The importance of “vernacular” space in public history can be explored in Delores Hayden's The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Through several case studies of projects that utilize alternative approaches to the preservation and interpretation of sites diametrically opposed to the elite preservation practices of the past, Hayden demonstrated that public history could “attend everyone’s past” (Hayden 1995, 3). Hayden's collaborative projects involved interdisciplinary teams of historians, architects, planners, artists, and others to “to find ways to rebuild public memory in the city around different sites and buildings” (Hayden 1995, xv). Hayden emphasizes that a broad “conceptual framework” is necessary to promote a projects work to create an inclusive story of who we are as Americans which focuses on “subtle evocation of American diversity, which at the same time reinforces our sense of common membership in the American, urban society” (Hayden 1995, 8-9). Public space, the Power of Place Project contends, is the key to cultivating this inclusive American identity.
For much of the history of American historic preservation, the built environments that held the stories of marginalized groups have been ignored in favor of sites that showcased wealth and power. This has placed the stories of elite, white men front and center in the realm of public history and has created a diminished sense of civic identity for many. This loss is what the Power of Place Project attempts to change by “reconsidering strategies for the representation of women's history and ethnic history in public places, as well as for the preservation of places themselves” (Hayden 1995, 11). Though Hayden presents several interesting case studies from the Power of Place Project, one in particular is striking for its ability to cross many fields and create a reach that can connect from a singular individual to broad themes in a community’s and, indeed, America’s history.
The story of Biddy Mason, an enslaved midwife brought across the country from Mississippi to Los Angeles, sought her freedom, and won is remarkable in and of itself. The ramifications of her victory and subsequent settlement in Los Angeles created a multitude of impacts that touches on legal, medical, racial, and gender history in addition to the history of the physical place of her homestead itself that provides "glimpses of the urban world she struggled to create” (Hayden 1995, 140-141). The site of Mason’s homestead had become a parking lot when planners from the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency approached Hayden and the Power of Place Project to create a commemoration on the site (Hayden 1995, 170-171).
The site was in a prime location for the resulting collaborative exhibits that accomplished the Project's goals of not merely telling the story of Biddy Mason, her struggle for freedom, her work as a midwife, and her numerous legacies, but more than merely the focus on Mason as an individual, the project was also able to contextualize her story into a broader storytelling of the "shapes of time" of the city as a part of the “overall historical narrative” which encourages the viewer to “contemplate change...in both space and time” using the built environment as the medium with which the story of one remarkable woman could be preserved (Hayden 1995, 172, 181, 187, 228). The Biddy Mason project exemplifies that the history of a place can be the common ground upon which inclusive urban landscape history can be found and that a new sense of place can grow from the acceptance of diversity.
Bibliography
Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995.
Images from The Historical Marker Database, Craig Baker, photographer, February 28, 2021, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=180005
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