LAKE PLACID — John Brown Lives! recently hosted “The Long Table” at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid.
The event featured a conversation between Tanya Jones, sociologist and Timbuctoo descendant; Dr. Lisa Yun Lee, cultural activist and executive director of the National Public Housing Museum; and Tiffany Rea-Fisher, performing artist and director of the Adirondack Diversity Initiative.
This was not Lee’s first visit to the John Brown Farm Historic Site in Lake Placid.
“I’m really interested in not just the historic site, but all of the story and I’m really intrigued by the long struggle for justice and the way that history has been reinterpreted,” she said.
Lee’s resume includes previous director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, an 1889 settlement house in Chicago, Illinois.
“At that time, I sort of re-imagined the exhibits and also at that time redid the core exhibition and programming in order to make that history more inclusive and expansive. I am currently the director of the National Public Housing Museum, which is a historic house located in the last remaining building the one of the first public housing projects in the United States.” Lee said. “My work there is also thinking about how do we interpret history in order to make it relevant for today’s issues. Say for example, if you’re a historic site that has dealt with immigration, then as a Site of Conscience, which is a special designation, then you would be required and asked to think about how does this history inform this moment of ICE raids.”
Over the last 20 years, Lee has worked closely with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the only worldwide network of Sites of Conscience.
“A Site of Conscience is a place of memory – such as a historic site, place-based museum or memorial – that prevents this erasure from happening in order to foster more just and humane societies today. Not only do Sites of Conscience provide safe spaces to remember and preserve even the most traumatic memories, but they enable their visitors to make connections between the past and related contemporary human rights issues,” according to sitesofconscience.org
“So the invitation was because of my experience and engagement with the International Sites of Conscience, which is what the John Brown site recently has been accepted and is also formally acknowledged as a Site of Conscience,” Lee said. “John Brown as a historic site has been grappling with how do we expand the story to tell stories about all the people who’ve lived on that site and to engage this history in a way that connects with the most pressing issues of our day? So for example, whether you’re thinking about abolition or mass incarceration or police violence or ongoing conversations around immigration, how might the John Brown Historic Site relate to this moment?”
A Site of Conscience is not only committed to telling past history, but connecting it with the present.
“And also insisting that you cannot solve today’s problems without going back in time and asking we have not yet learned from the past,” Lee said.
Housing insecurity is one of the most important political issues for her museum today.
“The question for us is how do you connect this history and try to solve issues of housing? But I think one of the reasons why I was invited to also come is this is a really critical and contentious moment for all of us in America. There’s a big battleground happening around who gets to tell history. The President has issued his Restoring Truth and Sanity (to American History) Executive Order, which demands that you tell positive histories of America. One of the questions for historic sites whether you are a plantation or the John Brown site or frankly any historical site in the United States, if you’re only to tell ‘positive’ history, you wouldn’t be able to tell the full history of any particular historic site,” she said.
Lee came to John Brown Farm during a moment when the federal government took down the history of enslaved people in Philadelphia, and a moment when the federal government insists the Smithsonian censors the history it tells.
“John Brown as a historic site has a critical question to ask itself: How does it tell its history and stay true to its vision, mission, and values given what is happening at this moment?” she said.
The work of the Sites of Conscience is to take things, which may seem on first blush as separate eras and movements in American history, and connect them.
“Chinese Exclusion Act is 1882. John Brown Raid is 1859. But for us as Americans and us as sort of global citizens of this moment to ask, what might these moments have in common with one another? What can we learn from each history in order to make today a better place for all of us? So this denial of certain people, and immigrant bans, and Chinese laborers, and prisons definitely has intersections with John Brown and how we think about it,” Lee said.
Asked what people do do if they’re feeling powerless or hopeless, Lee cited cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
“It’s always been people coming together across boundaries of difference and offering one another solidarity that has created the change in the world. So I think us gathering together in times and realizing our collective power and that we’re never by ourselves, and sort of being fearless in talking to people who actually have different ideas, and also realizing we share a common humanity is really important. Also defending historic sites like John Brown and other places and insisting that the powers that be can’t erase our collective history. and that just because it’s difficult history or it’s hard history, it’s very important for us to preserve this history and to make sure we understand how it can be better for all of us in the future,” she said.
Lee feels empowered whenever she visits a truth-telling historic site that brings people together.
“This event represents not just the commitment to truth and history, but to each one of us recognizing one another’s power and the joy of coming together. It’s called the Long Table, right. It’s coming together to break bread and share with one another and each other’s stories. It’s those kind of commitments to every day acts of generosity and friendship and citizenship that actually makes the world better,” she said.
Lee’s work at different historic sites always lives in the realm of how do we tell history in order to make it relevant to today’s most pressing issues.
“How do we let people know you can’t solve the problems of today without going back in time. This kind of event is so critical especially in these times when there is sort of this Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History Act targets cultural and historical institutions and is trying to whitewash history. There’s nothing more important today than the work we are doing at John Brown,” she said.