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Review of Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City 1940-1977 (2022).

Banner for Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City 1940-1977 book review.

In Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City 1940-1977, Mirelsie Velázquez provides an eye-opening account of Puerto Ricans’ relationship to colonialism and education as they migrated to the city of Chicago in the mid-twentieth century. The book presents a thorough examination of how these migrants built and fought for a community through the lens of K-12 and postsecondary education systems, showing how colonial education policies and principles followed Puerto Ricans in their schooling across the United States. It fits well within the literature of Latino education history, specifically involving civil rights, alongside books like Brown Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston by Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., while also providing an important contribution to the growing field of Latino studies in the Midwest, and it aims to bring public schools into the discussion as a transformative force in the region.

The book is shaped by the author’s experiences as a Puerto Rican woman who spent her formative years in Illinois and now teaches at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Velázquez states that intersectionality (the interconnectedness of different social categories which lead to discrimination) “of schools, oppression, and liberation” was a guiding influence for the diasporic Puerto Rican community and argues that its history cannot be separated from its relationship to colonialism (p.19). She uses this to analyze the intersection of concepts such as Coloniality of Power (the understanding of power structures that remain after decolonization) to diaspora studies as well as urban history, as the Puerto Rican communities she studies only formed in the large cities of New York and Chicago.

Book cover of Puerto Rican Chicago (2022).

Puerto Rican Chicago is the product of archival and oral history methodology. Velázquez notes that a challenge she encountered was the silences in primary sources directly depicting Puerto Ricans during the early decades of their mass migration. This created gaps in the narrative “from the community’s own voices,” something she skillfully supplemented with oral interviews (p. 20). The strength of her use of the archives is found in her sources from the 1960s—discussed most heavily in chapter five—which delves into print media produced by and for Puerto Ricans in their own words. The methods she uses shape her argument that schools were an essential place of the community fighting against inequality by providing the personal reasons and motivations behind their actions.

The author emphasizes the connectedness of Puerto Rican civil rights movements in Chicago to other cities and movements by other groups, including African Americans and Chicanos. She depicts the Chicago community as intricately connected to New York City, both as a legacy of migration and an ongoing relationship that tied the two communities together through familial relations, organizations like the Young Lords, and print media. By placing her own findings within the context of existing literature on New York’s Puerto Rican communities and other civil rights movements, especially those where African Americans and Chicanos fought for their right to a just education, she further solidifies this connection.

Midway of Riverview Park, Chicago. Ca. 1950s or 1960s

Midway of Riverview Park, Chicago ca. 1950s-1960s. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Velázquez frames her study as an effort to center women and their activism, but the source material she draws on more often reveals the limits placed on women’s participation in community organizing, a limitation she herself acknowledges. For example, even Que Ondee Sola, a newspaper that she states was notable for its inclusion of women, did not include the depiction of women as part of its mission, nor were women “equally represented on the writing staff” (p. 149). This also remains true for the women depicted in the involvement of schools, who were exceptions to the rule rather than the norm. Her argument could have been strengthened by reframing her claim to emphasize that women’s involvement was silenced even by their contemporaries as it aligns more with the information she presents on women’s sidelining in their participation in community organizing and activism.

The book is organized into five chapters. Chapters One and Two discuss Puerto Ricans’ historical relationship with colonial schooling and argue that the school system in Chicago is a continuation of Americanizing practices. In both, she discusses that schools were a reflection of the community’s struggles with issues of adequate housing and labor. She also creates a cyclical narrative of how Puerto Ricans adjusted to the city, how the city responded to them, and how the group reacted to their systematic treatment. Chapters Three and Four focus on school systems, with the first depicting community involvement in K-12 public schools and the latter on universities. Velázquez stresses the importance of student involvement in both, as students and their communities fought for adequate services and against discriminatory practices. Chapter Five discusses Puerto Rican newspapers and journals in Chicago and across the country, which highlighted community voices and needs with varying degrees of radicality.

Paseo Boricua in Chicago. Source: Wikimedia Commons

As debates over education and immigration continue to shape American politics, understanding the fight for civil rights in the nation’s public schools remains essential. Puerto Rican Chicago is an important contribution to the intersection of education, immigration, and cultural history, all in the burgeoning field of Latinos in the Midwest. It is also a beautiful exploration of the strength of the Puerto Rican immigrant community building in the face of systemic oppression, which in their case uniquely stems from the United States in both their place of origin as citizens of a U.S. territory and their destination as migrants to Chicago. The book can easily find a home on immigration, Latino, and education history syllabi, as well as on the bookshelf of anyone who has faced their own experiences with the U.S. education system as part of a diaspora. As this book importantly reminds us, Americanization is something that is constantly occurring in U.S. schools, a continuing legacy of colonialism and empire. But it is not the unstoppable force that it strives to be.

Kara Alexandra Culp is a current history PhD student at UT Austin, focused on Latina/o history in the 20th-century United States. Her dissertation project aims to explore the effects of education policy and law on Latina/o immigrant students in the borderlands in the 1970s and beyond.

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.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: Survivor and First Spanish Chronicler of Texas

Introduction: a figure at the margins

American historical memory abounds with the names of explorers and pioneers: Hernando de Soto, associated with the European discovery of the Mississippi; John Smith and the English settlers of Jamestown; the pilgrims of the Mayflower; and, in Texas, Davy Crockett and the Alamo have become mythic symbols. Yet few can easily recall the man who, long before all of them, wrote the first chronicle of what is now Texas: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
This contrast is not new. Cabeza de Vaca was never part of the traditional canon of explorers and pioneers; instead, he stands apart as a survivor who, out of necessity, became the first chronicler and an accidental ethnographer of the southern regions of what would later become the United States.

The Narváez expedition and its disastrous end

In 1527, Pánfilo de Narváez received the royal commission to conquer and settle the region then known as La Florida, a vast territory along the Gulf Coast. But the enterprise ended in disaster: shipwrecks, hunger, and clashes with Native peoples—particularly the Apalache—destroyed most of the expedition. Narváez departed with 600 men, but only four survived: Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, and Estebanico, an enslaved man of Moroccan (or North African) origin.
In Naufragios (1555), Cabeza de Vaca himself described with stark honesty the misery of those days, when survival depended on begging for food, improvising cures, or submitting to the demands of Native peoples. His account reflects not a conquest, but a defeat that forced a rethinking of the relationship between Europeans and Indigenous communities.

