By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
For Nicole Jackson, history can be a thing of beauty.
On Tuesday evening, Jackson, an associate professor of history at Bowling Green State University, took part in a panel discussion on “The Politics of Teaching History.”
Growing up, Jackson knew that her grandparents had moved to California after World War II. But when she learned California history in middle school she didn’t find any people who look like her. It was only through studying and teaching African American history that she discovered her grandparents’ story.
“They ended up there for particular economic reasons along with thousands of other people,” she said. This was history that connected with her own story.
“It’s a beautiful thing to learn and share,” Jackson said. But that’s not the case when history is stripped down to didactic lessons and facts to be memorized.
Jackson was joined on the panel by Timothy Messer-Kruse, a professor of ethnic studies at BGSU, and Gloria Wu, a social studies teacher at Bowsher High School in Toledo. Jolie Sheffer, the director of BGSU’s Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, moderated the session that was organized by Stevie Scheurich, a doctoral student in American Culture Studies.
The discussion began with the panel addressing two views of American History. One was represented by the New York Times’ 1619 Project developed by investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. The project was started as a reflection on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia.
Messer-Kruse said that the anniversary was almost overshadowed by another in Virginia – the founding of the Virginia House of Burgesses, which some scholars considered a starting point for American democracy.
He noted the irony of these two anniversaries, one celebrating democracy and the other the creation of system of oppression.
The 1619 Project had its critics. It was “out of step” with current historical research, Jackson said, as much as 15-20 years behind scholarship.
Also, some historians criticized it, she said, because “it displaces the impact of indigenous people.”
Messer-Kruse said it was important because it told how the expansion of liberty was the result of the struggles of African Americans against slavery and all the repressive systems put in place in its wake.
Conservatives, Messer-Kruse said, felt that the 1619 project “sullied” the reputation of the American Revolution by contending that rather than being a fight for liberty it was, in part, a struggle to maintain slavery in the face of threats from within the British Empire.
The other view, the 1776 Commission, sprang up in response to the 1619 Project, and was pushed by then President Donald Trump.
Asked to comment on it, Jackson was dismissive: “I have no desire to deal with that nonsense.”
Messer-Kruse said the commission was “a knee-jerk reaction” without much “academic integrity” but with “a lot of political juice” behind it.
“It’s just an appeal to the rhapsodic version of American history,” he said.
It arises, he said, in “a very conservative political moment” driven by “various groups in our society that really want … to reorient education away from critical thinking” and back to rote memorization.
They feel threatened, Messer-Kruse said, by “any narrative that puts power in the hands of people of color and those who have struggled.” They consider this to be “a history of victimization.” But “struggle is the whole nature of historical change.”
Wu primarily teaches Advanced Placement Civics at Bowsher High School. She must teach what the students will face on the test at the end of every semester.
And as a public high school teacher she faces ideological scrunity.
At Bowsher, 64 percent of students identify as an ethnic minority and 58 percent are economically disadvantaged.
She said “my students are tired of learning about slavery because they feel oppressed.” They tell her they want to study stories of hope. Stories like that of Barack Obama.
Many minorities, she said, have been oppressed “but what are some avenues to success?”
Wu said she starts with teaching the U.S. Constitution and how Americans got rid of a king. “Now with the progression of time, we are more inclusive.” At one time only white men who owned property could vote. Progress has come slowly. “So students feel there is a pathway to success,” Wu said. “Sometimes we fall behind, but we are progressing.”
Wu talks about civic engagement and requires students to get involved in political campaigns, including some students who worked for Trump.
Jackson said she teaches African American history sparingly because of the images of lynching and bodily mutilation are hard on her and on her students. “I have had students cry my classroom,” she said.
“I have to give lectures that center the pain of people who look like me. So much of what I study is literally painful,” she said. “There’s no way to teach the history of this country and avoid that.”
The other side is to see a student’s face light up because the content connects with something they learned it at home. One Mexican American student recalled in class her grandparents’ experience as migrant workers who labored in the United States as part of the Bracero program. “She was ecstatic to talk about this,” and has gone on to do graduate studies in history.
Wu said it is important “to include as many voices as possible. The more voices, the more perspectives, the more you corroborate history, the more you appreciate it and understand it.”
Jackson does that by employing podcasts. “My students want to learn more. They don’t really want to read more” and podcasts are “a great way to literally incorporate other voices.”
“It’s a fallacy to imagine we don’t bring ourselves into our work, that we don’t bring ourselves into our interpretation of historical events,” Jackson said.
The teacher must be transparent and honest about that.
“History is an egalitarian field,” she continued. Everyone can contribute by adding their experience, viewpoints, and questions.
But, she said, “when that hits the political field it becomes nothing but propaganda and all that conversation is gone.” Only the traditional interpretation is considered objective and “it is anything but.”
Messer-Kruse said he finds it ironic that those who decry “cancel culture” have canceled so many people out of the historical narrative. He drew an example from Northwest Ohio history.
He asked how many people were familiar with James Ashley.
An abolitionist, Ashley represented Toledo in the U.S. Congress during the Civil War. He wrote the bill that became the 13thAmendment, which abolished slavery.
Yet, he received almost no recognition until U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur pushed through legislation to name the federal courthouse for him.
Yet, when Toledo named its first two high schools, one was named for Morrison Waite, who as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme, ruled to strike down many of advances toward racial justice gained after the Civil War.
“That’s who we celebrate,” he said. “All history was canceled.”
It is those who take a critical view of history who are concerned with qualities such as objectivity. “Those who push for patriotic or wholesome history are only concerned with indoctrination. The whole notion of seeing history as patriotic destroys history itself from the beginning.”
Studying history requires taking “a clear-eyed view” without preordained heroes and comforting stories.
