This Historian’s display for the 2022 RSS conference inaugurated the Hidden History project.  Consisting of 3 posters, each one was loosely organized around a central theme: “Forgotten Footsteps;” “Lost Literature;” and “Missing Memories.”

The theme for the first poster was ‘Forgotten Footsteps’ and focused on Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Charles S. Johnson and their linkages to rural sociology. 

The organizing theme for the center poster was ‘Lost Literature’ and provides a glimpse into a selection of individuals in rural sociology and their research and work on race/ethnicity including Allen B. Doggett Jr., Minnie Miller Brown, Lewis Wade Jones, and William P. Kuvelesky. 

The third poster focused on ‘Missing Memories’ providing stories surrounding race and racism in rural sociology and RSS’s past.

Included are brief stories including the RSS’s 1947 resolution reading in part that: “meetings of the Society be held at places which are accessible to or which provide appropriate accommodations to other than those of the White race” and the small role that RSS played in research funding for 1890 Land Grant institutions.

The final story was intentionally chosen to reflect that there are also moments in our collective history that are revelatory for different reasons.  Difficult stories such as this one need to be remembered alongside the others so that we don’t forget how they became hidden from our history in the first place.

On tables in front of the posters were copies of publications such as those by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, Vernon Malan, and Minnie Miller Brown as well as recent works such as “Emancipatory Empiricism: The Rural Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois” by Joseph Jakubek and Spencer D. Wood and “Institutions Under Influence: The Case of Knowledge Stratification Within the U.S. Land Grant System” by Rosalind Harris.