Bust of Cabeza de Vaca in Houston, Texas. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Eight years on foot across North America

For nearly eight years, Cabeza de Vaca wandered on foot for thousands of miles across Southwest North America, from the Texas coast to northern Mexico. Born into the minor Andalusian nobility and trained as a royal official, he was utterly unprepared for what followed. He was a captive, an itinerant trader, and eventually a healer. He learned languages, participated in rituals, and acted as a mediator between rival groups.
One extraordinary episode shows both his vulnerability and the reputation that began to surround him:

“En aquella isla que he contado nos quisieron hacer físicos sin examinarnos ni pedirnos los títulos (…). Vi el enfermo que íbamos a curar que estaba muerto (…) y lo mejor que pude supliqué a nuestro Señor fuese servido de dar salud a aquél. Y después de santiguado, rezar un Pater noster y un Ave María y soplado muchas veces (…) dijeron que aquel que estaba muerto se había levantado bueno, se había paseado y comido con ellos.”

(“On that island I have mentioned, they wanted to make us into physicians without examining us or asking for credentials (…). I saw that the patient we were to cure was already dead (…) and as best I could I prayed to Our Lord to grant him health. After making the sign of the cross, reciting a Pater Noster and an Ave María, and breathing on him many times (…) they said that the one thought dead had risen well, had walked about, and had eaten with them.”)

It was medicine born less of science than of utter desperation. That experience transformed him—not because he set out to be more humane than other Spaniards, but because survival required him to navigate systems of violence, captivity, and coercion that did not fit his European frame of reference. He was no longer the Andalusian nobleman who had left Spain, but a man shaped by captivity, forced adaptation, and life on the margins of multiple Indigenous worlds.

Unlike Hernando de Soto, who led an armed expedition through the Southeast of what is now the United States and left a trail of violence, Cabeza de Vaca’s journey carried him far to the west and southwest, across much of present-day Texas and into northern Mexico. He survived through forced adaptation, negotiation, and the fragile accommodations of life on the margins. A clear map of Cabeza de Vaca’s route can help readers visualize the expansive westward trek that distinguished his journey from that of De Soto.

Map: Expedition of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca 1528 bis 1536

Expedition of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca 1528 bis 1536. Source: Wikimedia Commons

An early chronicle of Texas and the Southwest

The value of Naufragios lies not only in its spirit of adventure, but also in its status as the first written chronicle of Texas and the American Southwest. Within its pages, one encounters now-vanished peoples such as those later identified as the Karankawas and the Tonkawas, described in remarkable detail in their customs, social organization, and beliefs. More than a story of exploration, the work often reads almost like a proto-ethnography (long before anthropology existed as a discipline), attentive to daily life, ritual, and conflict resolution that few other chroniclers ever attempted.

A particularly revealing passage describes how disputes were resolved among these groups:

“Cuando tienen diferencias sobre algún negocio, pelean a puñadas hasta que se desbaratan la cara y todo el cuerpo de sangre; y después de quedar así maltratados se apartan y los suyos se meten entre ellos y los pacifican; y lo más admirable es que de allí en adelante quedan amigos y no queda memoria de la injuria pasada.”

(“When they have disagreements over some matter, they fight with their fists until their faces and bodies are covered in blood; then, once battered, they separate and their people step in to make peace. What is most remarkable is that from that point on they remain friends, with no memory of the injury suffered.”)

He also recalled the sheer physical toll of survival:

“…nos mandaban sacar raíces del fondo de los esteros, y con el agua y el esfuerzo se nos despellejaban manos y pies…”

(“…they ordered us to dig roots from the bottom of the swamps, and with the water and the effort our hands and feet were left raw and bleeding…”).

Far from the triumphalist tone of other chronicles of the Indies, Cabeza de Vaca’s work is the testimony of a man stripped bare, who observes and narrates not from the posture of conquest, but from the exposed and precarious position of a man forced to survive at the edges of multiple Indigenous worlds.

Legacy and memory

Despite the significance of his experience, Cabeza de Vaca has not become a central figure in wider American or Texan public memory. While he has never disappeared from scholarly work—and even has a statue in Houston—his life and legacy remain deeply contested. Historians such as Rolena Adorno, Patrick Charles Pautz, and Andrés Reséndez have placed him at the heart of debates on early Indigenous–European encounters, captivity, and proto-ethnography. Yet outside academic circles, he remains overshadowed by the dominant Anglo-American narrative of the frontier.

Part of this marginal position has to do with the kind of figure Cabeza de Vaca became. He was neither a successful conquistador nor a founder of colonial institutions, and thus did not fit easily into the political or ideological stories that later shaped U.S. national identity. His trajectory—marked by captivity, forced adaptation, and uneasy coexistence within multiple Indigenous worlds—did not lend itself to the heroic model promoted in popular accounts of exploration.

Historiographically, his reception has evolved. At the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Fletcher Lummis celebrated him as “the first American traveler,” emphasizing the extraordinary journey he undertook half a century before Anglo settlement reached these lands. Later, the foundational volume Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528–1543—first published in 1907 and reissued by the Smithsonian Institution in 1935—placed Naufragios alongside other essential early accounts and reinforced its value as a primary source. More recent scholarship—such as Andrés Reséndez’s A Land So Strange (2007)—has expanded this perspective, situating Cabeza de Vaca within the broader study of Indigenous–European interaction, cross-cultural mediation, and the limits of imperial power on the North American frontier.

As with Francisco de Saavedra—another Spaniard whose role I have previously discussed—Cabeza de Vaca remains far from central in the broader American historical imagination. Yet his story helps widen our view of the country’s origins: not because he stood at their center, but because his experience reveals forms of Indigenous–Spanish interaction later overshadowed by the dominant Anglo narrative.

Title page: La relacion y comentarios del gouerna, 1555. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Conclusion

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca embodies a different kind of explorer—not the victorious conqueror, but the survivor who learns and observes. His account is the first Spanish chronicle of Texas and an irreplaceable window into the Indigenous world of the sixteenth century.

Recovering his memory is not an antiquarian gesture, but a way of recognizing that the history of the United States was, from its beginnings, plural, mixed, and shaped by cultural encounters that still echo today in debates about frontier and identity, as well as in broader discussions about intercultural contact and historical memory in the early Americas—conversations that continue to shape how we narrate the origins of the U.S. Southwest.

His voice—overshadowed in Texas and in the broader national memory—deserves to be heard again, not as a relic but as a living part of American history. It is also a reminder that the “frontier myth” of Anglo conquest, perpetuated for decades by Hollywood and popular culture, is only one version of the story—and that Cabeza de Vaca’s survival reveals another: a frontier of adaptation, exchange, and fragile coexistence.

