Description: This diverse anthology addresses both historical research and interpretive methodologies, including investigating church and legal records, using social media, navigating sensitive or difficult topics, preserving historic places, engaging students and communities, and strength...
Review Quotes:
"Interpreting African-American history at historic sites is an essential but often complicated task. This timely and important volume seeks to improve and suggest successful plans for historical interpretation, and contains nearly two dozen essays spanning from the colonial period to the 21st century. It embraces a myriad of research methods and strategies for interpretation, including the use of social media, archival and documentary research, outreach programmes as well as instructing interpreters how to manage conflict and difficult questions. . . .This volume offers a rich and interesting insight into the world of public history. . . .[and] provides an engaging and fascinating account of how African-American history is interpreted today. Historical interpreters have an opportunity to explore, ask questions, dig deeper and engage an audience whilst navigating the tensions of American history. This volume celebrates contributions and successes, but we need to recognise that many historic sites have much to improve when confronting the legacy of slavery." --History In Review
"Museums and historic sites wishing to devise, or revise., their interpretive programs to better synthesize African American history will find several of the practical case studies in this volume quite useful. Those teaching public history in universities, particularly museum interpretation, historic site interpretation, and museum education courses, may also find it beneficial to assign this book as a way to help students understand current issues in the field. Few worthwhile historic sites and museums can fail to acknowledge the importance of expanding their programs to include the histories of diverse communities. Now, as van Balgooy and the essay authors clearly demonstrate, the challenge is to embed these histories within the sites themselves." --The American Historian "What a gift it will be when museums and historic sites can help our publics understand that they are shaped, touched, and made better by African American history, all day, every day. The essays in this volume give me hope that that day is not too far distant." --Lonnie G. Bunch, Founding Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture