Why do we need to talk about LGBTQ+ History? with Bill Wallace
Happy Pride! This month, we’re centering queer voices in our community and the challenges, joys, opportunities, and hopes we face in our cities and our world. This week, Josh dives into Worcester LGBTQ+ history with Bill Wallace, the Executive Director of the Worcester Historical Museum. From gay bars to Worcester’s first Pride Parade, Josh & Bill explore the importance of sharing stories from our past to inform our future.
Listen to Public Hearing wherever you get your podcasts and on WICN 90.5FM, Worcester’s NPR affiliate station. And, while we celebrate women all year round, our guests for the month of March are all women who live, influence, and/or impact the City of Worcester, MA. Learn more about our show at PublicHearing.co
Transcript for this episode
Joshua Croke (00:02):
Hello Worcester and the world and happy Pride. This is your host, Joshua Croke. And this is Public Hearing, our podcast and radio show about cities, communities and designing equitable and just futures. Today, we're talking with Bill Wallace, the Executive Director of the Worcester Historical Museum. We're going to dive right in because Bill and I are talkers. And today we are talking about the LGBTQ plus history in Worcester and asking why it's important to talk about history, to inform our present and our future. This is the Public Hearing podcast and radio show. Public Hearing is available wherever you listen to podcasts and on WICN 90.5 FM on Wednesdays at 6:00 PM, Worcester's only NPR affiliate station. Bill, thank you so much for coming on the show. We always kick off asking our guests to share some background about themselves. So any affiliations or experiences you want to bring into this space, as well as any part of your social location, which are things that describe parts of one's identity that have been deemed important by society for some reason or another which may include gender identity, race and ethnicity, geography, social class, et cetera. Please share whatever you'd like to bring into this space. And thank you for joining me on Public Hearing.
Bill Wallace (01:12):
Oh, thank you for the invitation. Happy to be here. My short version is I'm a native of Northern New Hampshire. I'm descended from a bunch of Yankees who went to Northern New Hampshire after the peace of Paris and just never left until I escaped. And I've been in Worcester for a long time. I tell people that arrived in 1976 and I let you do the math. Cause I don't like to quote that many years cause I don't believe I'm that old. And I have been the Executive Director of the Worcester Historical Museum before that I was in upstate New York, Oswego, New York where I ran the Oswego County Historical Society. And prior to that, I was associated briefly at Sturbridge Village. So my life has been spent in local history, whether it's Northern New Hampshire, where I grew up or here in Worcester.
Bill Wallace (02:02):
And when I'm maybe not at the museum, I tell people when they introduce me as a talker or something that I probably could be found in a cemetery. Cemeteries are one of my real fascinations because they're outdoor museums and there are such great stories there to be uncovered and discovered. I, for a long time served as the Chair of the Hope Cemetery Commission for the city of Worcester and was one of the founders of the Friends of Hope Cemetery. And if I'm not in a cemetery, if I'm not at work, I hope I'm at a Disney property since Mickey Mouse is my real hero. A great American icon and old, successful. And you can fix all of his ailments with an eraser. So wonderful. That's me.
Joshua Croke (02:50):
Well, I appreciate that and really appreciate being able to chat with you. You know, we are in Pride Month and I, for the time, you know, I'm into my thirties now, but for the longest time did not really appreciate or spend time really learning about my history being like my queer history, my family history, really looking at the value of history until much more recently in the past handful of years. So excited to talk about the LGBT for The Record exhibit that the Historical Museum did and the information that's kind of contained in there, but also looking at I'm sure we have a variety of listeners, some who are very deeply rooted into history and reading you know, about their past and others who might be just kind of more novice or really haven't kind of jumped into that space yet.
Joshua Croke (03:48):
And so I also want to talk about the value of understanding and looking at history to inform some of how we think about present challenges and opportunities, as well as what can help us inform the future as Public Hearing, we want to talk about how do we create compelling futures of equitable and just societies. And these are not uncommon topics and the more and more I dive into history, the more and more it's continued to be shown to me that it is cyclical and has been repeating itself. And if over and over, and a lot of the topics that we're talking about relative to queer liberation and equal rights and establishing more equitable and just community is been a constant constant fight for, for many, many, many years. So with that, what are some of your initial thoughts?
Bill Wallace (04:42):
Well, indeed the struggles of life have been part of our shared history for centuries. And if we don't understand what we've done in the past, and learn from those lessons of failure and success, then we are doomed to repeating some of those errors or not building on the lessons we've learned in the past. When you look at the history of Worcester, we talk about things that have happened here and what the community's impact has been, you know, the 1780, I think the 1780, it might be 1783 decisions of the Worcester Court System to uphold the freedom of a freed slave once freed slave, is one of the first acts in establishing the end of slavery in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that story of Quock Walker and the parallel in the Western part of the state of Mum Bett, Elizabeth Freeman, they help establish the tone.