José A. Adrián is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Málaga (Spain), specializing in language as a cognitive phenomenon and in its oral and written disorders. In addition to his academic work, he maintains a strong interest in history and the role of Spain in the Americas.

Review of The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family (2025).

In The Sewards of New York, Thomas P. Slaughter offers a captivating exploration of the Seward family’s multifaceted place in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although not written as a traditional political biography, Slaughter emphasizes that “politics, and particularly the abolition of slavery” remains central to the Sewards’ collective story (p. 2). Slaughter looks beyond William Henry Seward’s political achievements in his roles as New York State Senator, Governor, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State under Lincoln. Slaughter details a gendered history of a political family. He shifts the focus away from formal political record and toward the inner world of the Seward family, tracing the relationships, tensions, and experiences that shaped their lives.

Slaughter draws on newly rediscovered family correspondence and archival materials from the University of Rochester to illuminate the private world of William Henry Seward, his wife, Frances, their children, and broader family dynamics in Auburn, New York. Slaughter highlights that with the use of the “Seward family’s letters, we can look behind the curtain of the Victorian era’s private sphere to see life as it was experienced by other Americans” (p. 4). The book effectively argues that understanding the Seward family’s domestic life is essential to grasping the political landscape of their time. Through a rich tapestry of letters, the author connects the family’s personal experiences to significant societal changes, such as industrialization, expanding literacy, and evolving gender roles.

Book cover: The Sewards of New York (2025) by Thomas P. Slaughter

One of the strengths of the book is its accessibility. Slaughter combines scholarly rigor with engaging narration, making it suitable for both academic readers and general audiences. This is a testament to his deliberate effort to bridge the gap between academia and public readership, as evidenced by his recent transition to trade imprints. Reading through thousands of letters exchanged among multiple Seward family members over decades, Slaughter invites readers into the interwoven lives of a prominent political family navigating an intensely tumultuous moment in American history.

The narrative is not merely biographical; it highlights how private life was intertwined with the public sphere, especially during pivotal moments of life in the antebellum period and the Civil War. Slaughter’s exploration of Frances Seward is particularly striking in its engagement with a broader perspective on 19th-century gender roles and women’s leadership in the household. Slaughter emphasizes the sacrifices that the Seward family experienced as William Henry’s political career evolved; the Seward family began to “excuse his domestic limitations as son, sibling, husband, and father for the better part of another decade as prices they all had to pay for his dedication to the public interest” (p. 169).

Often overshadowed by her husband’s accomplishments, Frances emerges as a formidable force within the family, passionate, politically aware, and more progressive in her beliefs than her public persona suggests. Her correspondence sheds light on domestic ideals, gender constructions, and even spiritual movements of the era. While William Henry may have been the most famous Seward in Slaughter’s book, Frances’ story effectively takes center stage.

William Seward, Secretary of State, bw photo portrait circa 1860-1865

William Seward, Secretary of State of the U.S. Photo portrait ca. 1860-1865. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The book’s structure, supplemented by a detailed table of contents, allows readers to easily navigate through the family history from the 1820s to the early 1860s, making it ideal for those interested in case studies of political families. Each chapter covers a distinct period in the Sewards’ political and domestic lives. The themes of family ties, emotional resilience, and moral convictions are woven throughout, offering insights into how the Sewards navigated the complexities of their era, including issues of slavery and political upheaval.

A central theme in the Seward household is the private disconnect between Frances and William Henry. Slaughter’s detailed account restores Frances Seward’s agency, largely absent from the historical record for nearly two centuries. “Frances realized that it was not just his political ambition that kept her husband from home but rather his disdain for family life” (p. 239). Slaughter opens the reader to the perspective of life as a wife and family member of a significant political figure, and to the spiral of family issues that comes with it.

Portrait of Frances Adeline Miller Seward in 1844, by Henry Inman. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Slaughter’s The Sewards of New York is a poignant and enriching examination of a notable American political family. The author invites readers to engage with the Sewards not just as historical figures but as complex individuals whose lives reflect the broader societal transformations of their time. Unlike many political biographies, The Sewards of New foregrounds the domestic world that shaped nineteenth-century political life. Slaughter offers an example of how other authors may contribute by examining significant political families, focusing on how the historiography may shift depending on which figures are highlighted. It will undoubtedly serve as a valuable resource for anyone interested in early American history, political families, or the interplay between private life and public action.

Alec Ainsworth is a graduate student from Southern California in the Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and English at California State University, Fullerton.

“How Did We Get Here” Panel

On Wednesday, September 10th, I moderated a webinar with notable immigration historians who situated the current presidential administration’s policing, detainment, and deportations of marginalized immigrants in conversation with the past.

  “How Did We Get Here? U.S. Immigration Historians Respond” brought together leading scholars of U.S. immigration history to reflect on the current environment of fear among immigrant communities in the United States. Panelists traced the evolution of immigration law and enforcement from the late 19th century to the present, highlighting the structural forces that have shaped the experiences of economic migrants, political and environmental refugees, and asylum seekers. As one presenter, Dr. Kang, asserted, “We have always been here.” Immigrant communities–both authorized and unauthorized–have always lived under constant fear that a change in administration and policy could upend their lives.

In the week leading up to the webinar, three significant events underscored the intensifying pressures on immigrant communities. On September 4th, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out the largest immigration raid in U.S. history at the Hyundai electric battery plant in Ellabell, Georgia, arresting 475 people–most of them South Korean nationals. Many reportedly had legal permission to work in the United States, yet ICE operations separated families, and children returned from school to find their parents had disappeared.^[1] The next day, the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that immigration judges no longer had authority to grant release on bond.^[2] This decision made detention mandatory for immigrants awaiting hearings, vastly expanding incarceration in already overcrowded detention centers and funneling even more public money to private prison companies.

Days later, on September 8th, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal ruling that had barred roving immigration stops in Los Angeles. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that race, ethnicity, or speaking Spanish could be considered “relevant factors” in such stops, alongside factors such as where people work or congregate.^[3] The ruling appeared to sanction racial profiling, granting ICE wide discretion to detain individuals based on appearance, language, and perceived class. In her dissent, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that this decision entrenches a system in which “the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job.”^[4]

The webinar featured Professors Maddalena Marinari (Gustavus Adolphus College; President of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society); Deborah Kang (University of Virginia); Sergio González (Marquette University); and Carl Lindskoog (Raritan Valley Community College) to speak to the UT Austin community. Each scholar spoke from their own expertise, such as 20th-century immigration policy (Marinari), the growth of immigrant policing (Kang), the rise of detention prisons (Lindskoog), and the resistance efforts by immigrant communities and their citizen allies in what is known as the U.S. Central American Sanctuary Movements (González).

