Six months ago, I finished an AmeriCorps program with Northern Bedrock Historic Preservation Corps. At the end of this job, I moved back home, back into my bedroom from high school complete with shared bathroom. Since I moved home, I have created a professional life for myself in the form of work at the library as well as volunteer opportunities at an archive and a historic preservation organization. In the six months since I have moved home I have learned several things.
- I am a sheep.
Everyone grows up being told they are a leader…I am in fact not. I will not be a disruptor, asking for forgiveness instead of permission. There is no problem with this mentality. I am the support. This role suits me well. This realization hit me when I anxiously replaced the sign advertising the library’s social media handles. The old sign was peeling off the desk, so any rational person would say it was time to give that sign a face lift. However, nothing gave me quite the adrenaline rush like replacing the old sign with one of my own design without first asking my manager. Did I do it right? Will someone be upset that I changed this?
I know in all honesty that no one will notice the sign change. I repeat organizational processes and wait for someone else to begin executing an idea before I get involved. Then, of course, I replicate the work and carry it out like the little sheep I am. Sheep honestly get a bad rep in our society, but not everyone is a leader…not everyone can be one. Someone must be there to add magnitude to the change.
- Preservation and Reconciliation go hand in hand.
My college degree focused on general history and political science. My political science degree was mentored by a woman who studied atrocities and security issues. This means I know the basics of political systems, but I know a lot about studying mass atrocities/historical atrocities and how governments and people rebuild after them. Preservation, or public history might be the broader term to utilize, can facilitate reconciliation within an area.
Like most Southern states, my state was involved in the Civil War. People were formerly enslaved here, and a lot of the families still live here (it is almost crazy to see the number of descendants of enslaved people living just mere miles from the descendants of people who owned them). Public history can play a substantial role in beginning to rebuild relationships after the atrocious system that was slavery and the academic focus on white institutions that followed it. Every time a document is discovered, an archive can choose to process it and make it available for research use. There are political implications to a backlog—what is chosen for digitization, when it is chosen, and how accessible that digitization is. Making Civil War Confederacy records readily available but not US Colored Troop records has a political implication (most of the instances are not as obvious as this hypothetical). Preservation organizations can choose which sites to focus their advocacy work toward from saving historically Black cemeteries or antebellum plantations (again the reality is much more nuanced).
To illustrate this nuance, the organization that I volunteer with recently made the decision to move a Rosenwald school from its original location to a new campus to be turned into a museum. The choice to move the school (and hence not allow the school to be eligible for Historic Register status) comes with equity in mind. The land the school sits on, which is owned by Black families from the area, is now worth nearly one million dollars. The decision to move the school protects the memory of the institution, but also allows these families to have their payday (in an area where their neighborhoods used to be considered a ‘ghetto’ area, and their ancestors have been robbed of wealth building opportunities).
- Where I live has not realized the world has changed.
When I moved back home, I desperately wanted to begin working in the local historical community. Within several weeks, I came to the realization that there were no jobs in that area. There were no jobs, and most people that did anything related to history were volunteers.
Tennessee is not called the Volunteer State for nothing, I guess. The county historian—volunteer. People who help prepare exhibits on local history for the organization I volunteer for—volunteers. Those that digitize documents for the archive—volunteer. It is expected from these organizations that people who can volunteer regularly for eight hours a week still exist. The housewife hardly exists anymore! How can an entity expect someone to work for free in today’s economy? For an area that prides itself on preserving its history and working diligently to display it, it is quite shocking to realize how much the city relies on essentially free labor.
My hometown is coming upon a crossroads in this regard. It will have to choose whether to appropriately compensate the people necessary to care for these historic resources—the documents, the books, the buildings, the cemeteries—or risk the future prosperity of that goal. People cannot work for free anymore. Volunteers cannot regularly come in unless they are retired (and even retirement seems like a wish in this economy). There is special knowledge needed to protect these things, and the city must contend with its decision to not keep up with the reality.
- I need to marry rich.
Now, before assumptions are made, I am being somewhat facetious. Based on my activities—working for the library and copious amounts of volunteer work, I am best suited for the lifestyle of being a trophy wife. The rich spouse would cover the living expenses—rent, food, electricity, water, internet. My job would be to spend the rest on philanthropic endeavors like the Vanderbilt wives did in the 1890s. The money made working at a library is sufficient for my own spending, possibly sufficient to use as donations to these organizations; however, I am no longer pressed monetarily and can enjoy these pursuits of making society better.
There could be another essay or research project in here about the necessity of a house spouse. Economists have calculated the financial and economic impact of being a stay at home parent—providing a numerical value to the labor these individuals do around the home. That would be combined with the group of people who can be involved in society in a service aspect without the avarice or the anxiety associated with the pay of this kind of work. People desire communities, and the house spouses can develop those community ties. Without working, they could plan potlucks, be involved in the PTO, or pay attention to the civic and governmental organizations. This level of financial security could increase well-being. Would it be so difficult to raise the bar for a healthy economy to one that includes the ability for one partner to not work full time?
Six months is not a long time to let all these experiences marinate in my skull. These lessons will change or simmer down into a more cohesive conclusion as time rolls on. This is also just a sliver of what I have learned (some of the more organizational lessons won’t be written down until after I have left this state since I still want to work here). I am still young, with professional lessons left to learn.