Bill Wallace (05:42):
And it was Levi Lincoln, a guy from Worcester, a lawyer who is going to the court saying, no, this man is free. We need to learn lessons like that. We need to listen to Abby Kelley Foster during the Civil War era saying, no, we need women's rights. We need human rights, slavery is an abomination. We need to listen to people like Abby Hoffman, who reminds us constantly that we can do better. We can have a better life. And if we know who we are and where we've been, we can build on that and we can better understand each other, understand corporate decisions, whether it be civic or institutional, and we can move forward, but it comes out of a shared understanding of just who we are. We're all different. We all come from special places in our lives and our communities. And that's the job of the Worcester Historical Museum is to be the caretaker of those stories and those facts and figures to be the repository of them, then the resource. So we can hopefully together be a better community, which was the intent of sharing the LGBTQ plus story.
Joshua Croke (06:47):
Yeah. And I think stories and storytelling is so critical and it's being, and has been used as a tool for change for so long because stories are personal. They resonate with people on different levels. Like, you never know what story is going to strike a chord with someone that relates it to their own life or experience. And you know, thinking about that, I, you know, and you mentioned the history of slavery and, you know, moving into a more, you know, a free state and then looking at, you know, freedom more broadly across the US and the stories, I think also help to articulate the reasons why we are not free truly from racism and its impacts in America. And, you know, we're celebrating Pride Month as well. So we can talk about the intersectional elements of identity there, you know, the isms, racism you know, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, all the isms and phobias that we actively fight against today.
Joshua Croke (07:54):
But looking at the institutional structures that uphold longstanding and old beliefs, which I think in today's modern dialogue, it's, you know, people feel very individually or personally attacked when you talk about racism and racial bias, because of people's desire to separate from that identity, but not recognize similar to like, oh, I'm not homophobic. I have a gay brother, you know, whatever it might be, but not recognizing that the systems and structures have been set up to continually oppress and marginalize folks within our communities and how recognizing history allows us to take action to continue to dismantle those structures.
Bill Wallace (08:39):
I think it's no matter what the level, I like to tell the story of being a kid and having to sit next to my father's least favorite, cranky old aunt at every family event, because no one else wanted to be with her. So she was oppressed, she was marginalized. And I realized as a 12 or 13 year old that she had the best stories. She was one of the most fascinating people in the room. I learned a lot about the family unit that I was part of from this person who had been marginalized. And I think that to me is the lesson. We need to listen to each other, and we need to understand how we got here. And in 1993, the Gay and Lesbian Community Coalition of Central Massachusetts, which was one of the politically organized groups, started the LGBTQ archive that Worcester Historical Museum with a small collection and a woman by the name of Joe Ross was the co-chair of that project. And, it's her quote, that's in the catalog. And I probably won't get it exactly correct. But she said, “one of the main reasons that gay people became isolated is that our history was taken away from us.”
Bill Wallace (09:49):
And I think that's a powerful statement, but the reality is that if you allow your history to be taken away from you, then you are equally responsible for that. And that was part of our intent with the LGBTQ project, but it's also been part of our intent with sharing all the stories we do with the Worcester Historical Museum that we can't be isolated if we allow ourselves to be isolated, then we are complicit. So take an active role, show stories, and build on them
Joshua Croke (10:20):
Well, and I appreciate your description of the historical museum as you know, a steward of stories and that people can continue to add to the story book and especially, you know, and for listeners who might not be familiar with the For the Record exhibit I'd love to give you the opportunity to talk about that in a a little bit more detail. And, also the invitation that this is a growing, you know, knowledge base and collection of stories that we're still uncovering.
Bill Wallace (10:54):
Sure. Happy to do that. This is an invitation like sitting at that dinner table with my aunt, my great aunt, it's an invitation for everyone to take their place in the story that the LGBTQ exhibit was given birth in the cereal aisle at Shaws on West Boylston street, when I ran into Stephanie, one of our partners from Holy Cross and said to her, you know, it's the 50th anniversary of Stonewall next year. And we should think about collecting some LGBTQ plus stories in Worcester and putting that into the larger perspective. And that conversation over boxes of cereal led to this project that is now two or three years old, ended up in this 115 page catalog and this huge exhibit at the Worcester Historical Museum, that was a result of enormous community participation. It was an open invitation to anyone in the community with a story to tell, a story to share, whether you were the teller of the story, or you were the keeper of the story, and you didn't feel like you were the great storyteller.
Bill Wallace (11:58):
You might have the artifact. It was to come to the table and take your place in this adventure that we all call Worcester. So there was a community committee of volunteers. There were subsets, there were students our co-partners in this work. As I said, Stephanie Yuhl, Bob Tobin from Clark University and Joe Cullen from WPI. There was enormous community investment in this to tell this really, you know, fairly underrepresented in community history and certainly underrepresented in our collection. The story of yet another group in Worcester. We've done Swedish exhibits. We did a Water Street exhibit in 1983. We've worked with Armenians. We worked with, with the Vietnamese community, we've done a black oral history project, and it was time to add to that story. So the exhibit was up at the museum for about eight months, and we had lots of companion programming with it. And at the end of the day, it brought research to the table. They brought storytellers and story sharers or story keepers, I should say, but also brought allies and it brought adversaries to the table to have the conversation of how are we growing as a community and can we continue to this challenge to make Worcester better for everybody? So what, what didn’t I tell you that you'd like to know?
