digital history Archives

Leaps of Fame: The Rise of Sam Patch and a Changing Industrial Landscape

I was on a train listening to the podcast The Road to Now and I couldn’t stop laughing. The hosts joked about drunken slogans from the 19th century on American daredevil diver, Sam Patch, a feud fought by jumping off Passaic Falls, and a ship with an effigy of Andrew Jackson being sent over a waterfall. [1] As I stifled my laughter, it became clear that there was much more to the story. The podcasters explained Patch’s bizarre journey to becoming one of the United States’ first ‘common man’ celebrities during the onset of the Industrial Age, a narrative also explored in Leaps of Fame: The Rise of Sam Patch and a Changing Industrial Landscape.

To better understand Sam Patch’s life in the context of 19^th century working-class culture, I set out to make a ClioVis timeline. ClioVis is an interactive timeline software that allows you to chart, and emphasize connections between, historical concepts, events, and themes. My project incorporates The Road to Now’s podcast episode on Patch, allowing users to hear audio clippings of the podcast. Additionally, I relied heavily on Paul E. Johnson’s research in his excellent book Sam Patch: The Famous Jumper. Not many records exist on Sam Patch, especially preceding his fame, and Johnson’s book is the product of extensive research.

Patch life’s offers a fascinating window into a crucial moment in US history as industrial change transformed literal and cultural landscapes. Born around the turn of the 19^th century, Patch spent his youth navigating a shifting landscape of worker identity in New England. He worked as a skilled laborer in various textile mills and, in Paterson, New Jersey, even joined the Paterson Association of Spinners.[2] Outside of work, he quickly began mastering the art of jumping from high places.[3] Thousands of people gathered to watch Patch’s leaps, but his story goes beyond showmanship. Studying his life as a performer reveals how class-status determined access to natural spaces and illuminates the rise of the American daredevil celebrity.

A lithograph of Paterson, New Jersey. In the middle there is a landscape depiction of the port, and it is surrounded my small square landmarks of the city. — *A lithograph of Paterson, New Jersey nearly 88 years after its founding (Packard & Butler Lith. Philadelphia 1880). Source: Library of Congress*

The United States’ emerging Industrial Revolution provided the backdrop to Sam Patch’s life. At the time of Patch’s birth, the United States’ first water-powered mills were not even a decade old. In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Samuel Slater opened the country’s first water-powered textile mill in 1793.^[4] This style of mill would eventually transform New England’s waterways as entrepreneurs sought to harness the power of water for industrial production. In Paterson, New Jersey, the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.) built an industrial city that Alexander Hamilton hoped would define the United States’ industrial landscape. Paterson Mill—eventually water-powered—opened in 1794.^[5]

Patch worked in both of these industrial centers before becoming a daredevil. In Pawtucket, Patch found joy and escape by jumping in the Blackstone River with other children, where he began learning the art of high dives. In 1824, Pawtucket was the site of the nation’s first factory strike. Limited evidence makes it difficult to know if Patch took part in the strike. Regardless, he witnessed the formidable power of Pawtucket’s mill owners who colluded in setting working conditions to limit competition and maximize profits.^[6] His time in Rhode Island helped form his sympathies for New England’s working-class.

In 1826, Patch moved to Paterson, New Jersey where he would perform a jump designed to antagonize local businessman Timothy Crane over his use of public land. Patch and his fellow spinners frequently enjoyed the Passaic River recreational area. In contrast, Crane built a park called “Forest Garden” which featured a curated selection of plants for the enjoyment of the city’s elite. For a fee, people could enter Crane’s new park which used to be the site of a public playground.^[7] In September 1829, Crane promoted the installation of a bridge across Passaic Falls to his new park. Patch intentionally chose to organize a leap to coincide with the unveiling of this bridge. Crane, hearing of these plans, worked with the police to lock Patch in a basement with Patch’s other favorite pastime: the copious consumption of alcohol. Despite this effort, Patch found a way to freedom and jumped from Passaic Falls right as Crane placed the bridge.^[8] As planned, Patch stole the large crowd’s attention. Perhaps unintentionally, Patch also started his path toward becoming the United States’ first famous stuntman.

By jumping at the same time as Crane’s bridge unveiling, Patch staged a public show of resistance to Crane’s attempt to privatize land and regulate the recreational use of natural spaces. We may understand Patch’s jump as highlighting two important concerns that came to define his career as a showman: the public use of natural spaces and his sympathy with New England’s working-class. Patch brought entertainment to public audiences and championed the use of natural spaces for common enjoyment. Crane, on the other hand, created his “Forest Garden” in an attempt to make recreational areas more exclusive.

Drawing of 97-foot-ladder-like platform with Sam Patch on top. At the base, Goat Island. — *“Sam Patch on platform. (Typed and glued on the back: “In the 1829 Sam Patch built a 97-foot ladder-like platform at the base of Goat Island and jumped into the river”) Source: Wikimedia Commons*

By fall 1829, Patch had become famous and regularly attracted audiences of thousands. Invited to an event celebrating ‘the Niagara Frontier,’ Patch headed to the falls in early October. He planned to jump his highest jump yet off of a platform on Goat Island—a site in between the United States and Canadian Falls. Patch arrived late which led the organizers to delay his jump by a day. When the date came, he had a drink and prepared to throw himself from the prepared platform. As per his routine, Patch wore his Paterson Association of Spinners uniform during his jump.^[9] He leapt from the platform and gracefully landed in the pool below. His audience cheered as he emerged from the water. Patch went on to do another jump at the falls just 10 days later. These events further strengthened Patch’s fame.

