03_Empowering Citizen Scholars: Lessons Learned from the History Harvest

Abstract

The History Harvest is a community-centered, student-driven archival project that empowers community voices through material-based oral histories. Over the course of a semester, History Harvest students partner with a community to run an event in which community members bring artifacts of significance. Students record community members as they tell stories about their objects and digitize the artifacts for a shared online archive. The community members then take their items back home; there is no acquisition. This one-day event is a bit like Antiques Roadshow, except everything is valuable. More than a singular event, however, the History Harvest can be a litmus test for the success of a community partnership.

Wingo’s first History Harvest was with the Rondo community, a historically African American neighborhood in Saint Paul, MN, bisected by the construction of I-94 in the 1960s. The community has been fighting for recognition of what happened to them ever since. Wingo will discuss the multitude of public history projects that formed in the wake of the harvest, demonstrating the value of forming long-term partnerships, and including lessons learned about community engagement.