Joshua Croke (13:20):
Well and It also inspired, I know some local action as well because of the forum created within the context of this history and the work that still needs to be done. I know that myself and a handful of other folks in the community kind of banded together to form what is becoming the Queer Coalition of Greater Worcester, looking at how do we continue to connect and work together and amplify our own voices and identify and talk about issues in our community that are still not being addressed relative to LGBTQ plus identity. One of the big ones is healthcare and health care access for folks in the city. And you know, the other thing that I think, you know, relative to that, and like really creating this space and the opportunity for people and community to give voice. It also really, and this is something I'm personally very thankful and appreciative for, it gives us something to point to when people try and invalidate our experience by saying it is new. I think so frequently I have had conversations with folks about, oh, you know, well, gay is new, or like trans is new, or non-binary is new. We didn't have that when I was growing up. And this just so gives us the ability to invalidate that position as one that is rooted in ignorance and a lack of desire to see the world around them.
Bill Wallace (14:53):
Well, I guess to a degree it is ignorance, but part of it is just the stories haven't been told, the stories haven't been shared. And that was the intent again of the LGBTQ plus was to open that door and say, you know what, there's so much more to Worcester’s history than we understand what's is not the common book that you read, whether it's about race relations or LGBTQ or the immigrants in late 19th century America. Worcester has its own story and it needs to come to the table, like that great aunt and share those stories because out of that comes a common understanding and the common knowledge. One of the authors in the catalog, or maybe they're quoting someone, I don't quite remember, I wrote this quote down because I liked it.
Bill Wallace (15:41):
It says “Worcester is an obstinate place, resisting change, even when seeking it.” And I think that's part of the outcome of the LGBTQ exhibit. It ended with the challenge saying, Worcester has this enormously high rating from the HRC. So what are we doing to not only maintain it, but improve it, right. And what is that history? It isn’t dead, history is alive, well, active. We're building on it. We're making history every single day. The job of the Worcester Historical Museum is to perhaps challenge people, as you've said, to ask those questions and we will record it and hopefully more aggressively as a team record those changes in Worcester, So that the next generation of people, 50 years from now, a hundred years after Stonewall, aren't wondering, well, what happened to the LGBTQ community in Worcester? It's here, alive and well. You know, you and I were on a program the other day and people were talking about the Chinese and, you know, it wasn't until 10 years ago that we discovered a true reference to the first Chinese residency in Worcester. And that it follows some of the same discriminatory practices that happen to other places. But we didn't know that story till we found the documentary evidence. And now we are associated with some of those families and we can add value to that story. And out of that story comes understanding of our place in American history, but also our place within this community of Worcester and how we can all have a role in making life even better than this, and exciting in Worcester today.
Joshua Croke (17:13):
Right. Well, and interestingly, when you mentioned the program and we were talking about, you know, the history of Chinese folks in America and there was also a conversation around how there was, you know, assumed or stereotypes around homophobia and like how that also intersected with some of the experience. And so I think one of the things that I always like talking to folks about is like the intersections of marginalization and oppression, and like, where are these isms come from and how still present and played out because they're so architected into our structures in our systems,
Bill Wallace (17:57):
But the more we talk about them, whatever they are, the more we understand them, the roots and the players, then it becomes part of our understanding of who we are. And we integrated into our normal day to day conversations and our decision-making and our planning for the future. And it's not an afterthought. It's not a judgment, it's part of that informed intellectual responsible planning conversation.
Joshua Croke (18:27):
Yeah. So the LGBT For the Record catalog is so dense with incredible stories and photos and imagery and folks listening, if you have not picked up a copy, you can get them at the Worcester Historical Museum. It's really fascinating to read through, but Bill, what are some of the stories that stand out to you that you want to share with folks?
Bill Wallace (18:50):
Well, and I would add to what you just said, that this is only volume one, this is a first cut. So I'm hoping that some of your listeners will say well, but there's more to that story. Like NPR is not NPR. There's more to the story or there's another look at that story. Or I'm left out. My organizations left out. I hope people continue to contribute so that when we do a new version of, For the Record, it can always be constantly updated and more complete. But I think there's stories in there of the first Pride parade and Worcester first Pride march in 1975 and quotes from the newspaper and photographs that we were really shocked to find in the surviving in the files of the Telegram and Gazette, that they were very generous to share with us that, you know, 150 people walking from Worcester Common to the Crystal Park, opposite Clark University and having rocks thrown at them.