As Historian Paul E. Johnson argues, Patch was one of the first ‘common men’ to reach celebrity status without significant wealth or ties to positions of great authority. In his words, Patch “wanted to be famous and he succeeded”, a fear that was far from common at the time.^[10] In this way, he represented many aspects of the Jacksonian Era. His rise to fame mirrored the ideals that President Andrew Jackson and the Democrats promoted—an image of opportunity and success available to supposedly “ordinary” white male Americans.

My ClioVis timeline expands on Sam Patch’s story while better situating it within the context of the early 19^th century. Using the ‘categories’ feature, I organized my timeline into cultural history, labor history, and the events of Patch’s life. The software also allows me to incorporate images, audio clippings, and ‘connections’ to strengthen my argument. These features enabled me to create a complex chronology of Patch’s life.

Sam Patch ended his career with a fatal jump into the Genesee River in 1829—yet, his legacy lives on. Following his death, Patch’s name entered into the colloquial lexicon. “What the Sam Patch,” “Where the Sam Patch,” and “Some things can be done as well as others” all became common sayings.^[11] President Jackson named one of his horses Sam Patch, and the actual Patch became a character in countless theatrical productions and literary works across the world.^[12] Today, Patch’s life offers us a platform to jump off for a deeper understanding how the Industrial Revolution changed natural and cultural landscapes in New England. His story provides insight into how capitalists and workers varied in their approaches toward using public land. Finally, examining Patch’s rise to fame tells us something about how Patch and the Jacksonian Era ushered in new ideas of the ‘American celebrity.’ Patch claimed physical space—through his jumps and their audiences—for the working-class on public land and in peoples’ minds as a ‘common man’ celebrity.

Aidan Dresang is an undergraduate history major studying to become a public high school history teacher. He is interested in environmental history and resistance movements. As a future history teacher, Aidan hopes to teach history critically and bridge the community-classroom divide. He is currently a ClioVis intern.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Banner photo by Anthony Rodriguez.

[1] Rivers Langley, Narado Moore, and Ben Sawyer, “Sam Patch: America’s First Daredevil,” The Road to Now, accessed July 15, 2024, https://open.spotify.com/episode/3qHTRGbVgsrML2z5nYmtAL?si=c6bbc181cf284adb.

[2] ‘Spinners’ refers to workers who made thread, often using the ‘spinning jenny.’ The adoption of power looms in textile production mills often led to the displacement of skilled textile workers (spinners).

[3] Paul E. Johnson, Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, 1st ed (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2003).

^[4] National Park Service, “Slater Mill,” National Park Service, July 13, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/blrv/learn/historyculture/slatermill.htm.

^[5] National Park Service, “The Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution,” National Park Service, January 12, 2024, https://www.nps.gov/pagr/learn/historyculture/the-birthplace-of-the-american-industrial-revolution.htm.

^[6] Gary Kulik, “Pawtucket Village and the Strike of 1824: The Origins of Class Conflict in Rhode Island,” Radical History Review 1978, no. 17 (May 1, 1978): 5–38, https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-1978-17-5.

^[7] Paul E. Johnson, Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, 1st ed (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2003), 48.

^[8] Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, “The Real Simon Pure Sam Patch,” Rochester History, 1991.

^[9] Janet M. Davis, “Proletarian Daredevil,” ed. Paul E. Johnson, Reviews in American History 32, no. 2 (2004): 176–83.

^[10] Johnson, Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, 164.

^[11] Johnson, 163.

^[12] Langley, Moore, and Sawyer, “Sam Patch: America’s First Daredevil.”

Creating a Collective Conversation: A Tribute to Joan Neuberger

by the Incoming Editor of Not Even Past, Adam Clulow

Long before I applied for a position at the University of Texas at Austin, I knew about Not Even Past. Asked to teach a new course in my old university in Australia, I remember the familiar panic about readings: Where could I find something suitable for an undergraduate audience but written by a genuine expert, an article with a clear argument but also incorporating suggestions for further readings, a piece with its own voice but easily accessible to all. Here for me, as so many, Not Even Past came to the rescue.

For a decade now, Not Even Past has provided the premier platform to communicate the History department’s groundbreaking scholarship to the University of Texas community and the general public. Drawing tens of thousands of readers each year, it is, quite simply, one of the department’s great treasures and something that sets our community of scholars apart from hundreds of others across the country and the globe.

Many people worked on Not Even Past. It received consistent support from successive chairs of the department, the College of Liberal Arts and LAITS. Colleagues and contributors gave generously of their time and expertise in writing for the site, which drew as well on the work of a group of remarkably talented Assistant Editors. But Not Even Past is also unimaginable without the work of its founding editor, Dr. Joan Neuberger, who has guided the site for the past ten years and is stepping down this month. Joan’s vision of great history writing that is accessible to all courses through every part and every page of Not Even Past. It is a vision that is very difficult to realize and anyone who has worked with Joan knows her tireless skills as an editor and the time she invests in guiding a contribution through to final publication.

Joan Neuberger, Founding Editor of *Not Even Past*, testifies on SB 11 (Campus Carry) before the Senate State Affairs Committee (January 2016) Photo by Matt Valentine.