The event was co-hosted by the Frontera Scholars Collective, the Department of History, the Department of American Studies, the Center for Asian American Studies, and the Latino Studies program. The event was also organized in collaboration with Dr. Cortez’s course, “Immigration and Ethnicity.”

Jonathan Cortez, Ph.D. is currently an Assistant Professor of History at The University of Texas at Austin. Their current manuscript, A Nation of Immigration Camps, details the history of vernacular and federally funded immigration camps along the U.S.-Mexico border from the late 19^th century to the late 20^thcentury.

^[1] Lydia DePillis and Hamed Aleaziz,”Georgia ICE Raid Netted Workers With Short-Term Businness Visas,” New York Times, September 12, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/business/economy/hyundai-raid-worker-visas.html#:~:text=Hyundai%20ICE%20Raid%20Detained%20Workers,raid%2Dworker%2Dvisas.html

^[2] Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, “Immigration appeals court expands mandatory detention for millions,” Politico, September 5, 2025.

^[3] Lawrence Hurley, “Supreme Court lifts limits on roving immigration patrols in Los Angeles area,” NBC News, September 8, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-immigration-stops-los-angeles-rcna223845

^[4] American Immigration Council, “How the Supreme Court’s Latest Decision Clears the Way for Racial Profiling During Immigration Raids,” September 9, 2025. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/supreme-courts-decision-racial-profiling-immigration-raids/

Long Before the Field: Community, Memory, and the Making of Public History

The term “public history” entered my vocabulary only after I moved to the United States, where it designates a well-defined professional field. In Latin America, by contrast, similar practices have long existed without requiring a defined institutional/formal designation. Communities have always engaged in the making and sharing of history through oral traditions, local museums, memory collectives, and neighborhood archives, public talks, among so many others. People have narrated their pasts, not necessarily within academic frameworks, but as acts of survival, resistance, and belonging. These longstanding traditions invite reflection on when and why the need emerged to name such practices “public history”, and what it means when collective forms of remembrance become institutionalized as fields or disciplines.

Public history, as a professionalized field, took shape in the 1970s in English-speaking countries, particularly the United States, as a means to bridge academic research and broader social engagement. As James Gardner and Paula Hamilton note, it encompasses both university-based training and work across museums, heritage sites, government agencies, and digital initiatives. Early definitions emphasized historical practice conducted “outside the ivory tower” for public audiences, but the field has since diversified to include participatory, activist, and civic-oriented approaches. Its growth has been shaped by national contexts, memory politics, and the expansion of heritage industries—each underscoring the social, political, and ethical stakes of historical work in public life.^[1]

This institutionalization of public history resonates with ideas articulated much earlier by Carl Becker in his 1931 address to the American Historical Association, Everyman His Own Historian. Becker argued that all humans interpret the past through memory and imagination, and that historical understanding is not the exclusive domain of professionals but part of a shared human effort to make sense of experience^_.[2] Recognizing this broader agency calls for humility rather than gatekeeping—a lesson that resonates with practices in Mexico, where the work of cronistas—local historians and chroniclers devoted to preserving the histories of towns and municipalities—has long been central to civic and cultural life.

An aerial view of Guelatao de Juarez, Oaxaca and its surroundings

An aerial view of Guelatao de Juarez, Oaxaca. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Within Latin America, scholars and historians—especially those working in public institutions—often see their research as part of a reciprocal relationship with the communities that ultimately fund and sustain their work. This reciprocation, and therefore responsibility, reflects a broader understanding that history is not produced solely by, and for, academic peers but also for the publics who inhabit and inherit its narratives. Such accountability offers an important lesson for public history internationally: that historical practice flourishes when it remains responsive to the people and places it seeks to represent.

This ethos is not unique to Latin America. Across the world, long before “public history” entered academic vocabulary, communities across the world were already generating their own forms of historical knowledge. The telling of history was never confined to universities or formal institutions. It lived in plazas, churches, community centers, and homes; it was sustained through storytelling, ritual, and collective memory. These practices were often carried forward by teachers, activists, Indigenous elders, and neighborhood leaders who understood history as a means of continuity, belonging, and survival.

Even within the United States, some of the earliest public history initiatives originated outside academia. African American museums such as the DuSable Black History Museum in Chicago, founded by Margaret Burroughs in 1961, or the African American Museum in Philadelphia, grew directly out of the civil rights movement and the effort to preserve histories neglected by mainstream institutions. These projects—grassroots, activist, and often underfunded—demonstrate that engagement with the past has long served as a form of political work as much as cultural expression. In many ways, it is the later institutionalization of public history—its adoption and formalization within universities and professional associations—that represents the anomaly. Yet this framework has been embraced, sometimes uncritically, in countries where community-based and independent initiatives had long flourished, often to the detriment of those same grassroots efforts and the pluralism they sustained.

The first home of the DuSable Museum of African American History was located in this house, built for Chicago contractor John W. Griffiths in 1892 and purchased by Charles and Margaret Burroughs in 1959, who opened part of their home for the public museum

The DuSable Museum of African American History began in this 1892 house, purchased by Charles and Margaret Burroughs in 1959, who opened part of their home to the public as a museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons

When the field of public history was formalized in the 1970s within U.S. universities, it offered institutional recognition, professional pathways, and a common language for collaboration. These developments were invaluable for advocacy and training. Yet they should not obscure the longer, global genealogies of community-based historical practice. The move to define and credential public history can, unintentionally, overshadow the traditions that preceded it—traditions that continue to challenge academic hierarchies and broaden understandings of who can produce and interpret history. Recognizing these antecedents reminds us that public history, at its best, is not an invention of the academy but an extension of longstanding efforts to remember, interpret, and claim the past.

In recent years, universities and cultural institutions have increasingly embraced public-facing projects—exhibitions, digital archives, oral history collections, and outreach programs designed to engage wider audiences. These initiatives have expanded access to historical knowledge and reinforced the social relevance of scholarship. Yet they often remain shaped by institutional logics: funding cycles, curatorial frameworks, and professional protocols that determine how stories are told and what counts as legitimate evidence. Their tone is often careful and curated, designed to invite participation while maintaining institutional authority.