Bill Wallace (19:49):
You know, the story in 2002, when Water street decided that it perhaps could become the gayborhood of Worcester and the efforts to bring community together and how they didn't quite work, or the Pride flag that hangs over 290. That was the transition to the Mailbox Lounge, the story of the bars in Worcester. And what's actually most interesting is our inability to find some of the details. The first gay bar in Worcester of record was the Ports of Call, which was done on Main South, had been the New Yorker and became the Ports of Call. And the stories are that it was the gay bar for all of central Massachusetts. You came to Worcester because there was a gay bar. Also, you came here because it was a very different city at that point with many people living downtown, and you could be somewhat anonymous.
Bill Wallace (20:41):
You wouldn't mind that run into your cousin that you weren't expecting to see and you could be comfortable doing that. And then the Ports of Call closes, but there's a story of the Coronado hotel on, on Franklin street that was raided, it's bar was raided, the absence of police reports or the lack of police reports from the 1950s and the lack of coverage in the Telegram has made that very difficult. Perhaps someone will come forward and inform us, or a nice continuing research project and the whole history of the bars, but then there's the great story of David Rushford and his team at city hall who were conducting marriages on the first day, it was legal in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and in being very responsible and understanding of the larger city that we live in. The formation of Base Project Worcester in 1987 and the late woodier layer, this wonderful woman who had an art gallery down on Hammond street called Gallery 69A and then it was changed to the Atwood gallery, which was the birthplace of AIDS Project Worcester, stories that would otherwise, of people and organizations and places that had the potential for being lost that are so integral to community.
Bill Wallace (21:55):
And are the subjects in some cases of a walking tour, that's still offered by the team from LGBTQ Worcester, but they’re the places that generate the memories, whether they are saying, oh, I need to go back to my uncle’s scrapbook, because it's a picture of like the picture in the catalog of the men sitting at the bar at Exit Two, which was later called the Mailbox or going to dinner and at a restaurant in Worcester county, and the proprietor saying, you know, I have the original sign from the Exit Two, would you like it for the Worcester Historical Museum collection? I never thought it was important enough. Very exciting and very excited for people to understand that their history is really important. And these stories are our stories. They're Worcester stories, they're the community stories. And they're not an individual story.
Bill Wallace (22:44):
So I think the whole catalog is fascinating. I read it fairly regularly and I was learning something. And then I read it a thousand times when it was going to press and a lot of exhibit labels. And I put it down for a couple of weeks and go back to it and say, no, but there's a parallel, another community there’s a parallel to the project we're doing with another group in Worcester, and let's learn from this, let's all build on it. And let's put some of our prejudices aside, our lack of understanding aside to say that once we build, we can do better. So I encourage you and everyone else, all of your listeners to read those stories and say, can you add value to them? And where are you an ally? Or were you an adversary? Because both of those perspectives are very important. Are you a storyteller or are you a story keeper? Do you have something just tucked away that once you share it becomes Worcester's history and what was once yours becomes ours and as a result, we're a better community. So I don't know, I would probably put lots of other stories in there. What piqued your interest? What’s the story in there that made Josh Croke go, wow, I want to know more about that.
Joshua Croke (23:56):
Well, I'm fascinated with the evolution of the bar scene, because I, and I think part of that is because of the relevance of the MB Lounge, Worcester's only, you know, queer bar and queer space like identified space. And there's a lot of conversation right now, I think in community about the need or the lack of need for spaces that are specifically kind of carved out or defined as LGBTQ spaces, because the world is opening up a bit more and getting a bit more comfortable. And but I find so much solidarity and community and power in spaces that I know that I can walk into and be myself. And so I think that the stories of the presence of the bars, and I actually know the family members who used to go to the MB, The Mailbox back in like the seventies, and they talked about seeing incredible artists there, like I know Eartha Kitt performed there and various, you know, artists and like the strength of that community seems like it was so strong and thriving. And I feel like we're trying to get back to some amount of that, but there has been a struggle to really connect and bring in community.
Bill Wallace (25:16):
Well, certainly communities and the world have evolved. So that perhaps those spaces aren't quite what they were back in the days when we were hearing about in the sixties and seventies and the early eighties, when we would hear from people saying, I remember one person coming in saying, I tried to go to The Mailbox on a Friday or a Saturday night. And there were so many people, there were so many cars that I just, I decided to leave. But also the story of Arthur Desautels who opened Isaiah’s on Thomas street and his quote saying, but I knew that there would be a neighborhood that people would enjoy going back and forth, seeing different people in different places. So there was a time when there was an attempt to do that, but also there are quotes in there from people like the Ella page who say, well, it wasn't safe to walk from one bar to the other as a person. When we had the button from Berg Walls Cafe, some of your listeners might remember Berg Walls.
Bill Wallace (26:11):
It was a great place to have lunch. I remember and it would be open late and people would go there apparently after the bar. And it was the after hours hang out as part of that neighborhood on Main Street. But what we heard from people was they felt, as you've just said, comfortable going there, it was a time when the conversations in the larger community, on the street and family weren't what they might be today. And they felt comfortable going with people who shared their interests and shared their perspectives. And Worcester made a significant attempt to respond to that in terms of the investors there was Green Streets which was a dance club on Green street, but named for the author or actor or whatever he was, I forget. But then there was the, the 241, we have a wonderful set of photographs of the opening of 241 down on South Bridge street.