Not Even Past has been marked by constant innovation, the pushing of boundaries ever outwards and by a remarkable growth in its ambition and reach. The site started with the idea of a book blog but it has become something so much more: a full-service platform for the department, the university, and the discipline more generally. Joan’s interview which details the history of the site can be seen here.

Across her career Joan has won many accolades. In 2018, she was awarded the Herbert Feis Award that is given annually to recognize distinguished contributions to public history. It is worth quoting the citation, which sums up Joan’s indefatigable energy: “As the driving force behind multiple noteworthy online history projects such as the Not Even Past website, the Thinking in Public project database, and the 15 Minute History podcast, Joan Neuberger’s scholarship harnesses the possibilities of the latest digital platforms for public engagement. Each year her work touches tens of thousands of people, both inside and outside the academy. In addition, she is an enthusiastic mentor and editor for other historians writing for a general audience.”

Itza Carbajal, Maria Esther Hammack, Rebecca Johnston, John Lisle and Joan Neuberger during the recording of the 15 minute history podcast "Episode 84: Behind the Tower: New Histories of the UT Tower Shooting" — Itza Carbajal, John Lisle, Joan Neuberger, Maria Esther Hammack, and Rebecca Johnston during the recording of 15 minute history podcast “Episode 84: Behind the Tower: New Histories of the UT Tower Shooting“

Such words are echoed by Jackie Jones, the outgoing Chair of the Department of History and the President-elect of the American Historical Association, who writes that she is “delighted to join in celebrating Joan’s extraordinary editorship of Not Even Past from its inception ten years ago until the summer of 2020. The site is a testament to her creativity, energy, tech savvy, broad historical knowledge, and commitment to bringing the past to life for people inside and outside the academy. NEP exemplifies the UT History Department’s highest standards in terms of scholarship, teaching, and service to the department, the College of Liberal Arts, and the University. Because of Joan’s hard work, NEP reminds us that the study of the past can take us to new, surprising, and fascinating places, with the help of texts, images, music, videos, and interviews. Congratulations to Joan on leading NEP through its first decade and showcasing excellent features by faculty, graduate students, and alums!”

Since Joan announced that she was stepping down from Not Even Past, there have been a steady stream of tributes from across the department and the university. Joan has always reserved special time and energy for her work in training graduate students to become public historians. To mark the 10 year anniversary of Not Even Past and to celebrate Joan’s achievement we wanted to collect just a few testimonials from current and former students, for they speak louder than any other accolades of how hard Joan has worked to train, inspire and accompany students on their academic journeys to become distinctive public voices in their own right.

Photos of the creators of the Behind the Tower digital history project.

Every year Joan recruited an Assistant Editor, who worked closely with her on every aspect of the site. In 2016-17, that was Emily Whalen, who wrote to us that “Working with Dr. Neuberger on NEP transformed the way I thought about public history. After a year as a graduate assistant for the blog, I began to understand public history was less an added perspective than it was a holistic philosophy, a way to approach our entire professional toolkit and bring the public along with us as we delve into the past. I will also always remember Dr. Neuberger’s generosity with younger scholars. She is a model for professional mentorship and thoughtful guidance.”

In 2017-18, Natalie Cincotta, took on the role. Here are her words: “I am so grateful for Dr. Neuberger’s exhaustive efforts to make public history a core part of the graduate program. Through Not Even Past, 15 Minute History, Thinking in Public and coursework, Dr. Neuberger has engaged graduate students as writers, editors, and producers in the creative process of making history scholarship broadly accessible. Many of the graduate students who have worked or written for NEP (and other projects) have gone on to create their own websites and podcasts, write for national news publications, and use public history tools in the classroom. Thanks to resources like NEP, graduate students will go out into the world with a repertoire of tools and skills to engage the public in our work as historians in new and exciting ways. “

In 2018-19 the role was filled by Jesse Ritner who writes that “I had the privilege of working with Dr. Neuberger as the Assistant Editor and Books Editor of Not Even Past, where I have also contributed several articles. Writing for NEP, as much as anything has helped me write clearly, in a voice that is my own. Dr. Neuberger’s guidance, and the tremendous amount of energy she put into my pieces, is rare to receive outside of a student’s relationship with their advisor, and I think is one of the most valuable things that professors can offer graduate students. Working for her gave me a sense of what it means to work in digital history and public history, as well as to see (and at times experience) the tremendous amount of work it takes to produce and maintain projects as large as NEP. Her honesty, at times intensity, and her dedication to her project and the students who work for her and write for her, is something that I think the department will sorely miss.”

Alina Scott, the current Assistant Editor, explains that “It has been a pleasure working with and learning from Dr. Neuberger. Her Public and Digital History class sparked my interest in public scholarship. Her ability to take her students’ work seriously, prompted me to apply to work with her on NEP. While serving as the assistant editor of NEP, this became even more clear. Dr. Neuberger’s dedication to her students and public history is evident in how much time she spends with our work. Her care and attention to detail in editing and engaging with the main arguments of NEP submissions go above and beyond the requirements of the job. She also pays keen attention to the needs of the public, adapting NEP to reflect those needs. Not Even Past remains an important resource for UT graduate students and faculty, relevant digital tool, and contribution to public scholarship because of the dedication of Dr. Neuberger.”

