News of the Profession

OAH and NPS Designate Desegregation Landmark

The Organization of American Historians is pleased to announce the designation of five national historic landmarks as a result of the organization’s ongoing collaboration with the National Park Service (NPS). In 2000, the OAH and the NPS jointly produced a theme study on the history of school desegregation, which sought to identify historically significant sites related to this part of American history. In the four years since Racial Desegregation in Public Education was released, five of the properties mentioned in the report have received landmark designation, the highest honor given a property for its connections to the past. These properties include the following:

• The Daisy Bates House. This modest residence in Little Rock served as an impromptu command center for local activists during the Central High crisis of 1957, which culminated in President Eisenhower’s calling out federal troops.
• The Bizzell Library, University of Oklahoma. The state’s attempts to bar graduate student George McLaurin from the university inspired him to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine. The library was the setting for the events that led to the 1950 Supreme Court decision McLaurin v. Oklahoma.
• New Kent School and George W. Watkins School. These two rural Virginia schools were the focus of the 1968 Green v. New Kent County Supreme Court decision, which defined the standards by which compliance with desegregation law would be judged.
• Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall, and Founders Library. On the campus of Howard University in Washington, DC, these buildings have a long association with African American intelligentsia. The talent and ideas that developed here would prove instrumental when the struggle for civil rights moved to the legal arena.
• John Philip Sousa Junior High School. Site of a dramatic episode of brinkmanship by activists in Washington, DC. African American students were turned away for the 1950 school year at all-white Sousa, prompting a legal challenge and resulting in the 1954 Bolling v. Sharpe decision, another blow to the “separate but equal” doctrine.

The complete text of Racial Desegregation in Public Education, authored by OAH members Waldo E. Martin Jr., Susan Salvatore, Vicki L. Ruiz, Harvard Sitkoff, and Patricia Sullivan, is available online at <http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/nhl/school.htm>

A related issue of the OAH Magazine of History, designed to bring the history of school desegregation into the classroom, is available at <http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/deseg/.

OAH Purchases New Membership Information System

JL Systems, Inc. of Arlington, Virgina <http://www.jlsystems.com/>, was awarded the contract this summer to convert the organization’s nine-year-old membership database system to its NOAH Association Management System. Once fully operational in March 2005, the NOAH information system will allow the OAH executive office to better serve the needs of its members while managing the growth in the organization’s individual member and institutional subscriber base.

We expect the database conversion process to minimally effect the daily operations of the membership office. However, we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding in the coming months.

Kean Wins Teaching Award

First Lady Laura Bush presents former OAH Executive Board member Kathleen Kean (above, left) the Preserve America History Teacher of the Year Award by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Preserve America. Kean, a teacher at Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin, graduated from Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a B.A. in history before going on to earn an M.A. in history from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Among her many accomplishments, Kean cofounded Historic Milwaukee, Inc., a historic preservation organization, and was awarded the OAH Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau Precollegiate Teaching Award in 2000. She has also contributed to the OAH Magazine of History.

A special project of Laura Bush, this is the first year for the Preserve America Award given by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History which selects outstanding teachers of American history from the fifty states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories. From these finalists a national winner is announced as the “National Preserve America History Teacher of the Year” in a ceremony in New York. For more information about the awards, visit The Gilder Lehrman institute at <http://www.gilderlehrman.org/> or Preserve America at <http://www.preserveamerica.gov/>.