Community-based projects, in contrast, frequently emerge from lived experience and collective need. They are sustained by urgency rather than funding, by care rather than formal mandate. Small local museums, cronistas municipales, and memory collectives exemplify such work. Their exhibitions may be improvised and their archives incomplete, yet they possess an immediacy and intimacy that make them vital spaces of historical continuity. They assert the right to self-representation and challenge the notion that only institutions can authorize history. These practices are not merely nostalgic; they are acts of preservation, repair, and political presence.

Our Famous people display at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum

Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledging these distinctions is not about opposing the academic and the communal, but about recognizing that they operate through different epistemologies and responsibilities. Academic public history often interprets the past for the public; community-based projects tend to interpret it with the public—or, more precisely, as the public. This difference shapes not only the narratives we construct but also the relationships of trust and authority embedded within them.

The term public history has opened many doors. It has enabled scholars to frame their work through collaboration, to reach broader audiences, and to affirm the social value of history within institutions that often privilege theory over practice. The label provides visibility, resources, and a shared vocabulary for those working at the intersection of history, education, and engagement. These are invaluable contributions, and the growing community of public historians has helped redefine what it means to be accountable to the public.

At the same time, it is worth remembering that the impulse behind public history—the desire to connect the past with everyday life—is not new. Long before it became a field, people around the world were already practicing it: telling stories, preserving memories, teaching, and caring for their histories in ways that were collective and deeply local. To name these practices public history is not to claim them as new inventions, but to acknowledge and learn from those who have sustained them all along.

If public history offers one enduring lesson, it is humility. Historians do not possess the past; we share it with everyone who remembers, narrates, and imagines. Our task is not only to speak, but to listen—to build spaces where many histories can coexist. Whatever name we give it, public history is ultimately about relationships rather than audiences, collaboration rather than outreach. Perhaps the most meaningful contribution scholars can make is to remember that we are joining a much older conversation. Public history did not begin with us; it began with the understanding that memory itself is a form of care. Our responsibility is to help sustain that care into the future.

^[1] Gardner, James B., and Paula Hamilton, editors. The Oxford Handbook of Public History. Oxford University Press, 2017.

^[2] Becker, Carl. “Everyman His Own Historian”, American Historical Review 37, no. 2, p. 221–36: https://www.historians.org/presidential-address/carl-l-becker/

Raquel Torua Padilla is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a B.A. in History from the Universidad de Sonora and is currently a CONTEX Fellow. Her research focuses on the history of the Yaqui people in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Forgotten Spanish-Cuban Contribution to American Independence: Francisco de Saavedra and the Silver of Havana

When British forces surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, few would have imagined that the decisive blow had been financed not from Paris or Philadelphia, but from Havana. Behind this unexpected twist stood Francisco de Saavedra, a Spanish official whose name is absent from most American textbooks but whose actions helped change the course of the war.

Though he never set foot on the battlefield, Saavedra played a key role in securing the American victory. His contribution was strategic and financial, and it unfolded in the colonial capital of Cuba—a city that, by the late 18th century, had become the financial and military nerve center of Spain’s Caribbean empire.

Siege of Yorktown. 1781. Source: Wikimedia Commons

An Empire Without Liquidity

By the summer of 1781, the War of American Independence was reaching its climax. The American revolutionaries, aided by France and Spain through the Bourbon Family Compact, were preparing for a final strike. General Washington and his French counterpart, the Comte de Rochambeau, were planning a coordinated assault against British General Cornwallis at Yorktown, with naval support from Admiral de Grasse.

But there was a problem: France had no money. The French state, deeply indebted and fiscally strained, could not supply the fleet in the Caribbean in time. De Grasse needed funds to sail north, transport troops, and maintain the campaign. Without immediate financing, the entire operation—and perhaps the independence movement—would collapse.

Enter Saavedra in Havana

At this critical moment, Spain’s Caribbean presence proved decisive. In June 1781, following a desperate request from Admiral de Grasse, the Spanish authorities in Havana organized an extraordinary fundraising effort. In just a few days, half a million silver pesos were collected from merchants, landowners, and colonial officials—a sum that allowed the French fleet to sail north and support the allied siege of Yorktown.

Although Francisco de Saavedra was not yet in Havana during this crucial episode, his name would soon become central in the broader logistical and strategic coordination that followed. Saavedra had earlier been captured by the British while on a secret diplomatic mission in Jamaica. After his release and return to Spain, he gained prestige within the court of Charles III and held several important metropolitan posts. In 1782, he was appointed Royal Commissioner to the Caribbean, with broad powers to oversee Spain’s military and financial contributions to the war effort.

Francisco de Saavedra by Goya (1798). Source: Wikimedia Commons

A close ally of Bernardo de Gálvez, Saavedra established himself in Havana as a key figure in maintaining and expanding Spain’s support for the allied cause. He coordinated the flow of silver, troops, and supplies between New Spain, Cuba, Louisiana, and Venezuela—a complex imperial logistics network that kept the pressure on British positions in the Gulf and the Atlantic. Though not present for the initial fundraising that made Yorktown possible, he ensured that this type of transatlantic mobilization could continue throughout the final stages of the war.

Havana: A Hub of Empire

By the late 18th century, Havana had become one of the most important cities in the Spanish Empire. It was a strategic port, a fortified military bastion, and the financial capital of the Caribbean. Silver from New Spain (now Mexico), goods from across the Atlantic, and fleets bound for Spain passed through its harbor. Its local elite was wealthy, loyal, and deeply embedded in imperial networks. It was in this setting that Saavedra found both the material resources and the political support to act quickly and decisively.

Map of Havana 1798. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Why We Should Remember Saavedra

Saavedra’s name rarely appears in English-language accounts of the American Revolution. Yet his story reminds us that military victories often rely not only on generals and battles, but also on the invisible work of diplomacy, imperial logistics, and financial coordination. As Royal Commissioner in Havana and trusted envoy of the Spanish Crown, Saavedra helped sustain the momentum of allied operations during the final phase of the war—and exemplified a model of enlightened statecraft that deserves to be remembered.

More broadly, Saavedra’s intervention points to a neglected truth: the American struggle for independence was not only transatlantic but also transimperial. Cuba, as part of the Spanish Empire, played an indirect but essential role in this history. By recovering figures like Saavedra, we begin to see how interconnected the revolutionary era really was—not just through battles and declarations, but through the flow of silver, the logic of empires, and the resolve of men who could see beyond the moment.