Banner for *Public and Digital History* class projects : The Public Archive

Many other current and former students contributed to Not Even Past. Kristie Flannery, who has just accepted a position at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, writes that “With Not Even Past, Joan offered history Ph.D. students opportunities to learn about and experiment with how to write the kind of history that people want to read. Joan encouraged us to use our developing expertise to produce clear, engaging, and provocative pieces for public consumption about scholarly monographs as well as novels, films, music and museums that we love (or hate). Producing the high quality stuff you see on the blog involved a lot of patient and kind editing from Joan. Contributing to Not Even Past transformed my understanding of history as practice, of what it means to be a historian and to write history. Thank you!” For Brittany Erwin, a PhD candidate in the department, “Dr. Neuberger’s public history course was a jumping-off point for my digital humanities research. She was a great soundboard and editor, and I am so grateful for her insights.”

We leave the final words to Rebecca Johnston, who also provided the title of this piece. She writes that “the very existence of NEP encourages history students to think about the importance of our work in the public sphere. But it does more than help us find our relevance to the public – it pulls us out of our academic silos into a collective conversation with others in our own department. With NEP, Dr. Neuberger has created a community space that helps to make our department more whole.”

In her tireless work, Joan has created a collective conversation that links students and faculty but also the department’s scholarship to the wider world. As incoming editor, I thank Joan for all she has done and applaud her singular achievement in giving life, with the support of many, to Not Even Past. I hope to do justice to her vision of great history writing accessible to all, and it is an honor to succeed Joan in this role.

Other Projects Mentioned Above:

Professor Neuberger studies modern Russian culture in social and political context, with a focus on the politics of the arts. She is the author of a range of publications, including Hooliganism: Crime and Culture in St Petersburg, 1900-1914 (California: 1993), Ivan the Terrible: The Film Companion (Palgrave: 2003); co-author of Europe and the Making of Modernity, 1815-1914 (Oxford: 2005); and co-editor of Imitations of Life: Melodrama in Russia (Duke: 2001) and Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (Yale: 2008); Everyday Life in Russian History: Quotidian Studies in Honor of Daniel Kaiser (Slavica, 2010); and The Flying Carpet: Studies on Eisenstein in Honor of Naum Kleiman (Mimésis International. 2017). Her most recent book is This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (Cornell: 2019).

Digital Archive Review – Más de 72

by Ashley Nelcy García, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

An earlier version of this review was published on halperta.com.

What is a digital archive? I asked myself this question in the weeks before submitting this review. While digital archives are typically defined as a coherent set of digital objects that have been put online by a library or an official archival institution, Más de 72 challenges the notion of what we can identify as a digital collection of records.

Screenshot of Más de 72

Más de 72 is a digital project that collects primary sources pertaining to the massacre of 72 migrants from Central and South America and India. The documents and media shared on this site shed some light on the mass murder that occurred in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico in 2010, under the administration of Felipe Calderón. The collection was created by Periodistas de a Pie, an organization of active journalists that seeks to raise the quality of journalism in Mexico. The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), CONNECTAS, and journalists who were invited to participate in the project supported the development and completion of this project.

The collection is a valuable resource for individuals interested in Mexico’s recent history, memory, and human rights issues. Visitors can access primary sources such as official documents from Mexico and the United States, including some judicial records and declassified files. Testimonies from surviving family members recorded in video and audio by journalists, as well as photographs and maps are also available. Additionally, journalistic investigations and reports published by human rights entities provide context to users unfamiliar with the case.

via Más de 72

Más de 72’s primary strength is its presentation. The site contains six different tabs or capítulos (chapters) that provide different types of information. For instance, the sections titled “La Masacre” (The Massacre) and “Después de la Masacre” (After the Massacre) include official and visual documents associated the mass murder of the 72 migrants. Under these tabs, visitors can access documents like the press release from the Secretaría de Marina (Secretary of Marine) and the diplomatic cable that the U.S. Embassy sent to the Department of State. Online browsers with an interest in the role of official documents can also download more than 50 files under the tab titled “Transparencia” (Transparency). On the other hand, users interested in criminal records and procedures and migration studies can access a list of objects found in the location where the massacre occurred and the names of the victims under “Después de la Masacre.” In regard to organization, it is important to note that the names of the victims are listed under their country of citizenship and under the month and the year they were identified.

On the other hand, the tabs titled “Las Víctimas” (The Victims), “Los Culpables” (The Culprits), and “Sobre San Fernando” (About San Fernando) provide more detailed information regarding people and location. These sections can benefit visitors interested in oral history, memory, gender studies, and digital cartography. Under “Las Víctmas”, users can listen to four testimonies provided by victims’ surviving family members. “Los Culpables” has a list of the men and women involved in the mass murder; this section includes the names, the photos, the list of crimes they committed, and external links that provide additional information. The section titled “San Fernando” includes a digital map from Time Mapper that helps users identify the mass graves and the people that have been disappeared in Tamaulipas by geographic location.

Overall, the site benefits users who cannot visit Mexico or Tamaulipas. Aside from scholars, people who can potentially benefit from this repository include but are not limited to: family members of migrants and people who have been disappeared, residents from the state of Tamaulipas, people with relatives in the northern part of the Mexico, journalists, lawyers, and activists. Although the project is not affiliated with libraries, governmental, or academic institutions, Periodistas de Pie is open to working with community members. As stated in “Creditos” (Credits), users can share documents or materials by sending an email to the listed email address. In addition, the organization invites visitors to collaborate–either with skills or donations–to continue developing the site.