Bill Wallace (27:05):
So the collection is growing, the stories are growing, but I know there are people out there who could sit down and probably tell us for hours about being at, as you've mentioned, the Eartha Kitt concert at the MB on Main street or being at Exit Two and other little stories becomes such a different understanding and appreciation of the value of spaces like that to a particular audience. But we also, I would say, having just said that we also say that we heard concerns from some of the people coming to some of our discovery sessions. And I think it was referenced to the 241 on Southbridge street that the clubs started to attract a larger audience, a more diverse audience of community members. And that made some of the people going there very uncomfortable because it wasn't their space anymore. They weren't sure who they were speaking to.
Bill Wallace (27:57):
And that was probably what in the nineties, if I'm guessing from the people who were speaking, that there is clearly a need for a comfortable space. And we hear this, we've seen this, we had a Swedish club on Lake Quinsigamond in 1900- 1920s there was a Black Elk's Lodge. Communities want spaces where they come together and be themselves and have their conversation. And, we don’t invite everybody to our family dinners either. So there are spaces that belong to certain groups and the conversations that occur in them are important. But in this particular case, it's also important that we share those so that we understand it as a larger community and becomes part of the public record, not to compromise someone, not to embarrass them as if they don't want to be outed in this particular case, but so that we understand right.
Joshua Croke (28:55):
Well, and I think, you know, even talking about it's still very possible to out people in 2021, regardless of where the social and the politics have moved. You know, there are folks who, you know, I've met or talked with at places like the MB who go there and are still taking some level of risk because they're not out in their public or family life. And so the importance of those spaces, and also, you know, really acknowledging the role that like bias and stigma and stereotype and shame have in our society, as you know, the foundation of what the organization that I co-founded Love Your Labels with members of the Worcester community is specifically focused on, and there was a, you know, “A Word About Words” is one of the headers in in the catalog that I think is really important because I've had discussion and conversation with folks who are like, you know, why do you call it, Love Your Labels?
Joshua Croke (29:57):
Like you're making me claim something that you know, I don't necessarily want to say or claim, and, you know, our counter to that is we're not making anyone claim anything that they don't want to, or don't feel comfortable claiming, but words are important words are, and I really resonated with the man referenced who was always called like a fag or a sissy, or like the derogatory terms associated with queerness. And then he found the term homosexual and like what that did to really enable his acceptance and understanding of his identity. I felt very similarly when introduced to the concept and the identity of being non-binary and like really challenging the gender binary. And so terms are so important. And we hope that, you know, our vision as an organization is to eliminate bias, stigma and shame from society in that the words that we claim are parts of ourselves that can describe, but not define who we are.
Bill Wallace (31:09):
And that's exactly why these stories are important to share, because out of your reading of that, we understand some of this evolution of community that we watch our mouth as my mother would say, that we think twice about calling somebody out for whether it's the LGBTQ or as any other community in Worcester, that we hear this in all of our projects, whether it's Latino history or black history, that t's about understanding who we all are respecting those differences and not calling people out for them, but making them part of the larger team. And it's really important whether, you know, we for this project, LGBTQ, and for many of our others, we do oral histories and we offer people the option of being anonymous, because it's really important to hear that story about, fag, sissy and homosexual.
Bill Wallace (32:03):
And it may be that the person who's sharing it wants to remain anonymous for as long as they trust us, we will file that information away. And we will still make that story part of our shared learning experience. And I'm sure we were all, even when you were a kid, a little bit more recently than I was, you'd probably be called out by someone for using, you know, we don't call people that, we don't do this. We don't do that. And that's one thing when you're five or six, it's another thing when it's, you know, your age, your mine, 30 or 40, right.
Joshua Croke (32:37):
And, calling people, or calling them in as I, you know, in my facilitation work is, it's very interesting when you say something like that to an adult human, it'd be like, oh, well, you know, I'd encourage you to think maybe differently about using that term or, you know because of the connotation and again, the subtext that exists in how people use language.
Bill Wallace (33:03):
The Worcester Historical Museum we've brought in facilitators to talk to our docents and our staff about identifying and addressing the needs of people with limitations. And that language is just as important. It's all about how we view another person and how we relate to them. And it's, you know, we'll all slip up, right? We will slip up, but we have to be conscious when we do slip up. And again, I think that's part of this, you know, it's part of the Joe Ross philosophy that, you know, you got to share these stories and then we'll understand. And if you feel marginalized, you feel lost, you feel underrepresented, you feel misidentified. Then perhaps you also need to have a responsibility to share some of those stories and help everybody else. Because as a solid team we'll make it, but if we're fractured, we're not going to make it.
