Partner or Pariah? – Academic attitudes to history work by mill hands at Cooleemee, North Carolina

Abstract

Research by the author into the use of museums to restore community identity after industrial decline suggested working-class people’s use of history was profound and far-reaching. It also showed that the working classes might be at risk of exclusion from this opportunity to regain identity, because the middle classes tended to assume that they lacked interest in history or would not ‘appreciate’ museum facilities. More worrying still, one case study museum – The Textile Heritage Center, Cooleemee, North Carolina – felt rebuffed by the academic community, other museums, and funding bodies, because of their association with, and championship of, a working-class, predominantly white community. If some groups are being given that impression, then it is time to revise academic attitudes towards the poor, and time to truly listen to the ‘inarticulate’.