The website has some technical problems. It would be difficult for someone who is unable to read Spanish to understand the majority of the information included on the platform. Additionally, some links, hyperlinks, and images need to be updated. More descriptive metadata would also benefit the project and there is a need to assist with the second part of the collection titled, “Segunda Entrega: Fosas de San Fernando” (Second Delivery: San Fernando’s graves). While these are minor setbacks, they also provide an opportunity for archivists, scholars, and web developers to get involved with the project.

Capítulo 5: Sobre San Fernando (Chapter 5: About San Fernando) via Más de 72

Even though Más de 72 is not described as a “digital archive” by the journalists at Periodistas de Pie, this platform serves as a repository of digitized primary documents associated with an historical event. In this regard, it is important to consider how the digital humanities field can be co-opted by elites to control historically politicized spaces. We need to be thinking about what is at stake when the term “archive” is used to control information. The politics of archiving is especially important where journalists–the authors of many of the documents in Mas de 72–find themselves in a violent climate and are rarely protected by institutions of power.

Rising From the Ashes: The Oklahoma Eagle and its Long Road to Preservation

by Jaden Janak

On May 31, 1921, Greenwood, a district in Tulsa, Oklahoma crafted by Black business people and professionals, burned to the ground. After a young white girl accused Dick Rowland, a Black elevator attendant, of sexual assault, mobs of white vigilantes attacked this Black community and its citizens for what the white rioters perceived as an injustice against their women. Conservative estimates claim that by the melee’s conclusion some 1,000 homes were destroyed, dozens (if not hundreds) of lives were lost, and a remarkable number of businesses gone. One of the businesses razed in the chaos of the Tulsa Race Massacre was the Tulsa Star—the city’s first Black newspaper, established in Tulsa just seven years earlier. In 1936, E.L. Goodwin, a local Black businessman, bought the rights to the Tulsa Star, renaming it The Oklahoma Eagle.

The Tulsa Star, November 9, 1918 (via Newspaper.com)

Intertwined with the story of the The Oklahoma Eagle is my own story. My family moved to Oklahoma when I was an infant, so that my father could attend law school at the University of Tulsa. After graduating in 1999, my father’s first job was as a law clerk at Goodwin & Goodwin, Attorneys at Law. I grew up listening to the stories of Jim Goodwin, the son of E.L. Goodwin, and playing with his beloved Westie aptly named Justice. In the same building where E.L. Goodwin and his staff worked to publish, The Oklahoma Eagle, — at the time the only Black newspaper in the city of Tulsa — my father and Jim Goodwin toiled away at civil rights cases for indigent clients. These efforts to publish the paper were not without struggle. Four years before my father began working at Goodwin & Goodwin, it looked like the Goodwins were going to lose control of The Eagle.

A framed article discussing the Eagle’s financial struggles that hangs on the wall at The Oklahoma Eagle.(via author)

With determination and the support of local benefactors, The Oklahoma Eagle survived these financial struggles. In remembrance of the hard times and the faith that carried them through, the Goodwins constructed a hanging altar of sorts known as the “Wall of Faith,” which sits outside where my father’s office once was.

“The Wall of Faith” located at The Oklahoma Eagle offices (via author)

Many years later and after my father went into private practice, I returned to The Oklahoma Eagle in 2016, this time as a staff writer and legal intern with my father’s former partner, Jim Goodwin. Mr. Goodwin assigned me to cover local and national criminal justice matters because of my background in community organizing and newspaper writing with Saint Louis University’s student newspaper, The University News. That summer I wrote about topics ranging from the police murder of Ollie Brooks to the Orlando Massacre. However, these articles are not available online. As I discovered during my time at The Eagle, the paper lacked the infrastructure to enable digitization of the paper’s archive and current issues. To begin solving this problem, I worked with then-editor Ray Pearcey to create social media and a proper website for the paper. Still, I worried about the paper’s growing archive and how to preserve it. The Tulsa City-County Library had already microfilmed some of the older copies of The Eagle in the 1980s, but the vast majority of the paper’s near 100-year old archive remained either missing or in grave condition. After some quick research, I realized digitization is an expensive endeavor and certainly not one I could accomplish as a rising junior in college. So, I left The Eagle at the end of that summer and returned to school.

Fast forward another few years to the summer of 2019 and I am a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Goodwin approached me earlier this year and requested I return to The Eagle one last time to complete his dream of digitizing the paper. I had no previous experience with physical archives, much less with digitizing archives, but I have always enjoyed a challenge. When I arrived at The Eagle offices, I was not sure what to expect as I had never before seen the physical volumes of the paper’s archive. The room where the archives rest do not contain the conditions archives typically do such as climate-control, archival boxes, and an ordering system. Rather, the archive room has clear water damage and the papers lay unboxed with the thin protection of trash bags covering those that are not simply left open to the elements. Mr. Goodwin and his family have fought vigorously to keep the paper alive and in the meantime, some upkeep has fallen by the wayside. After seeing the condition of the archive, I knew we needed to act fast and protect this important resource of Black Oklahoma history.

