighted the NCPH 2024 Awardees on our Instagram @publichistorians: https://lnkd.in/gXS2Mtzn. Check out their stories and let them inspire you to apply for an #NCPH2025 Award.

Hey #NCPH2025 student attendees! We’re looking for students at the undergrad or graduate level to work a four-hour volunteer shift at NCPH 2025 next March in Montréal in exchange for complimentary conference registration. If you’re a student looking to close the gap between your budget and your travel costs, fill out a volunteer form via https://lnkd.in/gNKewU_3 for consideration. We’ll take volunteers in the order they apply, with a limit of two students per school (three for our Patron and Partner departments). You must be a member of NCPH and 21 years old by March 26 to volunteer.

The power of small museums. “Can Supporting Small Museums Solve Larger Problems in the Museum Field? I believe they can.” So writes Alli Schell for the blog Museums and Race. With more investment, Schell argues, very small museums would have the power to transform the museum landscape by advancing racial equity, breaking down hierarchies that drive the museum field, improving working conditions and benefits for museum workers, and changing the world of grant funding for the better. Read Schell’s full piece here: https://lnkd.in/gvnAAtnH    Photo credit: Interior of a small museum, Billy Hathorn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons   #ncph #publichistory #publichistorians #museums  

Eye on the National Archives: On October 31, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) broke a story contending that Biden-appointed US Archivist Colleen Shogan and her staff are editing coming exhibits at the National Archives Museum to make American history more comfortable and sanitized. The story alleges that during the development process, changes have been made to forthcoming exhibits to portray the Founding Fathers more positively; reduce focus on Japanese-American incarceration camps; cut references to environmental hazards; and remove reference to the birth control pill. As Nathan J. Robinson writes, “The correct stance for an archivist is to be committed to telling a truthful story that reflects what actually happened, even if this makes some people uncomfortable because there are truths they would rather block out of their understanding of the country’s past.” The WSJ piece is behind a paywall, but you can find a good summary and analysis of it at: https://lnkd.in/gg_3TgK5. Other news sites have followed the story, including:  https://lnkd.in/gwvQMY5m and https://lnkd.in/g_jNtVeV You can read Shogan’s response here: https://lnkd.in/gEbigFxQ #ncph #publichistory #publichistorians #nationalarchives

Effective today, Friday, November 15, at 12:00 pm Eastern, NCPH will be stepping back from the Twitter/X platform. Our account, which retains the history and memory of a vibrant and joyful online public history community, will stay up, but we will no longer be actively monitoring or posting there. We will not expose our social media volunteers to a space that no longer feels safe or productive. Staff has hit the limit of our capacity to monitor and spend time on a hostile platform where speech, core functionality, and the terms of service are subject to partisan and corporate whims. We look forward to spending more time with our public history community on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, and we may soon have a few new tricks up our sleeves. For non-members who infrequently use social media, the best way to keep up with NCPH is to sign up for infrequent emails via https://lnkd.in/g2ZkZa6x. For more frequent updates from us, you can join our community of public historians at https://lnkd.in/gKfpCiZM.

Applications for #NCPH2025 Dine Arounds and Pop-Ups are due TOMORROW! Learn more about what each event entails and submit an interest form here by 11:59pm on November 15th: https://lnkd.in/gJub_7zZ

The National Park Service (NPS), in partnership with NCPH, is embarking on a project to identify and prioritize historical research needs related to Black History at its parks in the Intermountain West (all NPS sites in the states of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming), to better preserve and interpret resources related to this history. As part of this project, we are asking for feedback from historians, NPS staff, volunteers, and anyone else familiar with this history, via the survey linked to below. Your responses will help the NPS determine how to prioritize future historical research funding to better understand and interpret Black history in the Intermountain West. https://lnkd.in/gfdPjK-A. This survey is optional and should take 5–10 minutes.  We appreciate your participation if you are able to do so. If you have any questions about the survey, or if you would like to provide feedback in a different format, please email the historian managing this project, Dr. Jackie Gonzales, at jgonzales@mirandolaresearch.com.

The following is a statement from NCPH President, Denise Meringolo, on the recent 2024 Presidential Election results

The following is a statement from NCPH President, Denise Meringolo, on the recent 2024 Presidential Election results