From the Editor | Phillip Guerty | A Century of Change | Vol 21 No 2 | April 2007

From the Editor

Teaching Lincoln and the Constitution

Phillip Guerty

This issue of the OAH Magazine of History is unique in a couple of ways. It celebrates the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Organization of American Historians and, in so doing, also allows us a chance to look back at the changes in historical research, writing, and instruction since 1907. Looking over some of the older records of the organization and the past issues of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review—the predecessor to the Journal of American History—I am impressed by how much the OAH has changed over the last century and how much it has grown.

The professional world of history in 1907 was much different than the one we know today. It was comprised almost entirely of white men who wrote mostly about the deeds of white men. Of the first seventy five presidents of the MVHA and the OAH, for example, only two were women—Louise P. Kellogg and Gerda Lerner—and one was African American (John Hope Franklin). Over time, the organization became more diverse. The number of women members has increased significantly and currently comprises a third of our membership, a percentage comparable to the profession as a whole. Racial and ethnic diversity in OAH has also increased, with 7 percent of our members self-identifying as African American, Latino/a, Asian American, or Native American. As Executive Director Lee Formwalt recently observed, however, these figures also reveal that although we have expanded our representation, more change is still needed.

At the same time that the OAH was becoming more diverse, it was also growing in size and incorporating all practitioners of history. In 1931, it had over 1,000 members. By 1949 this figure had doubled and ten years after that the membership had grown to 3,000. Currently, the OAH is as large as ever with 9,500 members. The organization has also grown beyond the learned society envisioned by the founders. Fifteen percent of our members identify themselves as public historians, 19 percent as precollegiate teachers, and 4.5 percent as professors at community colleges.

The scholarly interests of OAH members have also changed over the years and now include a range of approaches and methods that would have astounded the founders. In a recent survey, social history ranked at the top of members' scholarly areas of interest, followed by cultural history, political history, gender history, and African American history. The themes of the OAH Magazine of History reflect these interests and, in a survey done last month, subscribers listed "Social Movements in the 1960s," "Vietnam," "The American West," and "Jim Crow" as their favorite recent issues of the Magazine.

This issue of the Magazine links the changes in the OAH over the last century with those in the profession as a whole. As James Banner notes in his introduction, historians working in 1907 "would not recognize what their discipline had become one-hundred years later." Inside we touch upon some of these changes by focusing on several areas of scholarly research. Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser trace the growth of social history, while Sean Wilentz looks at political histories. David Hollinger analyzes the rise of intellectual history as a valid field of study and Emily Rosenberg reviews the ways that historians have understood the place of the U.S. within a world context. Both Diane Ravitch and Julie Reuben explore history education in schools, colleges, and universities over the last hundred years. Carrie Hoefferle provides an insightful teaching strategy for incorporating historiography into survey classes. Subscribers can also access bonus content in the form of three additional teaching strategies by Karen Cobb Carroll, Robert Cassanello and Stephen Engle online at <http://www.oah.org/magazine/>. Thanks to Jim and the contributing authors for putting together a fantastic issue that not only celebrates our centennial, but will undoubtedly serve as a valuable classroom resource for many years.

I want to also thank the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for continuing to provide primary source documents from their collection and for helping us again provide the Magazine of History free to members of the National Council for History Education. To our NCHE readers, I encourage you to contribute to future issues of the Magazine by submitting teaching resource columns. Forthcoming issues include Military History, Lincoln and Race, American Religions, and Human Rights. Contact us by email for deadlines and style guidelines.

We are taking a short break from the America on the World Stage series in this issue and will resume in July with Mark Noll's exploration of the global context of religion and reform in the United States in the nineteenth century.