From left to right: Ray Pearcey, former editor of The Eagle, pictured with Jim Goodwin and Chad Williams. (via author)

Immediately, I scoured the internet and consulted my colleagues about how to proceed. Eventually, I located an existing partnership between the University of North Texas and The Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) to digitize old Oklahoma newspapers. I sent an email to the Director of the OHS’s Newspaper Digitization Program, Chad Williams, proposing we form a partnership. Williams responded enthusiastically and said the OHS had been waiting for The Oklahoma Eagle to approach them. I thought my work had been accomplished just two days into my summer-long stay at the Eagle. This was not the case. I had not anticipated the deeply emotional process necessary for Mr. Goodwin to let go of the paper, his father’s enduring legacy and ultimately, his own. For the remainder of the summer, we debated back and forth about everything, from the expense necessary to digitize the paper ourselves to the changing role of newspapers in society. Indeed, newspapers are a dying form—one more likely to lose than to make money. Mr. Goodwin wanted to find a mechanism for him to sell his archive, produce income to sustain the paper, all while maintaining control of it. Disabusing him of this as a way forward proved to be one of the most difficult tasks of my burgeoning career.

Ultimately, Mr. Goodwin agreed to the OHS’s offer to digitize The Oklahoma Eagle for free while allowing us to maintain copyright privileges. During the process of signing this agreement, we discovered that someone from the paper (this person’s identity is still unknown) had been sending a copy of The Eagle to the OHS for forty years. The OHS, unbeknownst to the paper, had been microfilming issues for all that time. This has made the digitization process much easier than expected. In August, Williams along with a team of researchers gathered the remaining physical volumes of the paper and have begun work to digitize them. They will be returning the physical copies in archival boxes, so that the copies might survive longer. According to the agreement, the digitized version of The Oklahoma Eagle’s archive will be made publicly available on The Gateway To Oklahoma History by 2021, the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. As Lead Archivist on the project, I am still working with both The Oklahoma Eagle and the Oklahoma Historical Society to ensure the seamless nature of this partnership.

Final agreement between the OHS and The Oklahoma Eagle (via author)

As the Greenwood community prepares for the centennial anniversary of the Race Massacre, the city of Tulsa is finally reckoning with its dark history of displacement and genocide. In 1997, the city of Tulsa first convened a commission to lead an excavation of suspected mass graves containing the bodies of those killed during the Massacre. For political reasons, that search never happened. Now, a second commission has formed and has been tasked with leading the search. This time, however, the Mayor and the Tulsa Police Department have labeled this work a homicide investigation. Working with a team of archaeologists, historians, local activists, and government officials, the Mass Graves Commission hopes to locate the bodies of those deliberately discarded and forgotten. The history of The Oklahoma Eagle and the history of the Race Massacre are part and parcel of one another. Hopefully, as the 100-year anniversary approaches, the work of the Commission and the work of the OHS can meaningfully pay homage to the lives and intellectual history lost to this tragedy. The Oklahoma Eagle stands as a testament to Greenwood’s rich legacy of endurance as the paper quite literally rose from its ashes.

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Building a Virtual City for the Classroom: Angkor

By Adam Clulow and Tom Chandler

The Virtual Angkor project aims to recreate the sprawling Cambodian metropolis of Angkor at the height of the Khmer Empire’s power and influence in the twelfth century. A collaboration across disciplines and technologies, it has been built from the ground up by a team of Virtual History Specialists, Archaeologists and Historians at Monash University in Melbourne, Flinders University in Adelaide and The University of Texas at Austin across a period of more than ten years.

Although it has been used for research, Virtual Angkor was constructed specifically for the classroom and can be used at both secondary and tertiary level. It deploys advanced Virtual Reality technology, 3D Modeling and Animation to bring a premodern city to life, to place students on its streets and allow them to interact with a historical environment.

Angkor and the Khmer Empire

For approximately 500 years from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, the Khmer empire dominated the politics and economy of Southeast Asia. Located in modern day Cambodia, it was unique in the history of the region, extending direct influence across a vast swath of territory, encompassing most of present-day Thailand and the southern provinces of Laos and Vietnam.

Today, the Khmers are most famous for the remarkable architectural sites they left behind. Stretching over some 400 square kilometers, the Angkor Archaeological Park in Cambodia contains the remains of successive capitals of the Khmer Empire including an extensive network of stone temples. Together, these form one of the most important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia. At its peak in the twelfth century, the city is estimated to have been home to around three-quarters of a million people. This means that Angkor was, in the words of one archaeologist, “the most extensive city of its kind in the pre-industrial world.”

While the name Angkor conjures up immediate images of crumbling stone temples in a verdant jungle, reconstructing the city represents a huge challenge. Apart from inscriptions on temples, no written records from the period have survived the ravages of time and the monsoonal environment. The more important source comes in the form of extensive archaeological surveys of Angkor undertaken by the French School of Asian Studies (École française d’Extrême-Orient), the Greater Angkor Project, and the Khmer Archaeology Lidar Consortium. Together, they have produced detailed, multilayered maps of temple complexes, rice fields, roads, canals and settlement mounds throughout the Angkor Archaeological Park. These surveys provide the spatial foundations for any subsequent reconstruction of the city’s architectural and environmental landscapes. For written sources, historians rely especially on observations made by Zhou Daguan, a Chinese official dispatched to Angkor in 1296 by the Temur Emperor, who produced a detailed account of the city and its inhabitants.

