Dave Peters’ porch in West Oakland is a place everyone in the area knows, partly because of the décor, but mostly because of the effervescent, exuberant man who spends many days there, calling out to neighbors and passersby, letting people know that he is there and letting people know that he recognizes that they are there too. 

For an academic historian like me, that front porch is both a thrilling and a somewhat disconcerting place to be. I love telling stories, but I don’t see myself as part of the story (even though, unlike many historians, I have published a prize-winning book of fiction).

As a researcher, I have written three books of history, co-edited another, and published numerous essays and articles. As a public historian, I have helped lead Supreme Court amicus briefs, mentored graduate students in a partnership with the city of Sacramento and the Greater Sacramento Urban League, co-authored a report for a congressional select committee, produced material for the National Park Service, authored op-eds for leading publications and spoken to many varied audiences. 

But I have kept the two parts of my writing separate, even as I drew upon my research to do good public history and relied on my scholarly reputation to give credence to my public work. In  summer 2020, I began to feel some doubts about the firm line I had drawn between scholarly and community engaged history. On July 4, 2020, a friend and fellow historian, Gettysburg College professor Scott Hancock, was peacefully displaying historically accurate information about the Confederates honored at the Gettysburg National Military Park when a group of armed white supremacist militia surrounded him and accused him — absurdly — of plotting to pull down the massive Confederate monuments. Scott responded with a staggering calmness.

And then he challenged me and a friend and collaborator to find ways to follow his lead and put ourselves out there in a way that pushed us beyond our comfort zones, not just to produce good work others can use but to expose ourselves. What emerged from a group collaboration was the #wewantmorehistory project (later amended to #morehistory) that encouraged historians to do good history in public, either bringing under-told Black histories to light or countering older Lost Cause commemorations in informal, not just institutional, ways.

Putting myself in the story

Even with this background, I remained reluctant to put myself as an individual into the story. But participating in the 2023-24 Public Scholarship Faculty Fellows (or PSFF) group helped me feel comfortable contemplating crossing the line I had drawn in the sand between these two crucial parts of my life. Seeing the inspiring work being done by colleagues across the university gave me the confidence to break out of my own comfort zone (or rut), exposing myself a little.

While I haven’t yet published a full piece of publicly engaged scholarship, I did take a start to erasing that line by conducting a lengthy front-porch interview with Dave Peters. He is not only a cornerstone of the West Oakland neighborhood sometimes known as Hoover-Foster or Hoover-Durant; he is also an Oakland historical activist that wrestles with the questions that many historians and I struggle to answer: how do we do good history to the people we want to serve? 

In our interview “It’s the Stories We Tell Ourselves: On the Front Porch with Oakland Activist David Peters,” published earlier this month at Boom California, I got Dave (known around much of Oakland as “Bleacher Dave” for his vocal A’s fandom) talking about the ways he came to his work leading neighborhood tours in West Oakland focused on the neighborhood’s long history of Black activism and of multi-racial community building.

Getting Dave talking was the easy part. The interview shows how much he has thought about how and why to make local activist histories visible as a “cultural asset.” I have learned a lot from tagging along on Dave’s Black Liberation Walking Tours, and have tried to give back by sharing historical materials, carrying his speaker system, encouraging others to attend, going to the community events he sponsors, encouraging him and giving money.

What was more challenging was reflecting on how uncomfortable I was with letting myself be a small part of the story. This has been a part of my reluctance with doing community engaged scholarship, as opposed to public service; while my work has my name on it, I almost never personally appear in the text (except occasionally, and briefly, in an op-ed.) The work centers the work, which still feels as it should be. After all, the Reconstruction Era history I study and try to bring to the public is full of drama and struggle, of revolutionary transformation and of tragic reversals, of heroic victories and horrifying defeats. Who cares about me? When I have accompanied Dave on his tours, I prefer hiding behind the speaker or the visual materials, giving myself the distance to watch him and his audience.

Approaching Dave not as a subject but as a co-creator of this interview meant stepping out from behind the curtain in two ways. First, I had to get comfortable with letting my questions — not just his answers — appear despite my own shyness and embarrassment about their imperfections. Second, I had to decide how to respond when Dave referred to me or to my participation in tours as a volunteer. This, I found even less comfortable; my own role is minimal, and I squirmed over sneaking credit. In fact, I cut out some of the references to me (with Dave’s permission) as potentially distracting. Maybe next time I won’t. Either way, I expect to do more not just of public history but of work that centers the relationship between academic historians and community practitioners.

As Dave says in our interview, putting himself out there on his porch didn’t emerge naturally from his personality but instead required “being intentional, just talking to people in your community that are passing by.” So, too, has PSFF been part of my effort to be more intentional, to put myself out there. I am still seeking ways to explore how academic history might not just serve the public — as it already does in many ways — but actually co-produce works that demonstrate what goes into defining good history. That is the way we historians can be relevant to the people we most want and need to be useful to, and to make them — and also our role — visible even when we may not feel comfortable with it.

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Learn More About Public Scholarship Faculty Fellows

• Through the Public Scholarship Faculty Fellows program, we provide concrete tools and facilitate opportunities for faculty across all disciplines to collectively cultivate a culture of engagement at UC Davis and meet their specifically designed and stated goals. Learn about our application process.
• Public engagement is all about people. Read other stories. 
• This story was reposted from a story on the Public Scholarship website.