Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ABSTRACT
That historical interpretation is politically interested has become a truism. Certain
histories flourish while others are marginalized. Labor struggle is one such marginalized
history, yet it retains a vital presence for many people. In working at the Ludlow
Massacre Site, we must engage these subaltern histories and the people who guard them.
To understand how the memories of the Ludlow Massacre are kept alive, we surveyed
visitors at Ludlow and at a nearby local history museum. These surveys illuminate some
of the ways in which submerged histories are maintained even as they are silenced in the
broader public sphere.
Mark Walker
The Survey
In the summer of 1997 as part of my research into the memory of Ludlow, we
conducted a survey of visitors to Ludlow and to a historical house museum in the
Trinidad. In a two-week period we surveyed 115 people at Ludlow and 102 at the
Trinidad Museum. The purpose of the surveys was to identify differences in the class of
the visitors and in the reasons for their visits, the ultimate goal being to get some idea of
the relationship between class and historical consciousness in relation to the Ludlow
Massacre Site. We perceive Ludlow as preserving a counter-hegemonic history, as
having importance to certain segments of the public precisely because it ran counter to
dominant conceptions of US history. The survey at the Trinidad Museum, which falls
more within the mainstream of US historical interpretation, was for comparative
purposes.
We recorded a number of variables, the important ones for this discussion being
those relating to the class of the visitors and their historical consciousness. It is very
important to note here that class and historical consciousness are not things that can be
precisely defined through survey questionnaires. They are historical relations that we can
only approximate. The variables I used to get at Class were union membership, and the
visitor’s occupation and parent’s occupations. The occupations I grouped into the
familiar categories of white-collar and blue-collar occupations, equating these with
Middle Class and Working Class respectively. Business Owners were a third grouping
that I lumped in with the middle class since the focus of this research is on working-class
attitudes. For this survey, the visitors’ occupational grouping approximates their Class
Position, and that of their parents, their Class Background, and I use these terms from
here on. Recording Class Background was an attempt to recover something of the
subjective experience of class that comes from upbringing and family.
The variables relating to historical consciousness were the number of historical
sites they had visited in the past year, and, in relation to Ludlow or Trinidad, how they
knew about the site, why they visited it, and how often. At Ludlow, we also asked
whether the visitors were aware of the Ludlow Massacre before they visited the site. For
the purposes of this paper, each of the variables relating to Historical Consciousness was
cross-tabulated with Class, Class Background, and Union Membership, and the
significance of the association tested using Chi-square tests. The level of significance
was set at 0.05.
The purpose of recording the number of visits to historical sites was to assess the
extent the respondents participated in the discourse of official historical narratives that
comprise most public history sites. This response has an obvious subjective component.
Most visitors were understandably vague as to the number, and could only offer an
estimate. Even though we confined it to sites with some sort of designation as "historic"
(as opposed to, for example, weekend bottle-collecting expeditions in the canyons), there
was still some plenty of room for variation. One visitor, having recently encountered the
British heritage industry, was unsure whether her trip to England counted as a visit to
hundreds of historic sites or simply one big one. In the end, the Number of Historic Sites
Visited must be seen simply as the respondent's perception of their historic site visitation,
rather than an objective figure.
Whether or not the visitor belonged to a union was not a significant factor in
Historical Site Visitation, but Class Position and Class Background were. Working class
visitors and those from working class families were less likely to visit historical sites than
other classes. Twenty-two percent of the working class visitors had not visited any
historical sites in the past year, as opposed to only 5% of the middle class visitors. The
same pattern occurred just considering Class Background. Of those from working-class
families, 19% had not visited any historic sites, compared to 4% of those from middle-
class families. There are a number of possible reasons for this pattern, but at the very
least it does highlight that there is a class component to historical site visitation.
In comparing visitation to Ludlow to that at Trinidad, Class Position was not a
significant factor, which was contrary to my initial expectations. What was significant
was Class Background. Forty percent of the visitors to Ludlow were from working-class
families, compared to 29% of those at Trinidad. Unsurprisingly, Ludlow also had
significantly more union visitors (31% as opposed to 15%).
Just looking at Ludlow, the importance of Class Background over Class Position
was an important pattern. Visitors from working-class families were significantly more
likely be aware of the history of Ludlow than people from middle-class backgrounds—
57% as opposed to 32%. I also considered how people came to know about the site of
Ludlow, whether through education, tourist information, being from the area, or simply
the highway sign on I-25. Class Background was again the significant factor. Eighty
percent of the middle-class visitors found out about the site simply because they saw the
highway sign for “The Ludlow Massacre Memorial Site” and pulled over for a rest break.
The expectation in these cases was generally for an “Indian Massacre”. Only 51% of the
working-class background visitors found out about the site through the sign. Generally
they knew of the site because they lived or had lived in the area (23%), or because
someone had told them about the site (16%).
This is a very quick sketch of some of the finding of this survey. To summarize,
people from working-class positions and backgrounds are less likely to visit designated
historical sites. However, compared to the Trinidad History Museum, a mainstream
historic site, Ludlow was more likely to have visitors from working class backgrounds.
Those people most likely to be aware of the history of Ludlow were also those from
working class backgrounds. They tended to have found out about the site informally,
either through living in the area or being told about it.
These data were in some ways not what I expected given Ludlow’s importance in
preserving a counter-hegemonic history. A strong working-class association would
certainly have been nice, although the use of Ludlow as a meeting place by unions and
the annual UMWA commemorative service already highlights this proprietorship. But
the data from this survey are suggestive of the ways in which these silenced histories
survive, through family relations and local networks. History is created not just in
lectures, textbooks, and scholarly articles, but also around the kitchen table.
In working at Ludlow and trying to realize this work as action in the present, we
move from the study of history to that of memory and history making. We leave the
familiar practices and attitudes of academic professionals and entering a terrain where the
past is intimate, explicitly useful, and its meanings are jealously guarded. We tell
ourselves we can see a difference.
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