It is worth noting that while other Spanish figures involved in the American Revolution have received significant recognition—such as Bernardo de Gálvez, who was granted honorary U.S. citizenship and has a portrait hanging in the U.S. Capitol — Francisco de Saavedra remains virtually unknown. This silence is striking given Saavedra’s extraordinary contributions to King Charles III and, later, to Charles IV and Ferdinand VII.

Bernardo de Gálvez. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Saavedra was a product of the Spanish Enlightenment. A native of Seville, he was not only a soldier and diplomat but also an intellectual deeply involved in reformist Bourbon politics. He served the Spanish Crown in various high-ranking positions, including Minister of Finance, Secretary of State, and a member of the Council of Regency. His long career reflected both competence and trust from the monarchy across successive reigns.

He was also appointed Royal Commissioner for the Americas, a role that attests to his influence and the responsibility he was given over the Spanish colonial world. His close involvement in the expulsion of the British from the Gulf of Mexico and his role in the financial support to the North American insurgents show his strategic vision and loyalty to Spain’s imperial interests.

Why has his name faded into obscurity? Part of the answer lies in the geopolitical caution of the Spanish crown at the time. Spain supported the American rebels with discretion, avoiding overt declarations that might incite revolutionary sentiments within its own American territories. The fear that Britain could exploit discontent in the Spanish colonies was not unfounded. Indeed, just a few decades later, British influence would play a substantial role in the fragmentation of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, encouraging the emergence of independent republics rather than a unified post-imperial federation. In many ways, Spain’s restrained involvement in the American Revolution was both a show of imperial strength and a prelude to the anxieties that would define its own age of revolutions.

The marginalization of Saavedra’s legacy also reflects the broader persistence of Anglo-American historical narratives that have long characterized Spain’s imperial role through the lens of “Spanish misrule.” In such accounts, Spanish governance is often portrayed as backward, despotic, or inefficient—especially when contrasted with the supposed rationality and liberty of the Anglo-American tradition. Yet Saavedra’s actions in Havana, his administrative competence, and his vision of imperial coordination reveal a more complex and capable form of statecraft than the caricature suggests.

Constructing a Canyon: Black CCC Workers and the Making of Palo Duro

In September 1935, Jimmie Lee Robinson and fourteen other Black Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers stationed at Palo Duro State Park in the Texas Panhandle wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to protest their treatment in the CCC camp. “We work some time six days in a week,” they said, “and have to go to Canyon or on a long hike to keep from getting home sick.” Their letter ended with a petition asking to be relocated to a different CCC camp “near their own race.”^{^[1]} This complaint reflects Black workers’ deliberate assignment to Palo Duro Canyon, the “Grand Canyon of Texas,” because of its distance from nearby communities.

I encountered this letter while working on a larger project about how Palo Duro State Park became a symbol of Texas Panhandle history in the 1930s. What struck me was how easily this story—and the people behind it—had been forgotten. Palo Duro itself is a vast canyon in the Texas Panhandle visually defined by its colorful rocks and geological formations. But visitors to parks often don’t think about who built the trails, roads, and buildings that shape their experience of a landscape. Even less attention is paid to how that infrastructure tells a story—one that often excludes the full history of who lived in, used, and transformed these spaces.

Palo Duro Canyon Lighthouse. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

In the 1930s, CCC leadership charged young men with building the park’s foundational infrastructure. These structures told a version of the canyon’s history centered on white settlers while erasing the presence of both Black and Indigenous peoples, respectively. Even as they shaped the park’s landscape, Black people were subjected to segregation and geographic isolation at the hands of the federal government and the Texas State Parks Board.

To place the CCC’s work in a larger historical context, I turned to ClioVis—a mind-mapping tool developed by Dr. Erika Bsumek of UT-Austin’s History Department. ClioVis allowed me to visualize how a history of Palo Duro—told through the names of places and promotional materials—has long excluded the people who helped build it.

As I charted this history of Palo Duro, it became clear how the story of Palo Duro Canyon mirrored broader patterns of West Texas history—beginning with its earliest inhabitants. Indigenous people had lived in the canyon since as early as 10,000 B.C.E. In 1541, the canyon may have been a backdrop to Spaniard Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s quest to find the fictional Quivira, one of the famed ‘seven cities of gold,’ a mythical indigenous paradise. In the mid-18^th century, the Comanche (Nemene) arrived at the Panhandle Plains and “held Palo Duro Canyon as a prominent camp and trading site,” building a formidable power capable of challenging Texas expansion.^[2]

In an assault on Comanche power, the United States’ army expelled them from the canyon in the 1874 Battle of Palo Duro, part of the Red River Wars.In the remainder of the decade, nuevomexicano pastores—Hispanic pastoralists who drove sheep onto the Southern Plains—continued their use of the plains. In 1876, rancher Charles Goodnight established an important cattle ranch in the depths of the canyon.The Panhandle’s ‘JA Ranch’ became a respected institution in the ranching industry.

In 1933, the CCC answered community calls to transform the canyon into a park. President Franklin Delano Roosevel created the CCC program to employ mostly young men during the Great Depression to build much of the country’s wilderness infrastructure. Young men enlisted in the program and the federal government assigned them to a CCC company, where they often lived in a future park and built roads, hiking trails, and other park facilities. Their work not only gave the public access to remote areas but also shaped how visitors experienced parks. They also influenced how people understood the history of the natural spaces through the naming of places, buildings, and landmarks.

CCC boys at work. 1935. Source: Library of Congress

Soon after CCC work began, Palo Duro became the site of the largest CCC camp in the country and found itself at the center of conflict over the racial segregation of CCC workers. At its inception, the CCC camp at Palo Duro was integrated with Black and white workers. This changed in the summer of 1935 when CCC national director Robert Fechner issued a policy calling for the segregation of CCC camps. Texas State Parks Board Chairman David E. Colp, forced to select a camp to host only Black workers, said that “The Palo Duro is called ideal for negro companies owing to its location 13 miles from town.”^[3] Colp hoped to avoid conflict between white communities and Black CCC workers by geographically isolating Black companies. Soon, Palo Duro State Park’s CCC camp hosted only Black workers. Consequently, they played a vital role in building the park’s infrastructure.

