Chicago's History

I just returned from a four-day trip to Chicago, my mother's home city, for the wedding of a cousin. While there, I visited the Chicago Historical Society's recently reopened museum exhibits (here), most notably a retelling of Chicago history they call "Crossroads of America."  It is a beautifully done, interesting and captivating exhibit, with genuine artifacts, clear descriptions and engaging stories.  On first impression it is a wonderful collection. One thing, however, nagged me as I first entered the exhibit: there on the recreation of a platform next to an authentic "L" train car, there are three bronze statues having a fictional discussion in 1893. One of the voices, that of activist Ida B. Wells, talks of her protest of Colored People's Day at the World's Columbian Exposition. The dialogue has her using the term "African American" in reference to her own people, a term that was popularized by Jesse Jackson some ninety years later in the 1980s. Wells herself used the term "Afro-American" in her writings. Perhaps a minor point, but it led me to some further reflections.

Questions concerning the public representations (misrepresentations, suppressions, omissions, additions, distortions, etc.) of the past, especially in a civic context, have always fascinated me. The problem is multidimensional: present-day values, political correctness, business boosterism, community pride, and educational functionality have to be balanced against emotional authenticity, factual accuracy, and the reality of  historical ambiguity. Such public history museums present one of the potential drawbacks of a transdisciplinary approach: the involvement of multiple constituencies in solving the problem of appropriate historical representation. Satisfying all involved may mean compromises about the past, compromises in both senses of the word.

This is not to say that the exhibition is less than comprehensive or shies away from the darker incidents of Chicago's past (the Haymarket Incident, the 1919 race riots, etc.) but as in most cases it presents events as trials overcome, safely relegated to the pages of the past, rather than problems that still might persist in other forms. It is always hard to avoid an air of present-day triumphalism, of the "see how far we've come" and "look how much we've overcome" varieties in these kinds of displays. Anachronisms are also especially interesting as the past is reinterpreted for the present. Sensitivity to the present creates at best mild inaccuracies in the record, at worst outright deceptions. When the present is celebrated as well as projected back into the past, all to make history acceptable to multiple constituencies, one wonders about what may have been left out or changed in the process. Which gets us back to the transdisciplinary point: who is at the table, and how much weight each participant has at that table, can dramatically affect the outcome of the process, and not always for the better.

Comments

[Hank Browne]

Since you've decided to nit-pick, please note that the museum has, a great cost I presume, changed its name to: Chicago History Museum.

[Nathan Garrett]

It seems a shame to remove a historical phrase because it might (or will) offend someone. Sometimes the best way to get people's attention is to shock them. It's also particularly ironic that it's a museum doing the editing.