State and Local History: A Coming of Age

For all of us concerned with the health of the history profession, I’d like to call attention to a striking fact that while academic history programs statistically declined over the past decade or more, public interest in history soared.

As readers of Perspectives know, the National Center for Education Statistics reported last year that the annual num­ber of recipients of doctorates in history declined steadily from 1973 to 1983, and by approximately 50 percent over­ all. The annual number of BA degrees awarded in history declined steadily from 1971 through 1981, and by more than 40 percent overall. A survey by the American Council on Education indi­cates, moreover, that undergraduates can now graduate from more than 70 percent of American colleges and uni­versities without any coursework in American, European, or classical his­tory. All of which adds up to the de­ pressing prospect of an increasingly a­ historical citizenry. (See November 1984 Perspectives, page 3.)

However, in roughly the same period, the same citizenry seems to have been founding or expanding historical orga­nizations at a remarkable rate. The American Association for State and Lo­cal History (AASLH) periodically pub­lishes a Directory of Historical Societies and Agencies in the United States and Canada, which covers national, state and local historical societies, museums, historical libraries, archives, historic-site organiza­tions, historic-preservation groups, genealogical societies, ethnic-history orga­nizations, and the like. An edition pub­lished at the beginning of the 1970s identified 3,300 such  organizations. The 1973–74 edition listed nearly 5,000. The most recent edition, com­piled in 1982, turned up nearly 6,000. Judging by the number of question­naires we’ve just mailed, the new edition we are preparing to publish will show growth by at least another thousand.

Some of that is attributable to im­provements in our own net-casting; but much of it represents real growth in the field. AASLH itself has grown in mem­bership from 5,400 to 7,500 just since 1978. Further evidence that off-campus interest in history has been flowering comes from another kind of survey we have just concluded.

In our new book entitled A Culture at Risk: Who Cares for America’s Heritage, we have just published a profile of the historical-organization field. Taking together all the kinds of historical groups that appear in our Directory, we’ve found that more than one of every four came into existence just since 1970. In fact, more than 50 percent of the nation’s historical organizations did not exist before 1960. Approximately 85 percent postdate the First World War, and only some 5 percent existed before the twen­tieth century.

The continuously accelerating growth rate that seems to have characterized historical organizations in our time may now be leveling off, in response to the financial constriction of the 1980s that seems to be squeezing nonprofit cultur­al and social-service agencies generally. But we are not sure even of that. Genealogists certainly seem still to grow in numbers and in technical sophistication. New museums continue to crop up at a rate that alarms directors of established ones. And historic preservation of buildings is booming as never before, fueled by tax credits for rehabilitation.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and subsequent preservation legislation clearly had much to do with the growth of off-campus history activity. Also, many communities rein­vigorated their historical societies or founded museums in observance of the Bicentennial of the American Revolu­tion in the 1970s. Since the inception in the 1960s of the National Endowment for the Humanities, it and the state humanities councils it spawned in the 1970s have encouraged public pro­grams in history and increased the funding available for them. Moreover, what has happened to historical organi­zations reflects forces that have produced great growth in nonprofit public­ benefit service organizations generally, exclusive of hospitals and universities: An Urban Institute study indicates that two out of every three such agencies existing in 1982 were created since 1960.

None of that, however, can vitiate, obscure, or totally explain the equally incontrovertible fact that American citi­zens, though their sons and daughters were enrolling in fewer history courses, have themselves been supporting off­-campus historical activity with money and enthusiasm—historic-site develop­ment,  museum creation  or expansion, rehabilitation of historic buildings, historical reenactments and publications, and history programs focused on com­munities and on families. There is at least something to the cliché-encrusted argument that people in a society char­acterized by rapid change and various forms of dislocation feel the need of roots, of group pride, of social identity. These are needs that history can, and is being asked to, meet.

There is at least something to the cliche-encrusted argument that people in a society characterized by rapid change and various forms of dislocation feel the need of roots, of group pride, of social identity. These are needs that history can, and is being asked to, meet.

Now, has that translated into profes­sional opportunities to offset the declin­ing demand for historians on college faculties? Frankly, that question from the viewpoint of AASLH—a service or­ganization for historical organizations—seems secondary if not irrelevant. The goal of historical activity in universities or outside is not, after all, employment. The goal is to keep present and future citizens of a democracy from losing his­torical perspective. But in any case, the answer to the question is no.

The same survey that produced the profile of the field we have just pub­lished in A Culture at Risk also produced data on salaries and employment trends in historical organizations, which AASLH has just published under the title, The Wages of History. In that docu­ment we report that six of every ten historical organizations has an annual operating cash budget of less than $50,000, and that more than half of all historical organizations have no full­ time paid staff.

There is nothing per se bad about volunteers running local historical soci­eties. Without such volunteers, histori­cal resources in many communities across the nation would receive no care or use, and in many communities such volunteers, who sometimes include uni­versity professors, are doing a highly professional job unpaid. Indeed, the involvement of amateurs in historical work can itself be part of the process of citizen education. But the growth of historical organizations has not brought a proportional increase in jobs available for university trained historians.

Nonetheless, it has brought some in­crease in opportunity. As best we can tell, the educational level of historical­ organization and museum employees has been increasing: 10 percent have doctorates, mostly in history, as against less than 5 percent in 1973. More than 60 percent now have master’s degrees, compared with roughly 22 percent a decade ago. And nearly 95 percent of paid employees in the field now have at least baccalaureate degrees. More than 70 percent majored one way or another in history.

However, 75 percent of professionals in historical organizations are 45 or un­der in age, which means that without further institutional growth in the field or further professionalization of staffs, it could become as tough for new pro­fessionals in the field to find good jobs and rise within institutions as it is for young faculty in academe. Moreover, historical organizations are increasingly under pressure to hire staff with train­ing or experience in management or other professional skills in addition to, or even rather than, a history discipline. And that won’t change unless the econo­my does, which is why AASLH has encouraged university history depart­ments to develop graduate programs specifically for historical-organization or museum careers, and has published guidelines for realistically doing so.

Two things on the university side, however, continue to complicate the problem. One is opposition by universi­ty trained historians to the whole phe­nomenon; many feel that state and local history, historical societies, and catering to public or “popular” interests in his­tory are all second rate, not sources of opportunity for sophisticated historians. The other is the more recently promul­gated idea that graduate training in history provides particular analytical or intellectual skills of automatic value in many kinds of jobs outside universities. Whether or not that’s true, the assump­tion can be counter-productive for an applicant to a board that knows precise­ly what how-to skills are needed in historical organizations. This much is clear: history students are ill-served if encouraged to believe that skills gained in traditional graduate seminars pre­ pare one to run a historical organiza­tion.

Nonetheless, we must encourage out­ standing, trained historians to continue to come into the historical-agency field, and to prepare consciously for it, for this basic, obvious reason: Among all the other things a historical-agency administrator or curator has to be able to do effectively, day in and day out, the essential job is to judge historic re­sources—to decide whether the histori­cal value of a document, an artifact, a site or a structure warrants the expendi­ture of available funds on its care and use for research and education, now and for the future. And that is a judg­ment that can best be made by someone who really knows history.