In my ClioVis project, I look specifically at how the park focused on non-indigenous men like Goodnight and Coronado to construct a frontier experience for Palo Duro tourists. Although Black workers built much of the park, CCC leadership tasked them with installing signs and creating landmarks that celebrated white pioneers. The ‘Goodnight Trail’ aimed to honor Charles Goodnight being the ‘first white pioneer to enter the canyon,’ supposedly tracing his historic entrance path. The trail also positioned Palo Duro as a place to experience history as it connected the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum (in Canyon, Texas) to the park’s entrance. Once in the park, visitors encountered ‘El Coronado Lodge,’ named to honor Conquistador Francisco de Coronado. Meanwhile, trails such as ‘Kiowa Trail’ and ‘Indian Trails’ acknowledged an Indigenous past but—in the context of promotional materials I analyzed—framed it as something distant, rather than as an integral part of the canyon’s ongoing history. Regardless, the park’s infrastructure told a story of the region that surrounded white pioneers and settlers, not indigenous people and the Black workers who built the park.

Photo of El Coronado Lodge. Untitled. Project Reports on Civilian Conservation Corps Projects in State and Local Parks, 1933-1937. National Archives and Records Administration. SP-13-16.

The power behind these names is best explained through the concept of place-making. Anthropologist Keith Basso coined the term place-making to refer to the act of assigning meaning to places. Basso argues that “…place-making is a way of constructing history itself, of inventing it, of fashioning novel versions of ‘what happened here.’”^[4] He argues that through place-making, humans develop entire frameworks for understanding existence and the history around them. Therefore, the naming of places in Palo Duro State Park to honor colonizers asserted a settler-based history of the canyon itself.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park – Base Map. 1937. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Even as Black workers built this infrastructure, they resisted the geographical isolation the state forced upon them. As noted earlier, fifteen Black workers sought President Roosevelt’s help in being relocated closer to Black communities. We “have to go to Canyon or on a long hike to keep from getting home sick,” they wrote.^[5] The Black workers’ letter to Roosevelt spoke to the geographical isolation of Palo Duro Canyon, reinforced by racist policies barring them from visiting nearby Canyon, Texas and transportation challenges in reaching Amarillo, the nearest non-sundown town. At the same time, the Black workers demonstrated the ways they experienced the canyon on their own terms. As their letter said, the workers went on hikes, likely exploring distant corners of the park. The Black workers’ letter to Roosevelt encapsulated the complex nature of the Palo Duro CCC Camp.

By the summer of 1936, CCC workers’ grievances culminated in a strike. Angered by their forced geographical isolation, the workers refused to continue their labor, and a standoff ensued. They stood against an unnamed CCC commander as well as blacksmith Sid Harrison. With both sides brandishing picks and other tools as weapons, it was initially unclear if violence would erupt. The youth workers demanded better working conditions and voiced their feeling of isolation. CCC Commander Walter Caserta apparently diffused the strike after a four-hour negotiation. By the end of the summer, likely because of this confrontation, the Black companies moved to a different CCC site, and Company 894, an all-white CCC group from Bonham State Park, soon took over park construction at Palo Duro.^[6]

Structure of Road from Bottom of Canyon. People seen in the distance. ca. 1930s

Structure of Road from Bottom of Canyon. Palo Duro Texas. 1933-1936. Project Reports on Civilian Conservation Corps Projects in State and Local Parks, 1933-1937, Record Group 79: Records of the National Park Service. National Archives and Records Administration. SP-13-16.

Despite their role in building the park, Black people were erased from its historical narrative. Promotional materials failed to acknowledge their contributions to the park’s infrastructure, just as the CCC leaders and Texas State Parks Board reinforced this erasure through the park’s design. Beyond the park’s construction, Black pioneers like the widely revered Matthew ‘Bones’ Hooks played a vital role in the region’s history, yet their stories were similarly overlooked. Instead, the park’s infrastructure promoted a history of the white settler pioneer. Together, this structural erasure of history constitutes what historian Erika Bsumek calls ‘infrastructures of dispossession’—the ways physical and social infrastructure further alienate Indigenous—and in this instance, Black—communities from land.^[7]

The consequences of this erasure are still felt today. Historian Carolyn Finney emphasizes that park infrastructure’s orientation to white audiences perpetuates disparities between white and Black people’s use of public lands. In this sense, I hope to counterweave Black workers’ history into Palo Duro’s landscape. After all, the letter from Black workers to President Roosevelt and their strike are significant events in the creation of the park. However, to make this effort truly meaningful, further work must be done to recover the voices, names, and lives of those who built the park.

In my ClioVis timeline, I expand on not only the work of Black CCC workers but also extend my argument to include the alienation of indigenous communities from the canyon’s history. ClioVis allowed me to create a network of events to visualize the connection between events in the canyon’s history and the ways the CCC brought (or didn’t bring) that history to park visitors through infrastructure.

This story of Palo Duro Canyon is not unique. People worked in segregated CCC camps in natural spaces across the United States. The park infrastructure they built often told revisionist histories about the parks. On top of this, many parks themselves were inaccessible to Black people. The State of Texas forbade Black people from entering Palo Duro until the federal government forcibly desegregated the Texas State Parks System in 1964.

Nevertheless, the infrastructure built at Palo Duro positioned the park as a particularly special symbol of Texas Panhandle history. In 1966, the community demonstrated the park’s importance to their historic mythos by inaugurating the musical TEXAS in the canyon’s basin. Producers called it “A Musical Celebration of Panhandle History.” In that sense, it becomes even more important that the history of Black CCC workers is brought to the forefront of the landscape’s narrative.

^[1] Jimmie Lee Robinson and Arlena Evans, et al, Letter to Roosevelt, September 21, 1935, quoted in Jackson, “The Imprint of the Civilian Conservation Corps on Palo Duro Canyon, 1933-1937,” 148.

^[2] Zapata, “Palo Duro Canyon, Its People, and Their Landscapes: Building Culture(s) and a Sense of Place Through the Environment since 1540,” 17.

^[3] “CCC Companies Will Be Changed During This Week,” The Canyon News, August 15, 1935, Newspapers.com.

^[4] Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 6.

^[5] Robinson and Arlena Evans, Letter to Roosevelt, September 21, 1935, quoted in Jackson, 148.

^[6] My knowledge of the strike at Palo Duro relies on the work of Jackson and Petersen as I was unable to access the account from Walter Caserta. Jackson, “The Imprint of the Civilian Conservation Corps on Palo Duro Canyon, 1933-1937,” 152; Petersen, “The Building of Palo Duro Canyon State Park,” 12.

