This month, H. Duane Hampton, Emeritus Professor in the History Department and the namesake of our Public History Program, passed away. In addition to being a scholar and teacher, Hampton was a prominent part of Missoula’s community and a profoundly influential mentor to many young historians, particularly those working in public history. “Hamp,” as he was known affectionately by his multitude of friends, was a wonderful person who lived a full life. We are so honored to have a public history program named after him.

Congratulations to Torrie Cooney who was recently hired as the Assistant Education Director for at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula! Cooney received her public history certificate from UM in 2023 and completed several public history internships with the museum while she was a student. We’re so excited for her!

Graduate and undergraduate students joined Leif Fredrickson, Anya Jabour and Jeff Wiltse for a discussion of how history scholars (including students!) can translate their research into writing for the public, and how learning to write for the public can improve scholarly writing.

In April, three of our graduate students attended the National Council on Public History (NCPH) annual conference in Salt Lake City. In addition to attending talks on topics ranging from archives and collective memory to interstate visitor centers and re-interpreting state historical sites, our students presented an exhibit they completed with their classmates in Dr. Zimmer’s Exhibit Design and Development class last semester.

For two years, graduate student Dylan Yonce has been collaborating with others on a documentary, The Bodies Beneath Us, about two forgotten cemeteries in Missoula’s Rattlesnake neighborhood. The documentary will premier at the Roxy Theater May 6 & 13^th at 7:30 PM. Get tickets here and read more about this awesome documentary here.

An anonymous alum has donated $200,000 to our H. Duane Hampton Public History Program! To read more about this very generous donation and what it means for the public history program, check out this UM news story.

C-SPAN came to UM to record Leif Fredrickson’s lecture on the “Missoula Free Speech Fight of 1909” as part of C-SPAN’s “Lectures in History” series.

Several UM public history interns worked on Dee Garceau’s documentary Blue Death: The 1918 Influenza in Montana. The film will be broadcast on Montana PBS, Thursday, March 28 at 7pm, as well as March 31 at 10 am and April 1 at 2am.

Former UM public history student Austin Haney has been selected as a presenter for Humanities Montana. Congratulations, Austin!

PhD candidate and public history student Kym MacEwan has completed a project researching and writing the biographies of leading conservationists in Montana. You can read some of the bios MacEwan worked on at the Missoula Conservation Roundtable website.

Former public history student Sophia Etier has been working with Unseen Missoula to launch a new tour about the “restricted district” in Missoula: the areas where certain people (e.g., the Chinese) and certain types of activities (e.g., sex work) were confined during Missoula’s early history. The tour is called “Carnal Enterprises.” After completing her undergraduate degree at UM, Etier went on to get her MA in history where she researched Missoula’s restricted district. She is working on a book about the district.

The Missoula County COVID-19 Documentation Project received the Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties. The project was the work of many local organizations and indviduals. Funding for the project came through Missoula County and the UM Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections now holds and administers the collected documents and oral histories. Public History Director Leif Fredrickson was the projec coordinator and oral historian and public history student Madeline Hagan assisted with the project.

Wade Davies discusses the history of Native America basketball in a video with the Missoulian.

Professor emeritus Harry Fritz gave a talk on Abraham Lincoln at The Gild for Lincoln’s birthday.

UM Alumni Dr. Virginia Summey came to the University of Montana Campus via the UM Humanities Institute to give a talk about Elreta Melton Alexander, a black female lawyer and judge in North Carolina during the mid-twentieth century. The talk focused on Alexander’s life and activism within the US courts. Summey published her book on the same topic, “The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism Within the Courts,” in May of 2022.

National Public Radio’s radio magazine program, Here & Now, interviewed Leif Fredrickson on the history of the EPA during the Ronald Reagan adminsitration for a series called “Permanent Capture.“

UM history professor Leif Fredrickson gave a walk and talk tour at Milltown State Park about the history of the John Mullan monuments that were erected in Missoula, Bonner and across Montana in the nineteen teens. Fredrickson discussed the background of military explorer and roadbuilder John Mullan, why the monuments to him were created, and what has happened to the monuments since they were erected. The Milltown State Park and the Bonner Milltown History Center and Museum sponsored the event. See the NBC Montana news article on the event here.

UM professor of history Jeff Wiltse was featured in an article by Campbell Robertson for the New York Times, “‘Swimming Wasn’t For Us’” about the nation’s first black-owned swimming club. The Nile Swim Club opened in 1959 making it the first swimming club where the black communities in Philadelphia could swim. Wiltse’s book, “Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America,” is referenced to explain the segregated history of pools in Philadelphia and how the legacy of segregation lives on to the present in certain ways. Read the article here.

UM History Visiting Professor Eric Zimmer published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Can the Indigenous #Landback Movement Secure Self-Determination?” Zimmer connects his research on the history of the Meskwaki Nation to the modern #Landback movement, which has seen the restoration of tribal lands in Montana and elsewhere over the last several years.