Joshua Croke (34:01):
And I think you know, the topic of fracture is so critical, especially in the context of like discussing social justice and like social movement because of the racism that we see in the queer community and the homophobia that we see in, you know the black community and the different layers of, again, the intersections of challenge that if we are really looking at building inclusive and loving space everywhere, right, or really even from a design vantage point, you talk about, you know, training docents and things like that to think about how to work with and address and support folks with limitations in varying ability and things like that within the space, if inclusive design is all about designing for everyone, recognize and meeting the needs of the people who have the most need will only benefit everyone else. Right. And so that I think is something that we struggle with here in the current context of the history that we are making currently in Worcester is really looking at who are LGBT leaders.
Joshua Croke (35:15):
And, you know, we recently had a dissolution of the Worcester Pride Organization not more than a year plus ago. And some of that was very much rooted in a non-inclusive environment, in a space of marginalized folks, right. Looking at the transphobia and racism, and calling that out and making actionable plans. And not only saying like, oh yeah, we don't think racism is cool, right? It's like, what are we doing to actively be antiracist as an organization, as members of a community that also experienced marginalization, but see the compounding nature of if you are queer, black and Muslim in Worcester, you know, the challenge that one faces is, you know, much more compounded and unique.
Bill Wallace (36:09):
Absolutely. We all have to listen. We all have to be open-minded and we all have to be willing to share. And I come back to, you know, sitting next to that cranky old aunt that nobody liked, looked like a prune and, you know, just, you know, it was just miserable. But once you got to know her and you reached a common ground, it was a very logical and reasonable relationship. And at times, very exciting and challenging and thoughtful and permissive in some cases to ask the tough questions. And I think that's where we enter too many spaces with too many preconceptions, too many notions of what's right and wrong, and not willing to just listen to each other. One of the staff at the museum said the other day, we were talking about racial justice.
Bill Wallace (36:55):
She said, it goes back to the golden rule, not to be religious, but just go back to the golden rule, do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. If we all understand who we are, and we understand, or are willing to share who we are and accept that and appreciate that the conversation will be so much different. It isn't about a rule maker. It isn't about the one loudest voice. It's about what we do as a team and how we reach common ground. And in order to do that, sometimes it does require a shake up of an organization and repositioning of people, places and thoughts, that's okay. It's the history that, where we started this conversation, the history of life in America, the we do things when we do things and we repeat them and we repeat some of the mistakes, but hopefully each time we do it, we repeat fewer mistakes and we experienced more growth as a collective.
Joshua Croke (37:51):
In the program that we participated in the other day. Something that I've reflected on that I thought was a powerful statement, was that history doesn't change and like the notion that history doesn't change, but how we learn about history and how we shape and tell those stories is what's, there's like, I guess some flexibility within, but history itself doesn't change. So how do we really create this visibility and honesty into the past?
Bill Wallace (38:21):
Oh, we do collectively, and I'm not suggesting taking more credit for Worcester Historical Museum than what is due we do collectively projects like the LGBTQ plus Worcester for the record, we share these stories with each other. We collect the stories of the Latino History Project and work toward an exhibit. We collect the stories of immigration of the Vietamise to Worcester in the 1970s, eighties, the horrors of their transition. We collect the stories of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who was leading you know, the anti-slavery movement in Worcester in the 1850s and sixties and Eli Thayer who formed the Emigrant Aid Society at Worcester City Hall, trying to keep Kansas a free state. We can make a difference. We can learn from those lessons of the past and realize that, you know, maybe times you got to stand up, you won’t be as popular as you might've been the day before, but at the end of the day, you gotta live with your own conscience and you gotta
Bill Wallace (39:16):
you need to understand that you can make a difference and like Abbie Hoffman, sometimes you just can't sit still. You gotta keep nudging people until they listen a little bit and realize that they're not necessarily being difficult or obstinate. They just need that little bit of encouragement for a reality check. I think that, you know, I think the role of the Worcester Historical Museum, no matter who's there, whether it's staff or volunteers or the followers of the museum, we like to tell people this is the family album.
Bill Wallace (39:57):
This is where we have all the secrets, the good stuff, and some of the bad stuff. But this is where we come together to say, okay, what are we doing as a collective, as a group? And, and I think that comes out of that. I believe firmly in my heart and soul, out of that awareness and understanding of community and of each other comes the exciting possibility for change, for meaningful change. Because once we understand each other where we've been, where we hope to go and do some negotiation along the way that we will be at a place whether that is your Pride group that you've just mentioned, or it's making decisions at City Hall about public access for people that have limitations or it's it's multilanguage school curriculums, or whatever the case might be or whatever it is in Worcester, that by understanding who we are, where we've been, how we've gotten here, we can maybe miss some of those potholes and just kind of gracefully go over the speed bumps to a new tomorrow. And we'd like to tell people that the Worcester Historical Museum is just the headquarters of Worcester’s history, but, you know we aren't the authoritarians, the authority figures, we don't, we aren't the grand Poobah of Worcester history that everyone in Worcester is the storyteller and the story keeper. And this is a shared responsibility. And at the museum, we're happy to be that repository, but it's really a community conversation.