Aidan Dresang is an undergraduate history major at UT-Austin. He is writing his History thesis on anti-nuclear resistance to the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant. More broadly, his research interests include North American environmental history and social movements. He currently serves as a ClioVis intern and as the History Department’s social media intern.

Review of The Hard Work of Hope: A Memoir, by Michael Ansara (2025)

Banner for The Hard Work of Hope. A Memoir. By Michael Ansara. Reviewed by Sarah Porter

In his recent memoir, The Hard Work of Hope, activist Michael Ansara reflects on decades of organizing experience in the U.S. civil rights, student, and anti-war movements. Raised in Boston, Ansara was one of many Northern students who came of age following World War II and, drawing inspiration from the Southern civil rights struggle, organized opposition to the Vietnam War on college campuses. Ansara began his career as an activist in high school, working with a local civil rights organization, the Boston Action Group (BAG), to develop campaigns around issues like employment discrimination and tenants’ rights. Later, as a student at Harvard University, Ansara joined Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and became a leading voice in the anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following the war, he helped to build Massachusetts Fair Share, an organization that addressed local and neighborhood-level concerns ranging from utility rate hikes to zoning laws.

Book cover of The Hard Work of Hope, a memoir.

Most of the book is devoted to Ansara’s anti-war activism while at Harvard and shortly after graduating. As U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated over the course of the 1960s, many American students began to protest what they viewed as an unjust and immoral war. They organized massive rallies and demonstrations, circulated literature, and engaged in civil disobedience. Ansara was involved in planning and executing major campaigns at Harvard, including the occupation of University Hall and the subsequent student strike in 1969. As its title suggests, however, the book does not only document the flash points of the student movement —the massive rallies and confrontations with law enforcement. Rather, Ansara places emphasis on the day-to-day work of engaging with ordinary people and compelling them to act. As he notes, “It is easy to write about the demonstrations, the marches, the confrontations. They were dramatic and essential. However, they were only possible because of long hours of outreach, discussion, connecting. It was the mundane work of reaching out to students that occupied me, and the other SDS organizers, and that made it possible for people to join the march, get on the bus, join the movement” (p. 48). Far from being inevitable, the successes of the anti-war movement were the result of years of planning and organizing by activists who often encountered fierce opposition from law enforcement, their peers, and the public.

[Large crowd at a National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam direct action demonstration, Washington, D.C.]
Source: Library of Congress

Throughout the book, Ansara also reflects on what he perceives as the failures of the anti-war movement. For instance, he acknowledges that many activists failed to offer concrete support to Vietnamese refugees and veterans after the war ended. He also addresses the creation of groups like the Weathermen, a radical offshoot of SDS that utilized political violence. Ansara was deeply critical of the group’s strategies, but he also recognized the role that state repression played in its development.

Ansara’s discussion of movement strategy and structure is particularly useful, and several ideas may resonate with contemporary readers. First, Ansara argues that the anti-war movement would have been more effective had it embraced electoral politics alongside direct action protest. Second, he distinguishes strategies from demands. Early on, anti-war activists focused on capturing public attention with bold and confrontational protests. Once the public was receptive to their message, however, many groups failed to deliver clear and actionable demands. Ansara suggests that a straightforward program of action is essential for organizing. Lastly, Ansara challenges the idea that a movement can be truly “leaderless.” Organizations like SDS rejected formal leadership structures as hierarchical and undemocratic. Yet, as Ansara notes, this often gave way to informal—and, thus, unaccountable—leaders making all of the decisions. He writes, “Every social movement and every organization has leaders, formal or informal. The question is not whether we have leaders, but whether we have good leaders, leaders who empower others, who build successors, who are accountable. In SDS, the confusion over leadership inhibited our effectiveness, allowing young, arrogant men like me to lead without being held accountable” (p. 258).

Group of young people standing, some are cheering.

Freedom Summer. Source: Wikimedia Commons

While the book does address the larger political context in which activists like Ansara operated, some of the events mentioned in passing deserve further explanation, particularly for younger audiences and for those without a background in history. For example, Ansara references the bombing of 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and the murder of three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—during Mississippi Freedom Summer on several occasions without fully explaining what happened or how it shaped the larger social landscape. More thoughtful analysis of these events would provide important context for readers by highlighting the violent opposition that activists faced, especially in the Deep South. Moreover, as Ansara acknowledges, his memoir is a deeply personal reflection on his experience as an activist, and it should not be taken as a representation of the anti-war movement as a whole. Student organizing on college campuses was a crucial part of this broader movement, but there were many other manifestations of anti-war activism that cut across lines of gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Finally, while Ansara reflects critically on student organizing during the Vietnam War, he is less forthcoming about his later life, including the dissolution of Massachusetts Fair Share due to financial mismanagement under his leadership and his subsequent failed business ventures. Although some readers may appreciate Ansara’s focus on his anti-war activism, others may be left desiring a more complex portrait of his life that grapples with some of these contradictions.

Ultimately, The Hard Work of Hope represents a valuable resource for a number of audiences. For scholars researching anti-war and student activism during the 1960s and 1970s, Ansara’s narrative offers a firsthand account of key campaigns, such as student protests against Dow Chemical and the Harvard Strike. Educators might also incorporate excerpts of this book into undergraduate or high-school classrooms as an example of a primary source for analysis. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Ansara’s memoir offers valuable insight for those currently organizing for a more just and equal society on college campuses and beyond.

Sarah Porter is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies twentieth-century social movements, policing, and mass incarceration in the United States.

This is Democracy – Iran-Contra and its Legacies

In this episode, Jeremi and Zachary Suri are joined by Professor Alan McPherson, an expert on US foreign relations who introduces his new book ‘The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy.’ Together, they discuss how this Iran-Contra scandal altered public trust in the American government and set troubling precedents for future administrations.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem titled “Same Old Lies”.

Alan McPherson is a professor of history at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is the author of numerous books on the history of U.S. foreign relations, including: The Invaded: How Latin Americans and their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations; Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet’s Terror State to Justice; and, most recently, The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy.

This is Democracy – Ending Wars

This week, Jeremi and Zachary talk with Michael Vorenberg about the difficulties of ending wars in democracies. Their discussion includes various perspectives on when the Civil War truly ended, the challenges of war termination, Lincoln’s approach toward reconciliation, and the lasting impacts of unresolved conflicts.

Zachary sets the scene with the poem “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman.

Michael Vorenberg is an associate professor of history at Brown University. He is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. This book was used for Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film, Lincoln. Vorenberg’s exciting new book is Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War.

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