HISTORY MATTERS WHEN YOU’RE NOT LOOKING

History matters more to history majors?

We like to think so, but history matters to everyone else, too.

It matters with personal history, house history, town history, business history, and the big history between nations.

The key to remember is that it always starts small. And it starts with one question:

What happened?

What happened in the top image was a repeat of history. It’s a window of the Oregon Historical Society museum. This is a post from last October during statue tipping season.

The museum took a hit then. People went inside and handled a few things. They broke the law when they went in, then broke museum law, the one museum law posted in every museum in the world:

DO NOT TOUCH

Museums play a different role than a store with a sign like “If You Break It You Bought It.”

No sign says, “If You Break In, It’s Yours For The Taking.”

Do not touch, or stand too close, or reach out. Do not be a museum jerk, don’t make a museum guard’s day worse.

Go in, walk around, read labels, buy something form the gift store. That’s a museum visit in twelve words.

Protecting Our State’s Cultural Legacy

History shapes people’s understanding of who they are as individuals and as members of a civilization. The Oregon Historical Society is a scholarly asset and a public resource dedicated to putting the power of history into everyone’s hands and to advancing knowledge in all corners of the world.

Consider becoming a museum member.

Breaking into a museum sends the wrong message no matter who you are or what you represent. The windows are for transparency, not an invite to shatter.

Besides, it has doors. If the doors are locked, then the museum is closed to the public.

If you need to get in, there’s this option:

Venue Rental

Located in the heart of downtown Portland and overlooking the historic South Park Blocks, the Oregon Historical Society offers the blend of the old, the new and the beautiful, creating a memorable venue for all occasions. The Historical Society is an ideal venue for weddings, receptions, award dinners, lectures, seminars, business meetings, holiday parties and birthday celebrations.

History Matters In Celebrations

History people come in all shapes and sizes, though most imagine History Fan as an older person with nothing better to do.

That’s the wrong picture, as wrong as History Fan portrayed as a breaking and entering protestor.

This is a museum with local and state records. If you buy a house in Portland, Oregon you can find out all you’d want to know. From the lot, to the block, to the section of town, it’s all on record.

If you are just passing through on a protest tour, skip the part about history protest.

Any doubts about a passion for history get swept away in this era of social media. People don’t connect the dots, but they are doing basic documentation with every food picture, cat picture, or pictures of gatherings.

Anything that establishes a point in time and the people present is historical documentation. You’ve been an active participant in history and didn’t know? Now you know.

The difference is in the word “Archive.”

People in the past didn’t have social media to post on, but a museum collects and shares their lives a hundred years later, two hundred years, a thousand years.

Instead of copy and paste thing, a view and delete deal, museums are forever. We count on them for the definitive last word.

No More History?

Don’t say that to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.

In 2001, an official Race Riot Commission was organized to review the details of the event. No one will ever know the absolute truth of what happened during the hours of the Race Massacre.

However, by examining historical resources, members of the Race Riot Commission determined a number of details to be undeniable. “These are not myths, not rumors, not speculations, not questioned. They are the historical record.”

Historical nomenclature means calling things what they are. Like the difference between a riot and a massacre.

In recent years there has been ongoing discussion about what to call the event that happened in 1921. Historically, it has been called the Tulsa Race Riot. Some say it was given that name at the time for insurance purposes. Designating it a riot prevented insurance companies from having to pay benefits to the people of Greenwood whose homes and businesses were destroyed. It also was common at the time for any large-scale clash between different racial or ethnic groups to be categorized a race riot.

What do YOU think about history matters?

Definition of RIOT: a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with common intent. Definition of MASSACRE: the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.

We go through our lifetimes in somewhat familiar ways. It’s called a culture. More than putting on makeup and your hair up pretty, and meeting somewhere in an Oregon city, the idea of culture gets a bad rap.

It feels exclusionary because no one goes out of their way to hear what culture even means.

“the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.“

Culture is how we live, what we eat, where we go, how we get there. It’s about family, how we raise kids, educate them, clothe them. From small things to huge, we live in a particular culture different than others.

Then we find out just how different, and make changes. Or we discover things we like from the past and work to bring them up to date.

There is a culture of protest and engagement. History matters the most when we aren’t looking, when we count on others to collect and exhibit the times we live in.

The No More History people will want to revisit their time, their era, and when they’re older.

Some kid will ask the question, the history question: “What was it like back then?”

Someone will start explaining, get a few things wrong, and off everyone goes on a mission to the history museum? Why?

To learn.

“What happened?”