Joshua Croke (41:36):
And I think, and you and I have had this conversation before of like, how can we be as cognizant as possible to not prejudice, how we share story, what we collect for story, and really think about you know, presenting information in a way that is honest and isn't necessarily kind of tainted with the frame of now, right? Cause as we know, going back to history and the way that people, you know, talk about things where like, oh, wow, no one would say that today. You know, how do we be more honest and strip our own biases when collecting and sharing and choosing what to include in catalogs like this one?
Bill Wallace (42:20):
Share the story and we don't predetermine, we don't assess them in advance, whether they're right or wrong, we add value to the story. Then we look to another voice to put them all together into a catalog like this. This is why we have Bob Tobin and Joe Cullen and Stephanie Yuhl, to sit back and say, okay, here's this wonderfully rich resource. How do we make sense of it? And maybe the next generation will make sense, but in a different way, but we want to collect it all because we want it to be there. We want it to be a resource for people. There are no right or wrong answers at the Worcester Historical Museum. There might be a date that I can't remember. That's typically the wrong answer for me, but there are no right or wrong answers.
Bill Wallace (43:02):
When people come to bring us stuff for the Worcester Historical Museum, it could be something from yesterday. It could be something from 200 years ago and here at the Worcester Historical Museum, they think, oh, it's going to be in the history book. And it's got to be really old and dusty and musty. No, that's not what it is. Again, I go back to sitting next to that great aunt . It's those stories. We all have the skill. We all have the ability to judge and assess and ask if it's enough information and we need to validate it. But once it gets to the resource pile, then the picture comes into focus. I like to tell people the story of my father, who growing up in Northern New Hampshire with all those mountains, you know, no television, of course, because it's thousand years before television and bad radio reception, he loved to do jigsaw puzzles, cardboard, jigsaw puzzles, 10,000, 50,000 pieces.
Bill Wallace (43:52):
So I grew up doing jigsaw puzzles and I can hear it to this day, my mother saying to my father using lots of words, we can't use on air and lots of negative words. But the puzzle would be done, one piece would be missing. And my mother knew that my father had put that piece in his pocket when he opened the box. Cause he wanted to put it in the last piece. He wanted to make the picture whole, he wanted that, right. And I say to people, but you might be like my father, you may have that one missing piece. Don't decide that we don't need it, share it and let the rest of us understand it. It's a little bit like, you know, the, the sissy, queer and homosexual, that's an important lesson that someone might not have thought it was of value.
Bill Wallace (44:40):
It is a value because it's all part of the story. It's the storytellers who will gather, who will reap all that richness out of the wealth of it and tell the story. And as with American history at large or European history at large, those evaluations may change over the time, but the facts aren't going to change, the perspective might change, but, but the facts are going to be there. And that's the part that doesn't change. And yeah, we can grow. We can look back at something and say, well, was that the right thing to have done then? No, maybe not. Or did they do the best they could. Maybe not, but let's learn from it and not repeat that mistake.
Joshua Croke (45:20):
I was recently at a yard sale. I'm a yard sailor. I love going yard sailing on a Saturday morning. And there was a guy who had had a yard sale who was closing up an antique shop, or he was downsizing his old antique shop. And so there were dozens and dozens of like boxes with old photos and things. And I'm a like a scavenger when I go to yard sales. So I'll pick through every box I'll, you know, go through every bin and
Bill Wallace (45:48):
Remind me not to go with you.
Joshua Croke (45:51):
Okay. Oh yeah, no, it's like a four to seven hour affair. But I was going through these boxes and totally separate boxes. And I was flipping through photos and I found this old like family album and it was just photos of family, you know, very kind of candid on the beach at a party, et cetera. And I was flipping through it and I like something about it resonated with me. So I was holding onto it. Cause it was also the binding I thought was cool. I also look for a lot of things with like old typography as a graphic designer. I love to find the way that people chose and selected type. And I was going through another box across the yard and ended up finding that the couple who is in this family album, their wedding photo in like a a different way. And I just like it seemed so like maybe small, but also like really powerful that there was this connection. Like even across this yard of boxes with stacks of information, it was like, wow, I just saw this person's face. And I was able to kind of make that connection.
Bill Wallace (47:01):
So imagine what life would be like seven days a week at 30 Elm street, when people bring us collections like that, it could be one photograph that we put into the larger perspective of hundreds we might have let's say the Hotel Bancroft might be that one missing picture or the Pullman Standard Company, or bring us their family treasures of albums full of things or the late Christina Cocaine who brought us thousands of our father's negatives of Worcester, people, places, activities that adventure into all, every one of those pictures. I know I just missed going to a yard sale with you cause I couldn't stand there while you did it. Cause I would want to do it. That adventure of putting those pieces together, putting that puzzle together, completing the picture for all of us is a very exciting adventure. And everybody has a voice in that.
