In This Issue: Fall 2005 – Northeast Ohio Journal of History

In The Current Issue:

From its inception, the Northeast Ohio Journal of History has endeavored to make the best use of the technology available to provide our readers with a high-quality alternative to print-only periodicals. From the virtual museum exhibit that has been a feature of every issue, to the recently-added interactive discussion board function, we have tried to take full advantage of the possibilities open to online journal.

This issue of NOJH provides yet another exciting new example of the potential of electronic publishing. For the first time, we are publishing an article that is accompanied by video clips. Kenneth Bindas and Molly Merryman examine the intersections of race, discrimination, class, gender, and memory during the civil rights era in their feature article, “Out of the Shadows: Informal Segregation in Warren, Ohio, 1954-1964.” After reading the article, click on our “Exhibit” section to visit some of the oral history clips the authors used as source material. As compelling as these video clips are, we hope other authors will be encouraged by this precedent to submit articles accompanied by video or sound files for future issues.

Our “Notes and Comments” section features a piece by Gregory Wilson describing the million-dollar “Teaching American History” grant he wrote in conjunction with the Akron Public Schools. The three-year professional development program for elementary and secondary school teachers is already underway and has brought in nationally-recognized scholars to participate. “Public History Partnerships through the Teaching American History Program” highlights projects from the Akron, Cleveland, and Youngstown areas.

While you are visiting the journal, please take the time to drop by our new discussion board. Taking advantage of the technology available to us as an electronic journal, we believe this new feature will make our journal more interactive and serve to engender substantive debate, discussion, and exchange of information for all people interested in the history of Ohio.

In addition to the usual book reviews, we also encourage the reader to explore the other features of our site. For those who missed earlier issues, please visit our “Archives” link, which contains the entire contents of previous volumes. We have expanded our “Research Links” feature, adding not only more primary sources but also more links to local historical agencies. We strongly encourage the reader to suggest or send new links for this page. The same is true for items in “Current History,” which is a clearinghouse for information on events of a historical nature in Northeast Ohio. Because we update this section constantly, please feel free to send announcements for it at any time.

We would also like to remind our readers that printer-friendly versions accompany each article and review. These PDF files are not only easier on the eyes when printed, but also contain basic issue data and page numbers for convenience in citation.

As always, please address any inquiries about this project (or about any other aspect of the journal) to the editor at kkern @ uakron. edu. We welcome all comments and suggestions.

Kevin Kern

Contributors:

Kenneth J. Bindas is a Professor of History at Kent State University and teaches at the Trumbull campus. He has published widely exploring the intersection of politics, culture, and ideology, especially during the Depression era, including “All This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA’s Federal Music Project,” and “Swing, That Modern Sound.” This year will see the publication of “Hoover Chickens and Other Tales of the Great Depression: Oral History, Memory, and the American South.”

Ann Bowers is the recently retired director of the Center for Archival Collections, Bowling Green State University. She now serves the Center as the part-time archivist for the National Student Affairs Archives. She has been an instructor in the Department of History teaching courses in women’s history, Ohio history, and public history.

W. Sherman Jackson, Associate Professor of History at Miami University, specializes in American Constitutional History and Law, Presidential Studies, Civil War and Reconstruction. His current projects are “LBJ and the Age of Segregation” and “The Civil War Amendments: An Era of Constitutional Reform.” He is the author of Reconstruction: the Lost Promise and co-editor of Black Scientists and Inventors.Dr. Jackson has served on the advisory committee for the National Underground Railroad Museum and as history consultant to the National Park service.

Kevin Kern is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Akron and Managing editor of the Northeast Ohio Journal of History. He specializes in the fields of Ohio history and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States social and intellectual history. Dr. Kern is currently working on a study of the Galton Society (an early twentieth-century eugenics organization) and its influence on the development of American Anthropology.

G. Richard Kern is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Findlay. He specializes in the history of religion and is the author of John Winebrenner: 19th Century Reformer and Findlay College: The First Hundred Years.

Molly Merryman is an assistant professor of Justice Studies at Kent State University, where she also has faculty affiliations with History, LGBT Studies, and Women’s Studies. She is currently editing a broadcast documentary on the topic addressed in this journal piece.

Gregory Wilson is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Akron, specializing in environmental history, public history, and the United States since 1945. His is currently working on two publications: an article that will appear in the International Journal of Social History in 2002 entitled “’Our Chronic and Desperate Situation’: Pennsylvania, Deindustrialization, and the Emergence of Redevelopment Policy in the United States, 1945-1965” and a forthcoming chapter in Beyond the Ruins: Deindustrialization and the Meanings of Modern America titled “Deindustrialization, Poverty, and Federal Area Redevelopment in the United States, 1945-1965,” which will be published by Cornell University Press in 2003. Dr. Wilson is also the Publication Director of the Northeast Ohio Journal of History.

In The Current Issue:

Feature Article:

Book Reviews:

Notes and Comments:

Contributors: