History From BelowHistory From Below:
How to Uncover and Tell the Story of Your community, Association, or Union
(Revised Edition)
A book by Jeremy Brecher
Commonwork/Advocate Press 1997
Table of Contents:
Preface by Studs Terkel
Introduction
Why History From Below?
What's in It for Us?
Doing a History Project
Gathering and Using Documents
Oral History
Visual Materials
Making a Product
Appendices
Antidotes to Anxiety in an Interview
Releases
Bibliography
Some Sources for Futher Help
In an age when "how to" books deal
with self-centered making out, whether in commerce or sex, Jeremy Brecher's work
is astonishing and refreshing; and, God knows, necessary.
History From Below is an exciting primer, enabling "ordinary" people,
non-academics, to recover their own personal and community's pasts. At a
time when our history is being officially distorted and profaned, Brecher's book
can be a salubrious antidote: uncovering our true past. Ours, the richest
country in the world, is the poorest in memory. In this work lies the way
to help cure our national amnesia.
-Studs Terkel
This is a guide for people who are not professional historians but who want to explore the history of their own community, workplace, union, or local organization. It will tell you how to design a project you can do with the time and resources you have available; how to collect documents and do interviews; how to put together the material you gather; and how to present it to others in your group and community.
Until recently, history was often regarded
as solely a matter of what the powerful, the famous, and the wealthy thought and
did. It was "history from above." What ordinary people
felt and what they tried to accomplish was regarded as insignificant, not even
worth regarding as part of history.
Recently, a student at a state university heard mentioned a
large and dramatic general strike that had occurred in 1920 in his home town of
Waterbury, Connecticut. He later wrote, "I live in the city that this
incident occurred in and yet had never heard about it. When it was
mentioned during the class lecture... it immediately aroused my curiosity.
Upon looking into the matter, I found that there was nothing said in any of the
books concerning Waterbury's history (approximately 15 books included this
period of time)."
This part fo the life of his community had truly been
"hidden from history."
Such disregard for the history of ordinary people has led
to a movement for "history from below." This movement asserts
that workers, women, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities have a history
that deserves to be uncovered and made known.
The movement for history from below has
challenged not only the elitist conception of who history is about, but also
elitist notions of who history who should do history and who it should be for.
It has emphasized that not only professional
historians but also ordinary people who are interested in the past of their
families, communities, and organizations can contribute to the understanding of
history. And it has shown that history, appropriately presented, can find
a wide audience when it addressed matters which concern ordinary people.
The result has been an international
movement of communities and workers investigating the histories of their own
neighborhoods and workplaces. IN England, thousands of people have
participated in local "history workshops" which explore the history
for particular neighborhoods. In Sweden, thousands of workers have taken
part in the "dig-where-you-stand" movement, tracing the histories of
their own workplaces and communities. More dramatically, when workers in
Poland conducted a nationwide general strike, occupied their own workplaces, and
created their organization Solidarity, one of the first things they did was to
try to record and uncover their own history. Through interviews with early
participants, published in their local union newsletters, they made sure that
the story of their own movement was preserved. And looking further back,
they began to recover and publish the history of Poland's previous social
movements.
In the U.S., the movement for "history
from below" has been growing over the past few years.
=THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORY WORKSHOP organized history-oriented "reunions" of retired shoe workers in Lynn, old-time textile workers in Lawrence, and former clerical workers in Boston. These workers came together to share their knowledge and experience with each other, with historians, and with younger members of their communities.
=THE BEAVER VALLEY LABOR HISTORY ASSOCIATION, composed primarily of retired steelworkers in the Pittsburgh area, published a labor history newspaper telling month by month of the events that had occurred half-a-century before when the steel plants were being unionized.
=A COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION in a transitional neighborhood in Hartford produced a slide-show history of the neighborhood to introduce new residents to the area's background. It also gave different ethnic and racial groups in the community a sense of their common heritage and an understanding of how inter-ethnic tensions had also existed in the past but had ultimately been resolved.
=THE BRASS WORKERS HISTORY PROJECT in the Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut brought retired brass workers and other community residents together with historians and media producers to prepare a book and a movie on the lives of those who had worked in the brass industry.