Teaching

Most Asian history survey courses make reference to Angkor but the standard black and white illustrations contained in textbooks make it difficult for students to gain a sense of the scale and grandeur of the city. The Virtual Angkor project allows educators to place students inside the Angkor Wat complex, to view the famous bas-reliefs first hand without leaving their seats, to sail down one of the hundreds of canals crisscrossing the city, to inspect a marketplace selling goods from across Southeast Asia and to watch as thousands of animated people and processions enter, exit, and circulate around the complex.

The project, which went online in January 2018, can be experienced in multiple ways, through Virtual Reality headsets, online 360° videos that provide a glimpse into the city, short animated scenes that highlight episodes in the daily life of Angkor, and interactive teaching modules.

The most immersive experience comes via a Virtual Reality headset combined with earphones as the project includes multiple soundtracks of the environment complete with music, snatches of conversation, and sounds of daily life. The experience can be dizzying for students who jump to move aside as processions pass, who experience vertigo as they look down from elevated structures, and who become aware of the sun slowly rising in the sky above them.

While such equipment is usually available in university laboratories, it is also bulky and expensive. As a result, Virtual Angkor is designed to be accessed using student’s smartphones. In History classes, with their focus on close analysis and discussion, the phone is often seen as the enemy of the instructor, a source of distraction and diversion from the material at hand. But it can also be turned into a key educational tool. In this case, Android phones can be paired with relatively crude headsets such as Google Cardboard, which can be purchased for less than $20, to create an immersive environment. In addition, students can interact with the project via 360° panoramas which enable them to look around the city from the particular stationary point or by watching short 15-20 second animated scenes.

The site also includes a series of interactive modules focused on three themes: Architecture and Power, Water and Climate, and Trade and Diplomacy. These use the technology as a jumping off point for more conventional historical enquiry. To cite one example, students can look around a thriving marketplace in the city before making use of primary and secondary sources to consider how Angkor was integrated into wider networks that stretched across the region. For this particular week, the site combines a visualization of the marketplace with Zhou Daguan’s description of “sought-after Chinese goods” and an important article on Chinese ceramics in Angkor. These combine to push students to reassess the place of Khmer merchants and consumers in regional networks of trade.

Viewed as a whole, the Virtual Angkor project represents an attempt to harness advances in technology to create an immersive environment that allows students to use their phones to experience one of the great cities of Global History. Moving forward, its broader goal is to take the site and its underlying technology to new audiences via a partnership with Ubisoft, a video game company famous for its construction of elaborate historical environments, and a traveling IMAX exhibition that will move between multiple cities.

Further Reading

David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 4th Edition (2008).
The definitive general history book on Cambodia from ancient times to the 21st century written by the foremost scholar in the field.

Michael Coe and Damian Evans, Angkor and the Khmer Civilization (2018)
A concise survey of Cambodian history from the beginning of recorded Khmer history to the expansion of French colonialism into Cambodia in the 18th century.

Damian Evans, Christophe Pottier, Roland Fletcher, Scott Hensley, Ian Tapley, Anthony Milne and Michael Barbetti, “A comprehensive archaeological map of the world’s largest preindustrial settlement complex at Angkor, Cambodia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 36 (2007): 14227-14282. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0702525104
The most extensive exploration of the geography of Angkor, which was developed through a combination of decades of on-the-ground mapping surveys with cutting-edge remote-sensing technologies developed in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA.

Adam Clulow and Tom Chandler, “Modeling Virtual Angkor: An Evolutionary Approach to a Single Urban Space,” IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, Volume 40, Issue 4 (2020), 9-16

Roland Fletcher, Damian Evans, Christophe Pottier, Chhay Rachna, “Angkor Wat: An Introduction,” Antiquity 89, no. 348 (2015): 1388-1401. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2015.178
A brilliant introduction to a special series of articles dedicated to exploring the latest developments in archaeological research on Angkor Wat and its surroundings.

Ian Mabbett and David Chandler, The Khmers (1996).
An authoritative monograph covering 2,000 years of the Khmer people and their culture.

Zhou Daguan, A Record of Cambodia, The Land and Its People, trans. Peter Harris (Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2007)
A first-hand account written by the Chinese diplomat, Zhou Daguan, describing his stay in Angkor from 1296 to 1297. Offers a tantalising glimpse into the intricacies of Khmer society from the eyes of an outsider.

Andrew M. Koke, “Virtual Reality in the Classroom: How Historians Can Respond,” Perspectives on History, Oct. 1, 2017.

Virtual Angkor images: Tom Chandler and Mike Yeates, SensiLab, Monash University

Between King and People: Digital Tools for Studying Empire

By Brittany Erwin

Governing is complicated. It requires an understanding of both top-tier policy and a recognition of changing circumstances over time. It also involves a comprehensive workforce, who perform different tasks according to their position in the larger hierarchy. The Spanish monarchy ruled over territories stretching from the Caribbean to the islands of Asia, and to the southernmost point of South America, for over 300 years. During that period, there was no neat transference of authority from the court, located in Madrid, to the civilizations of the Americas. Instead, a confluence of contradictory voices and choices paved the way for Spanish imperial rule.

“Bureaucracy on the Ground in Colonial Mexico” is a digital exhibition created to help scholars and the public access the lived experience of colonial rule. Its newest features allow for further exploration of the many actors involved in the processes of governance.

