{"id":2151,"date":"2019-10-13T22:38:21","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T03:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dixonhistory.com\/news\/?p=2151"},"modified":"2019-11-30T20:04:29","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T01:04:29","slug":"constructing-history-through-collective-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dixonhistory.com\/news\/constructing-history-through-collective-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"The People’s View: Constructing History through Collective Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The People’s View: Constructing History through Collective memory is an article published by the San Fransisco Musem of Modern Art in April 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Mike Dixon first met Rein Jelle Terpstra in a bowling alley parking lot<\/g> in Elkton, Maryland, in 2015. Terpstra, an artist from the Netherlands interested in the connections between perception and memory, had come to town the day before doing research for The People\u2019s View <\/em>(2014\u201318). The project aimed to collect photographs, home movies, and stories from people<\/g> who had witnessed Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s funeral train as it traveled<\/g> from New York City to Washington, D.C., on June 8, 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Terpstra had been hanging around an out-of-service train station in \nElkton, looking for people who had been there that day 50 years ago. \nWhen he noticed the Elk Lanes bowling center across the street, he went \nover to investigate and saw senior bowling on the schedule for the next \nmorning. Returning early that day, he approached the man at the desk, \nwho took the microphone and introduced him over the loud speakers. While\n friendly, the bowlers didn\u2019t have any train photographs, but they did \nhave a suggestion: call Mike Dixon. Terpstra reached out to Dixon, who \ntold him, \u201cHold on, wait half an hour there. Don\u2019t move.\u201d And he \ninterviewed Terpstra with a reporter from the Cecil Whig,<\/em> a local paper, in the parking lot. After that initial meeting, Dixon began helping Terpstra find leads in Cecil County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A local Maryland historian specializing in social and community history<\/g>, Dixon says, \u201cMy whole practice is around the people who do not make<\/g> the headlines. And [Terpstra\u2019s] not looking for the professional journalists, the photographers, the politicians; he\u2019s looking for the memories of everyday people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n