As this semester starts to draw to a close, my class was assigned Thomas Cauvin's Public History: A Textbook of Practice in preparation for our presentations about the Hungerford property in Eatonville.
My assigned chapter was Chapter 12: Civic Engagement
and Social Justice. The point of this chapter is to demonstrate show how public
history can be used in social justice efforts. This chapter can be divided into
two major sections. The first half goes through the many minority groups left
out by standard history, and how they have been represented in recent years. While
some groups have begun to receive strong representation like Native Americans,
most minority groups have struggled to receive full attention. While Native American
museums are able to find strong connections with the tribes they represent,
most groups struggle to come to a consensus on how their groups are represented.
Other groups like the LGBT community struggle to even get the attention of historians.
The second half of the chapter focuses on how these efforts can allow for a
reconciliation with the past. By bringing more attention to the mistreated groups
of the past, historians allow people today to learn about and make amends for
the faults of the past. While making amends can take many forms, reconciliation
begins by simply presenting and preserving the history of these groups.
For the Hungerford presentation, I decided to look
into the idea of a Community Land Trust for the Hungerford property. Eatonville
has a history of land trusts dating back to the city’s initial founding back in
1887. While the land trust does not exist today, the idea of bringing it back for
the Hungerford property is not a bad one. A land trust serves several functions.
First, it serves as a way to keep housing affordable for lower income people.
This is done by selling only the improvements to the land rather than the property
as a whole. The improvements, say a house for example, can also only be sold
for a set percent higher than the initial purchase. This allows people to get a
return on investment and sell to another low-income individual. The second function
of a land trust is to allow the community to keep investors and speculators
away from the community. Lastly, the land trust gives the community control
over what can be built on the property. Land trusts are typically governed by
three groups. Those who live on the land, those who service those who live on
the land, and those who represent the public as a whole. When applying this to
the Hungerford property, there are several pros and cons to the idea.
For the pros, Eatonville would have direct control
over what is built at Hungerford rather than being at the whim of Orange
County, the state of Florida, or a private investor. Eatonville has struggled
financially due to a variety of factors, so having a land trust that helps lift
up the poor would be beneficial to the community as a whole. Lastly, a land
trust would continue the history of Eatonville through its founding and as a
Black community. Of course, there are cons as well. The presence of the land
trust could deter investors from investing in the community as they do not want
to share authority or cannot meet the demands of the trust. The land trust representatives
could also reach a deadlock that would result in the property sitting unused.
Despite these cons, the land trust could still be a viable path for the Hungerford
property.
Tying in with the chapter I read, the Hungerford property
would greatly benefit from the ideas of Civic Engagement and Social Justice.
For a start, Orange County could begin to make amends with Eatonville by turning
over the Hungerford property to a land trust run by the community. The land
trust in turn could begin to allow Eatonville to represent their story on a
larger scale than before. If they don’t want to present their own history
further, Eatonville could use the property to lift up their own community
economically instead.
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