The anniversary of my first day in book publishing (August 5, 1985) is a good day to observe that the LCRM project has brought me in contact with some of the most inspiring authors I have met in my twenty-four years of scholarly publishing. They are scholar-activists who want their scholarship “to live and work in the world” (quoting Bob Korstad, whose book on the North Carolina Fund, coauthored with Jim Leloudis, will be published by UNC Press in Spring 2010 ). They are interested in recognizing, recording, and revealing hidden histories as told and interpreted by the people who lived them. They believe that not only are these histories valuable in themselves and must not be lost, but also that there is much that society can learn from them.
I have also met some inspiring librarians whose work is focused on making voices seen and heard that have lived in practical obscurity for a long time in archives and attics.
My colleague at UNC Press, acquiring editor Mark Simpson-Vos, says that I have been “bitten by the public history bug”!
After writing a post about “My History is America’s History: 15 Things You Can Do to Save America’s Stories” and ruminating further about the similar and interconnected activities of all of our project partners, I came up with the following virtuous circle, which might be said to describe what the Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement Project is all about:
Act for change → Record/archive → Discover → Analyze/share → Publish → Inform/educate → Act for change
The Center for Civil Rights works with communities to act for positive change; in so doing, they make the history that the rest of the project partners want to record (Southern Oral History Program), archive and make available (the UNC Special Collections Library), analyze and share in the form of teaching and writing (scholars/authors), and publish (the University of North Carolina Press) in order to inspire and inform those who continue to “make history” by acting for positive change. The little arrows might oversimplify a process full of multidirectional overlapping, but this linear interpretation might turn into a useful tag line for the LCRM Project.
Sylvia-
This is a wonderful article that captures a phenomenon that has lots of momentum in my world. I was bitten by the bug when I began to write my dissertation about social workers in South Carolina three years ago. As I began to interview women who were social workers in the 1930s and 1940s it began to dawn on me that they had a distinct view point on the changing landscape for women and African Americans. My hope is expand this scholarship.
Thanks for your great article,
Elaine
Thank you for your response, Elaine, and what an excellent topic you have! I hope that you will publish your work and also find a way to preserve the interviews and make them available.
Sylvia