“Excuse me,” a visitor asked as they tapped my shoulder. I was leading a tour group for the National Parks of Boston. We were standing inside Faneuil Hall and just about to hit the Freedom Trail. Faneuil Hall was the social, political, and commercial heart of colonial Boston. It also was an arena for action and resistance before, during, and after the American Revolution. The visitor inquired, “Is this one of those woke tours?”1
I paused. I thought he was joking at first but he waited for a response. “What do you mean?” I replied.
He asked if the tour was “political.” I told him that our tour was about the American Revolution in Boston, so yes. He said “okay,” but looked unsatisfied.
The question caught me off guard and I chewed on it for days afterward. The visitor seemed to think I possessed some sort of ulterior motive, that I was here to advocate a political position through the medium of historical storytelling.
It made me wonder: when is history advocacy and when is it not? The answer is complicated and depends on the time and place.
Outside of Faneuil Hall in the winter. Photo provided by the author.
In the late nineteenth century, when US history as a profession was in its infancy, historians were predominantly wealthy, white, Protestant males from the Northeast. To give legitimacy and credibility to this emerging field of scholarship, its early practitioners modeled the discipline of history on the quantitative practices of scientific research, which meant gathering large amounts of data and tracking variations over time. Historians discouraged subjective thinking and instead encouraged a sterile, objective, truth-seeking approach.2 This attitude created a foundational state of the field based on their privileged realities. But as women, people of color, and people from under-resourced backgrounds began to enter the field as colleagues, they brought with them different lived experiences and perspectives that informed new historical narratives.
These new narratives disrupted the status quo which centered white males as the primary historical actors in American history. They upset power dynamics, gave voice to the silenced, and offered space to the marginalized. Through their teaching and writing, these historians advocated for respect, dignity, and inclusion in historical records that had previously excluded them. They took a stand that their stories mattered too. This could not have been possible without drawing upon their own experiences, backgrounds, and contexts. American history thus pivoted away from narratives emphasizing white, Euro-American elites, to, by the mid-20th century, accounts reflecting the experiences of workers, women, racial and ethnic non-whites, and many others.3 In doing so, they revealed that historical objectivity was a fallacy. People alive in their own times and places shape and are shaped by the world around them.
The interior of Faneuil Hall. Photo provided by the author.
In 2002, the National Park Service published its Long-Range Interpretive Plan for Boston National Historical Park, where I work as a seasonal ranger.4 The plan called for new research on the colonial slave trade and the lives of people of color in colonial Boston. Rangers began to refocus their attention on the legacy of Peter Faneuil, the building’s namesake and benefactor. Faneuil was a wealthy Boston merchant complicit in the Atlantic slave trade, and rangers brought these details to light. This new interpretation complicated the established historical narrative of Faneuil Hall as a bastion of American patriotism and freedom by exposing a major contradiction: that the so-called “Cradle of Liberty” was built with funds derived in part from the institution of slavery. Born of this effort was a local movement to rename Faneuil Hall, given Faneuil’s own connections to slavery. The movement sparked a spirited public debate and the city installed an exhibit about the history of slavery in Boston in the basement and first floor.
The author conducting a Freedom Trail tour. Photo provided by the author.
Through the 2010s and since, Americans have experienced a reckoning with its legacy of white supremacy by removing Confederate memorials from public spaces. There is an alternative side to this mode of thinking. History also can be used as a force against advocacy, or, put another way, to advocate for the status quo. As historian Sarah Maza reminds us, challenging an established historical narrative “is almost inevitably fraught and usually meets with enormous resistance.”5
One recent example of this resistance was the reaction to The New York Times’ 1619 Project. This body of work constituted a seismic historiographical shift. The dominant and mainstream narrative of US history grounds the founding of the country in the American Revolution; The 1619 Project, however, uprooted the idea and sought to ground America’s founding in the introduction of African chattel slavery to colonial North America in the year 1619.
The first Trump administration responded to The 1619 Project by creating the 1776 Commission. Executive Order 13958 which established the commission charged that because students were learning diverse histories of the founding era, they were ultimately being “taught in school to hate their own country.”6 The commission published a report that attempted to reaffirm the familiar founding narratives that had long centered white, Protestant, male elites.7 The Biden administration dissolved the commission the day Joe Biden was sworn in as president.
After taking power, the second Trump administration issued a similar proclamation, Executive Order 14190, threatening federal funding in K-12 schools that practice what the administration describes as “anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies.” The order also reestablished the 1776 Commission. As justification for the order, the administration charged that new and diverse interpretations of American history failed to provide students with “a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration” for the United States.8 In a joint statement, the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) said, “We reject the premise that it is ‘anti-American’ or ‘subversive’ to learn the full history of the United States with its rich and dramatic contradictions, challenges, and conflicts alongside its achievements, innovations, and opportunities.”9
When I conclude my Freedom Trail tours I always tell my visitors that history is not the past — it is an interpretation of the past. It is crucial to remember that one person’s history is another’s advocacy, and sometimes advocacy is used as an insult. Oftentimes, the word is used because a different historical narrative is challenging or outright rejecting one’s preferred narrative. But all historians advocate in some sense, whether for ideas or arguments or even people. Advocacy should not be a dirty word. It is fine to have good-faith disagreements about historical figures and events; that is what the historical process is about, competing arguments that win adherents based on the strength of fact-based evidence and analysis. I implore my visitors to scrutinize their source material and question what they think they already know. Healthy skepticism and honest scrutiny are crucial elements of an informed citizenry. I urge them to remember that all history is dyed in the color of the present moment. When we view history this way, we can see how advocacy at different times and in different places has affected our understanding of the past and the context of today.
After the tour, the unsatisfied visitor who asked if the tour was woke was the first person to approach me. He did so with a large smile and an outstretched hand. He thanked me. He even tried to tip me. Any suspicion he harbored seemed to have eroded. He finally seemed satisfied.
For this moment, at least.
Boston’s Faneuil Hall at night, Andrevruas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- The term “woke” is fluid and can be difficult to define. In recent years, “woke” has been co-opted by US conservatives and used as a pejorative to describe progressive stances on social justice issues, especially relating to matters of racial and gender equity.
- Sarah Maza, Thinking About History (The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 6.
- Sarah Maza, Thinking About History, 200.
- Seasonal rangers are National Park Service (NPS) rangers who staff NPS sites during tourist seasons. Their work can range from historical interpretation and educational programming to science and stewardship to law enforcement.
- Sarah Maza, Thinking About History, 6.
- Donald J. Trump (1st Term), Executive Order 13958—Establishing the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, The American Presidency Project, Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/346695
- The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. The 1776 Report, Jan. 2021, trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf.
- Donald J. Trump (2nd Term), Executive Order 14190—Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling, The American Presidency Project, Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/376053
- “AHA–OAH Statement on Executive Order ‘Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,’” issued by the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, February 5, 2025, https://www.historians.org/news/aha-oah-statement-on-executive-order-ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/
