Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion in South Carolina have become popular recreational sites. Although local institutions have created and disseminated a teleological narrative about the engineered lakes, the reservoirs both symbolize and attest to submerged Black histories. To create these lakes, Black communities and their cemeteries faced inundation, or removal and reinterment. Through an examination of the Santee-Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project, this essay argues that the project’s administrators articulated and effected historical value through their procedures of cemetery preservation (or lack thereof). By doing so, this essay allows us to understand why local institutions fail to commemorate the loss of Black histories in the area. This essay concludes with a brief interrogation of the utility of commemoration, digital and otherwise, to redress erasure.

This issue presents four articles that demonstrate the diversity of public history scholarship today. Labor issues, racial justice, new media, and the intersection of the built and natural environment are considered in these pages.In “Renting History: Housing and Labor on Public History’s Front Lines,” Brian Whetstone takes a close look at the practice of house museums and historical societies renting their property to tenants, many of whom acted as both caretakers and interpreters. Focusing primarily on the mid-twentieth century Northeast, Whetstone shows that this practice not only sustained these institutions, but further, argues that “renting and tenant labor were vital to the interpretive, labor, and curatorial practices of house museums throughout the twentieth century.” Although often overlooked by both visitors and public history scholarship, “renting history” sustained and shaped public history institutions. Further, Whetstone shows that this phenomenon “makes explicit an uncomfortable reality: the practice of public history is inextricably entangled with the logics of real estate, finance, and capitalism.”Cheryl X. Dong examines the use of public history by the Black Panther Party (BPP)—a radically anti-capitalist political organization that critiqued US history and tactics employed in the mid-twentieth century Civil Rights Movement through their newspaper. Dong finds that the BPP newspaper, The Black Panther Community News Service, “engaged in active public history labor as it recast the Black past and US history to support the party’s…ideological rejection of nonviolent protest and critique of middle-class Black political respectability.” The BPP undertook historical research and interpretation, and in doing so “helped establish a theoretical framework for social justice-oriented public history as an alternative narrative that did not emerge from white, mainstream institutions such as museums or historical societies.” Dong argues the BPP provides an example which professional public historians should heed: “marginalized groups [are] the keepers of their own history rather than…disadvantaged communities that need history experts” to record and tell their stories. This article encourages public historians to revise their understanding of best practices in public history methodology.Next, we feature two reports from the field. Anja Werner, in “Motion Comics as Digital Public History: A New Means to Attain Multi-Perspectivity in Contested and Entangled Histories,” examines a new kind of media for public history, motion comics. Motion comics are short (often under ten minutes) videos based on drawings with either a narrating voice or sound effects or both. Used more commonly for public health campaigns, Werner finds that they can enliven a classroom and especially online teaching. Werner makes the case that these short videos create public history engagement on several levels, for the historians, the subjects (who often contribute oral histories), and the audience. Warner argues that these short films create an especially strong emotional connection for both producers and audiences because their use of drawings (comics) allows them to seem both personal and universal.In “Conserving the Historic Stone Walls of New England,” Robert Thorson focuses on New England’s stone walls, the interpretation of which “provides new opportunities to thread together historical, archaeological, aesthetic, geological, and ecological interests.” These structures, Thorson argues, “have become dominant portals through which residents and tourists experience early American history in the Northeast, especially New England.” Using a multi-step approach, Thorson shows how preservation and interpretation of these walls can provide a rich resource for public historians.We continue to explore social media as a place for public history production in Felipe Caro Romero’s review essay, “Virtual Tools for IRL Problems: Reviewing the Construction of Queer History Online.” Caro examines seven Instagram pages in both English and Spanish that document and analyze the queer past. As he states, the “sharing of queer history on the internet is an important intervention against its censorship elsewhere.”Finally, please join me in thanking for their service outgoing editorial board members Paige Roberts, Samantha Rosenthal, and Kendall Tallmadge Tryhane, and in welcoming our new members, Bethanee Bemis, Evan Faulkenbury, Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan, and Tara Y. White.

In lieu of a traditional presidential address during the 2024 annual National Council on Public History (NCPH) Meeting in Salt Lake City, I decided to draw on my skills and experience as an oral historian to spotlight the wealth of knowledge and experience of women of color who have been the “first” in their respective public history roles. I, too, was a first: the first person of color to serve as president of our organization in its forty-four-year history. There always has to be a first, and that position comes with its burdens and its privileges.I have spent my entire career as a public historian listening to the stories of our communities and trying to make space for new voices in our historical work. It has been my pleasure and my honor to work with our staff, our board, and our committees over these past four years—first as vice president and then as president—to prioritize creating a welcoming community for an increasingly diverse membership. This work comes in many forms, both social and structural. I am proud of the efforts NCPH has made to listen to and learn from the experiences of the people of color in our communities about their experiences as public historians as well as their experiences with our organization. Structurally, our work to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment includes a focus on diversity and accessibility programming supported by our endowment, the elevation of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility task force to committee status, concerted work to diversify our committee appointments, an emphasis on these issues in the long-range planning process, and the creation of the Diversity Travel Award. Of course, this is just the beginning of a long process of learning and listening that future generations of leadership will need to carry forward.With these goals in mind, on a Saturday morning in April, I sat down with three amazing women to discuss their perspectives on public history and on being women of color in the field. Amber N. Mitchell is the founding Curator of Black History at The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Detroit, Michigan. Lacey Wilson is the Project Manager of the Teen Museum Studies program of the Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, New York. Nicole Martinez-LeGrand is the Curator of Multicultural Collections at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis. Each of these women has lived the experience of being the first, and sometimes, the only, women of color in their organization. Our conversation about these experiences surfaces the difficulties and rewards of taking on these leadership positions: isolation, miscommunication with colleagues, undue outreach and advocacy tasks, challenging norms, addressing cultural competencies, but also joy, fostering a more supportive environment for future generations, and deepening community bonds and engagement. Some elements of this conversation were uncomfortable, but in this time of historical urgency, participating in conversations such as this is our path to growth and to making space for a more diverse future.I invite you to read the transcript of our discussion, edited for clarity, and to reflect on how our community can move forward together.