Meet the researchers: A sense of who and where you are

Interview with Professor Janette Greenwood, Bob Andrejczyk and Stephanie Martinez

Professor Janette Greenwood is researching the migration of ex-slaves into Worcester County during and after the Civil War. We interviewed her along with Bob Andrejczyk ’01 and Stephanie Martinez ’01, both of whom were juniors when they participated in Professor Greenwood’s seminar on Reconstruction. Bob is a history major and Stephanie is a psychology major completing a minor in history.

Janette, can you tell us about your research project and how undergraduates have been involved?

One of the courses that I teach here at Clark is a research seminar on Reconstruction in the United States after the Civil War. I was particularly interested in organizing it as a research seminar for a couple of reasons. It’s directly related to a book I’m working on about the migration of former slaves—southern Blacks –to New England, using Worcester County as a case study. I was also interested in a book by historian Eric Foner [Reconstruction : America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 where in one chapter he explores the impact of Reconstruction on the North. Most studies have been about the impact of Reconstruction on the South when the federal government was working with the southern states to reconstruct a new society after slavery. But how were federal policies and thinking about free labor affecting the North? It’s a fresh area for research.

In class we read Foner’s book and those of other authors about Reconstruction to get an overview of the period. Then I have students choose a research topic—most students will focus on various dimensions of Massachusetts or Worcester County during the Reconstruction. Topics might include the suffrage movement--women almost get the right to vote in Massachusetts right after the Civil War, or Native American rights and how they were impacted, especially by the passage of the 14^th and 15^th amendments. Native Americans were actually made citizens of the state for the first time. There was a lot going on in Worcester in terms of unionization and labor, capital, and management conflict. White workers in the North began to appropriate theories about free labor that were initially applied to African-Americans. Some white workers maintained that they were “wage slaves” and their rights also needed to be addressed.

There are lots of different dimensions to Reconstruction in the North. Worcester provides an excellent case study. We have wonderful resources here—the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester Historical Museum, Worcester Public Library—lots of places where students can go to do original research, and study Reconstruction and its ramifications.

So how did you use your classes to extend your own research and get your students involved?

It struck me when I was doing my own research that there were a lot of things I didn’t know about, and when I tried to find out, there was nothing there in secondary sources. Some examples were information on the general composition of the Black community in Worcester, the relationship between white patrons and the Black community, Black institutions, churches, and veterans groups, etc. I realized many of these were related to Reconstruction. I could compile a list of questions that could be areas of investigation for students.

Also, from my own research I became familiar with local historical sources. That knowledge lets me point students to the sources relevant to their particular questions. I can say to them: I know about these sermons, or these records are available, or these court documents or real estate records, things like that.

So in other words, you and your students are working as a group, focusing on a particular time and place. Each person’s research can provide a context for what the others are doing.

Yes. And then the course itself provides them with a sense of historiography; that is, what other historians have said about this subject. So each student’s research also gives him or her a chance to evaluate other historians—do they agree with them, do they disagree. It’s not just about doing Worcester research, although that’s important, but about placing information about the Worcester area in a larger context.

Stephanie and Bob, you were both in this Reconstruction course. Stephanie, what did you focus your research on?

I was looking at the Black church in Worcester, specifically the AME Zion Church. (The church is still in existence.) I was examining records at the church and the Worcester Public Library.

Bob, what were you investigating?

I was researching Nahum Gardner Hazard, a member of the Massachusetts 54^th Voluntary Infantry Regiment, the first Black regiment recruited in the North. [The movie Glory was based on this regiment.] The Hazards were an African-American family prominent in Central Massachusetts. I was trying to piece together his life.

My sense is that Massachusetts is a good place for historical records.

In some ways, but Black history has often been given less consideration, especially in terms of archival sources. Bob has gone out and done some incredible digging, even interviewing people to get a sense of the man he studied. He went all over the county.

Bob: I drove to Fitchburg, Townsend, historical societies where you’d see some old man who hasn’t seen a face in five years, and he’ll talk to you for hours--everything you want to know.

Were there any particular sources about Hazard that you were especially excited to find?

Bob: Well, I actually got started by reading a book about the history of the town of Shirley, Mass. That told Hazard’s story, how he was kidnapped when he was nine years old and sold into slavery. My interest came from that story. I’m interested in the people.

Janette: What Bob did so effectively was to take a fairly ordinary person—not someone famous- and tease out what life must have been like for an African-American in Massachusetts around the time of the Civil War, and the implications of that.

Bob: You’re actually going out, you’re going places, you’re digging around in library basements finding all these documents and records. It was fun, it was different, it was definitely active learning.

Janette, can you comment on the benefit of having students becoming involved in research?

If you can allow students to be historians themselves, that is an extremely valuable thing for them to learn. Like Stephanie said earlier, the process holds both frustrations and rewards. It’s like detective work, you have a question, you have clues or hints, you’re looking for something you think should be there and find out it’s not, or quite different than you thought it would be. You learn to squeeze out as much as you can from just a few sources, but try not to go too far beyond your sources. It also teaches you larger skills, about analyzing, about being persistent. You end by writing a narrative about what you think happened.

Another reward about local historical research is that it connects students to the community. Once having had that experience, students seem to think about themselves in a different way in regard to the larger community. They appreciate the historical context in which they’re living. Maybe that’s something you can take wherever you go, the sense that every place has a history, and it’s worth seeking that out. Every place has the potential to give you a sense of who you are and where you are.