This guide is based on experience gleaned from many of these projects. It was prepared by a historian from the Brass Workers History Project who has also served as a consultant on many other community- and labor-based history projects. Suggestions and additions have been made by people who who have had experience with dozens of other projects. We hope it will help stimulate a outpouring of additional projects in local communities throughout the U.S., and that it will provide you the guidance you need to make your project enjoyable and worthwhile.
For Individuals, history
from below is of value because it provides a way of understanding oneself and
one's background. Often individuals feel a need to discover something
about their roots. They may try to uncover family histories and
genealogies; the TV series Roots, portraying such a quest, gained more
viewers than any previous program in history. But people's roots are not
just their family; they have common roots in communities and workplaces.
Too often these are ignored, leaving people with their desire to know where they
come from unsatisfied. History from below allows you to learn something
about where you came from not just as an individual but as a member of social
groups.
Doing history an also give you a new perspective on the world
around you. The images provided by the media are often mere snapshots,
trendy but superficial. Examining the past, understanding how people felt
and what thy did, and seeing how things have changed can provide a sense of
perspective that makes the contemporary world more understandable.
While it may come as a surprise to those whose experience of
history in school was memorizing the names and dates of presidents and kings,
doing history from below can also be a lot of fun. It has some of the
satisfaction of asking questions and discovering the answers that comes with
being a detective or an investigative journalist. And your project can be
built around activities you enjoy, whether that means taking and collecting
photographs, reading old newspapers, or talking to other people about what they
remember from the past.
FOR EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS, history from below provides an opportunity for school, college, and adult education students not just to read about history but to practice historical research and interpretation themselves. It lets them make a connection between history, their own lives, and the lives of the communities they come from. It challenges them to develop skills in research techniques, interviewing, interpreting documents, writing, and critical thinking- because these skills are needed to answer questions they themselves have formulated. And it corrects the one-sidedness of "history from above."
FOR LABOR AND COMMUNITY GROUPS, history
projects can have a direct practical value in communicating to the members
of the group, young people, and the public at large a sense of the group's
heritage, experiences, needs, and goals. Such public understanding is
especially important for groups that have been under public attack, or who have
had to organize and engage in strikes, community protests, and other
"troublemaking."
In most schools, students learn little about the history of
labor, women's, minority, and other social movements. They are often
exposed to business speakers and to "educational" materials paid for
by corporate groups. It is no wonder if they come out of school with
little preparation for the real problems of life in communities and
workplaces. As one local union leader noted, "I was anti-labor myself
when I came out of school. It wasn't till I went to work that I found out
what the labor movement was really all about."
The media- newspapers, radio, TV, movies- give little sense
of ordinary people's experiences or why they sometimes have to take collective
action. Often they portray community groups "causing trouble"
through some form of direct action or workers as disrupting things through a
strike- without giving any sense of the reasons behind the actions, or the
courage, self-sacrifice, and cooperation it took for people to get together to
improve their lives. It is little wonder if "the public" starts
to blame every problem from inflation to crime on the "greed" or
"troublemaking" of social movements.
History from below can help you counter these forces right in
your local community. IF you put together a pamphlet or slide show about
some aspect of your group, you are likely to find a receptive audience for it in
local schools, clubs , and organizations. If you do a media project or a
public event, there is a good chance of getting your materials covered in local
newspapers and on radio and TV.
History from above" has robbed people of their heritage
and led to ignorance an distortion of the role of ordinary people in
history. As two labor leaders wrote nearly forty years ago, "If there
is any one paramount characteristic of books on American history, it is that
they are not histories of the people. Histories of the generals, the
diplomats, and the politics there are plenty; histories of the people- the plain
people- there are few.
This is no accident. It is part of the great conspiracy
which consists in drawing an iron curtain between the people and their
past. The generals, the diplomats, and the politicos learned long ago that
history is more than a record of the past; it is, as well, a source from which
may be drawn a sense of strength and direction for the future. at all
costs, that sense of strength and direction and purpose must be denied to the
millions of men and women who labor for their living. Hence, the record of
their past achievements is deliberately obscured in order to dull their
aspirations for the future."- George F. Addes and R.J. Thomas from The
Many and the Few
"History from below" provides a way that you can participate along with thousands of others all over the world in setting that historical record straight.