Kicking off Friday Links for 2011

2011 January 7
by Leah Nahmias

From Leah:

For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights is a traveling exhibit developed by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In case you don’t live in one of the cities it’s traveling to, be sure to visit the exhibit’s website, which features short overview essays and many examples of photographs, magazine and newspaper coverage, and film footage documenting the visual culture of the post-war black freedom movement.

Friends of ASHP David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz authored this reflection on the 40th anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).

From Ellen:

Mike O’Malley at The Aporetic eviscerates the much in the news Our Virginia fourth grade history textbook, and for all the right reasons. The book’s inclusion of “black confederates,” which first brought it to national attention, is only the tip of the iceberg. Its utter lack of historical argument or interpretation leaves it with inclusive factoids, “empty headed and peppy multiculturalism,” and little else. “But crit­i­ciz­ing this book for errors,” Mike notes, “is like crit­i­ciz­ing a mur­der scene for tacky furniture.” Read the whole post, it’s well worth it.

Am I the only historian to feel slightly mortified this week upon reading about the 200th anniversary of a major slave revolt that I’d never even heard of? The New Orleans Times-Picayune has the story of local efforts to commemorate the uprising of more than 200 enslaved men in St. John and St. Charles parishes, led by Charles Deslondes, that took place on January 8, 1811.

Inspired by Dorothea Lange and Studs Terkel, Matthew Frye Jacobson has started the Our Better History project and the Historian’s Eye website, which are an effort to capture our current historical moment in photographs and interviews. His ambition: “to document the experience of sweeping historical forces at street level; to render the diversity of worldviews and outlooks; to give voice to a vernacular analysis and wisdom that outshines our ‘punditry’ more often than we are ever encouraged to imagine.” The site contains both transcripts and audio of the interviews, and has a Flickr group where anyone can post their own photographs.

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