The objective of this project is to follow bureaucratic function on the ground. In partnership with the Benson Latin American Collection, I created an interactive digital exhibition on the 1765 visita, or royal inspection, of New Spain. The visita examined local institutions, evaluated economic policies, and reorganized society in a broad display of royal authority. This procedure helped the king implement widespread political, economic, and social reform in this territory in order to tighten control and increase efficiency. It set the precedent for changing policies throughout the empire over the next several decades.

Designed for a non-specialist audience, the exhibition explores the timeline, spatial breadth, and procedure of the inspection, by providing access to digital versions of the original documents produced by the royal inspection visita. The project provides an accessible forum for understanding how the lengthy and expensive process of royal governance effectively fostered relations between the ruling government in Spain and its many different constituencies on the ground in the Americas.

The site now offers full transcriptions of all the documents. Users could previously read the documents in their original form from high-quality images. Now they can dive deeper into the significance of the text itself. The kinds of words that Spanish officials were using– and the patterns in which they used them–help reveal the way that the Crown’s authority manifested itself locally.

Closer textual analysis also helps identify the multiple actors involved in this process. The Spanish monarch, Charles III, had designated José de Gálvez as the inspector general, or visitador. However, at every point, the inspection required the assistance of a wide variety of local officials, from priests to supervisors at the tobacco factory. Gálvez also frequently consulted with the viceroy, Carlos Francisco de Croix. These personal connections are significant because they reveal both the tensions and the cooperation that royal administration could meet in the Americas.

The new features of the “Bureaucracy on the Ground” site help make the obscure topic of imperial governance more accessible. For the Spanish Crown, 300 years of colonial rule depended on more than the faraway king’s decisions. It was the people on the ground who made the bureaucracy work, and this project aims to acknowledge the many forms of their participation in the process of imperial rule.

This project has received support from Professor Joan Neuberger, LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Coordinator Albert Palacios, and the UT Digital Writing and Research Lab

Also by Brittany Erwin

The Museo Regional de Oriente in San Miguel, El Salvador
The National Museum of Anthropology in in San Salvador
Review of The Archaeology and History of Colonial Mexico by Enrique Rodríguez Alegría (2016)
History for Us at the El Paso Museum of History

The Public Archive: Mercenary Monks

Millions of tweets and millions of state documents. Intimate oral histories and international radio addresses. Ancient pottery and yesterday’s memes. Historians have access to this immense store of online material for doing research, but what else can we do with it? In Spring 2018, graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT Austin experimented with ways to make interesting archival materials available and useful to the public; to anyone with access to a computer. Over the Summer, Not Even Past will feature each of these individual projects.

Jonathan Seefeldt’s digital project “Mercenary Monks” provides a glimpse into the lives and continuing legacy of the Dadupanthi Nagas—an early modern monastic community from the semi-desert region of western India. Poems, photographs, and other documents illuminate a monastic world of raising mercenary armies, caring for widows and child brides, providing credit and other banking services, collecting tax revenue from farmers, providing merit and prestige to an emerging merchant class, and asserting a (short-lived) form of political independence.

More on Seefeldt’s project and The Public Archive here.

You may also like:

Indrani Chatterjee on Monasteries and Memory in Northeast India
Indian Revolt of 1857, a digital project by Anuj Kaushal
Victoria & Abdul: Simulacra and Simulation by Gajendra Singh

The Public Archive: The Gálvez Visita of 1765

Created by Brittany Erwin, “Bureaucracy on the Ground: The Gálvez Visita of 1765” examines the localized consequences and on-the-ground implications of the royal inspection, or visita general, administered by José de Gálvez in New Spain from 1765-1771. The project includes a curated collection of digitized documents from the Genaro García Collection at the Benson Latin American Collection, blogs, and lesson plans.

More on Erwin’s project and The Public Archive here.

Also by Brittany Erwin on Not Even Past:

You may also like:

Renata Keller reviews Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in the Americas, 1492-1830 by J.H. Elliott (2007)
Acapulco-Manila: the Galleon, Asia and Latin America, 1565-1815 by Kristie Flannery
Antonio de Ulloa’s Relación Histórica del Viage a la America Meridional by Haley Schroer

The Public Archive: Indian Revolt of 1857

Also known as “Sepoy Mutiny,” the Indian Rebellion of 1857 represented a major, although unsuccessful, challenge to British colonialism. Anuj Kaushal’s digital project, titled “Indian Revolt of 1857”, considers the question of Indian nationalism during the rebellion and British response through blogs, lesson plans, and digitized issues of Illustrated London Times and New York Daily Tribune.

More on Kaushal’s project and The Public Archive here

You may also like:

On Women and Nation in India by Indrani Chatterjee
Sundar Vadlamudi reviews Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India by Gauri Viswanathan (1989)
Isabel Huacuja discusses A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)

The Public Archive: Texas Czech Culinary Traditions

Kolaches (Credit: Whitney, via Flickr)

Tracy Heim’s digital project, titled “Food Migrations: Texas Czech Culinary Traditions”, explores the experience of migration through the lens of food. Using the online publishing platform Scalar, “Food Migrations” not only offers a taste of Texan-Czech culinary culture through recipe books, photographs, and maps, but also considers the ways immigrant cultures are preserved – and changed – through food.

More on Heim’s project and The Public Archive here.

You may also like:

Domesticating Ethnic Foods and Becoming American by Madeline Hsu
Feeding of the Body and Feeding of the Soul: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 5)
Great Books on Urban Foodways

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