Death, Racism, and Intemperance:

A Social Historian’s Perspective on Living History and the Interrelation of Controversial Issues

Excerpt of an article written by David Vanderstel, Conner Prairie, Noblesville, Indiana. To read the entirety of this paper, join ALHFAM to explore the A.S.K. database, full of challenging insights and ideas, past and present, for our members. Join today!

For decades, historians have searched for ways to improve their descriptions and analyses of the past. In 1912, historian James Harvey Robinson called for a research approach that embraced “every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since first he appeared on the earth;… it would depict the habits and emotions of the most obscure individual. ” In the late 1950s, historian Samuel P. Hays urged educators and historians alike to focus on “the human side of the past” rather than simply on formal institutions and political histories.

Both seek to recreate the “climate of the times” and the “spirit of the age” in order to understand more fully the environment within which people live.

Using social and behavioral history, however, can be dangerous, and one must be fully prepared to deal with the consequences of the resulting controversies. By depending upon current historical scholarship, one will be led naturally to the “debunking” or explanation of popular myths and misperceptions of the past. Try to convince your visitors that life in the “early days” was not necessarily “kinder, gentler, and simpler,” but that it was filled with rapid change, controversy, disruption to established patterns, gossip, and general turmoil, all of which is comparable to our lives in contemporary society. These are indeed controversial subjects because they challenge the popular perceptions of the past.

Challenging the historical norm that is perpetuated in schools, museums, textbooks, and most flagrantly in television mini-series raises the fear of offending, attacking, and belittling visitors and untrained staff. It is, however, our ethical responsibility as public educators to communicate that the historical process is ongoing, that our perceptions of the past constantly change as new sources and interpretations become available, and that we must be willing to change and adapt our understandings of the past as new information is found and published.

Another way to improve our understanding of the past is to face and address those negative issues that comprise daily human life in its fullness—pain, anger, disagreement, dissatisfaction, hatred, violence, death. If we look back across the ages, the history of our nation and its communities has not been peaceful and idyllic and has continued its course through other eras of worldwide conflict, urban upheaval, rural discontent, racial and sexual discrimination, family breakup, denominational bickering, class competition, generational conflict, to name only a few.

How is it that a history so filled with controversy and conflict has become so pasteurized and homogenized by the time it is interpreted in textbooks and museum exhibits? How many historic houses and sites are “populated” by the stereotypical television families of past eras where the greatest crisis of the day is usually the evening’s meal, as opposed to those sites which interpret domestic discord and community conflict? Do we as humans naturally seek solace in a supposedly simpler, less hostile past because of the chaos and complexity of contemporary life? If anything, we do a disservice to preserving and interpreting the past if we portray a conflict-free past that never really existed. Would it not be better for us to work back from our awareness of the present to show the roots of contemporary conflicts, to explain how controversial issues have affected generation after generation, and to see what we can learn about human behavior in that context? We must acknowledge that human conflict is not a part of history—it is history.

Has Conner Prairie hedged on interpreting some controversial issues? We have agreed not to address an issue or topic until it has been fully researched, coordinated by the education staff, and appropriate staff training has been offered. We also have obtained the advice of other historians, educators, and consultants on ways to present sensitive issues to the public.

The greatest problem that we have had in interpretation, however, has not been related to the village, but rather to the William Conner story. Our primary challenge has been to address and explain Conner’s participation in Indian removals and shrewd land and business deals in the surrounding area, thereby placing Conner in the context of early nineteenth century opportunists rather than evaluating him from our own twentieth century biases and perspectives. Whether it is a matter of semantics or a concern over showing what might be considered Conner’s “unethical” behavior, there are many who would still prefer to see Conner as a benevolent land magnate and founding father and the Delaware tribes wisely deciding to leave for lands further west, rather than being forced from their lands by advancing white settlers.

As an academically trained historian, I cannot think of an issue that should be avoided in a museum’s interpretation. Advances in the fields of women’s history, demography, ethnicity, urban/rural community studies, material culture, and other segments of the new social history have provided a wealth of new materials to be incorporated into a museum’s programming and exhibitions. Some subjects may indeed require sensitive handling and a more mature audience; I do not think that we should refuse to interpret such issues simply on the basis of being “controversial” or sensitive in nature. History is the study of the human past—individually and collectively—and of the processes by which societies have changed over time. Therefore, we must seek to integrate all aspects of life in order to obtain a more complete view of history and to make the past more relevant for the present.

The interpretation of history has changed dramatically in recent decades as a result of new sources, new theories, and a renewed awareness of the importance of the ordinary human being in the course of time. History museums, which have traditionally been the keepers of the past, need to assess this new approach in order to become “stimulators of knowledge,” to excite the public’s curiosity about what really happened, and to explain the ways in which the present has emerged from the past. Rather, if we encourage the visitor to think, ponder, inquire, probe, react, cry, laugh, get angry, and just face reality, we will be doing the greatest service for the preservation and interpretation of history. Thus, I believe that museums must revise their interpretations to show the role of turmoil, violence, and conflict equally as they focus on the positive aspects of the past. In this way, we can provide a richer educational experience for museum-goers.

This is an excerpt of an article that first appeared as: David Vanderstel, “Death, Racism, and Intemperance: A Social Historian’s Perspective on Living History and the Interpretation of Controversial Issues,” in Thomas A Woods, Gayle Eade, and Ellen B. Green, ed., Proceedings of the 1989 Annual Meeting XII (1989), 70-73.