Bill Wallace (47:50):
I like to tell the story of our Water Street exhibition in 1983. We did an exhibit about the East European immigrant Jewish experience in Worcester, which was for an organization founded by a bunch of Yankees in 1875 was kind of adventuresome in 1983. So we would go to meetings and we would talk about the temples and out of that exhibit in 83, I grew one, five years later about Shaarai Torah, the former temple up on Providence street, that's now a condominium project. So we got through the first one fine, the second one. I would go to all the meetings with Norma Feingold, who was the team leader on that. And I would always ask all these groupings of generally older men. And we did a picture of the laying of the cornerstone of Shaarai Torah east. Norma would always afterwards chastise me saying these were observant Jews.
Bill Wallace (48:43):
There would be no camera present at an event like that. And so please don't ask again and I would go to the next meeting and ask again and she'd become even more annoyed. And this went on until, you know, I thought, well, what's she going to do arrest me? Until one day this nice little man came in with one of those family albums you were just talking about this reminded me of that, you know, the eight and a half by 11 horizontal, the falling apart black pages with a shoestring holding the whole thing at the end or all of the pictures of his family at the beach. But there was this one little, probably two and a half by three or four inch photograph of his grandfather and his top hat on the wooden scaffolding of the laying of the cornerstone of Shaarai Torah East.
Bill Wallace (49:28):
Someone had taken a picture of what I was told wouldn't exist. And, it was a major part of the exhibit. And this is man's proudest moment. And I remember him saying to me, “I thought these were just pictures of my family. I didn't think there was anything in here anyone cared about.” So we have to remind people that someone does care about their story and their place, and they all have something of value. Whether people are screaming at them or throwing rocks at them, like they were in 1975 of that first Pride parade. We all have a piece of the story and we have to bring it together. Now that comes understanding and appreciation and hopefully progress. It's all very exciting. History is this is one of the most exciting things you can do.
Joshua Croke (50:13):
Which I feel like I was totally disillusioned to when I grew up going through school. I don't know whether it was my own interests at that age or whether I didn't receive fabulous curriculum and instruction. But I so agree with you. I find it fascinating to kind of dig through these stories and you know, the catalog here, and looking at how there are mirrors to my own life and experience as well as you know, the communities more broadly. It brings a sense of like cohesion and closeness to community that I feel like I hadn't had in that level of strength before
Bill Wallace (50:59):
In the place you're in. And you can relate to it better because you understand who's been there before you who's walked those streets. What the experiences have been. I remember being at one of the Yo-Yo Ma concerts at Mechanics Hall. What was that a couple of years ago? And at the intermission there was a guy I think from Boston or somewhere, and the woman next to him was trying to explain to him the history of the hall and the portraits, and as the historian, as the person that the Worcester Historic Museum, I wanted to change that story a little bit, add a few details, a little bit of accuracy when I was so excited that this man from Boston, wondered and seeing where he was, what was the meaning of that place? What were the portraits about? And he was this person who didn't have it all straight.
Bill Wallace (51:43):
That was okay because she was giving him the essence of it. She was putting him in time and place and having them understand where he was. If we all can do that in Worcester, what a great place it would be. And how different would it be? Some of the decisions of, I don't know, The Human Rights Commission or the historic preservation, what is it called or whatever that group is called, the and some of the design decisions we make for the future of Worcester or the system to make for the school committee. If we understand time, place, who we are, where we've been, and, you know, like that volunteer tour guide at Mechanics Hall, or like me quoting a date, that's wrong. I was told the structures in college. I don't know, I think it's that year, but I know what page it's on. I can look it up. If you have the essence of the story, if you have the essence of Worcester. The concept there is a very exciting place. When I arrived here a thousand years ago, I thought it'd be in Worcester for three, four years. It was so fascinating. I'd never wanted to leave.
Joshua Croke (52:48):
Well, I so value our conversation. I always learn something about our history and, you know, our community. And, as we're a show about building inclusive, equitable, and prosperous futures, and just another note for listeners and reminder, if you have history or stories or photos or artifacts about LGBT Worcester, anything Worcester, I guess, we're having this kind of broader conversation as well, bring it to the Historical Museum.
Bill Wallace (53:17):
Email us and be in touch with us. We are currently closed, but we plan to reopen on July 1st post, hopefully post pandemic for everybody. And we're off to an exciting new future. And I will remind you and everyone else that next year is the 300th anniversary of Worcester. It's a big year for celebration and for great progress and understanding more about who we are and sharing that history on different levels, like, you know, chatting on a podcast or doing an exhibit or doing a painting or positioning your organization or thinking about those family archives is a great time to do it.
Joshua Croke (53:51):
Yeah. 300 years. Wow. So what can we expect in Worcester in the year 300?
Bill Wallace (53:59):
I don't know. I would ask that question of you. What should we be expecting from Worcester as we move forward in that three hundredth? You know, everyone asks me what we should be doing for history exhibits and in 2022. And I always posed the question. What should we be thinking about for the future of Worcester and knowing that we're building on 300 years
Joshua Croke (54:18):
I would say comprehensive owned story-based, history curriculum in our public schools, definitely one of them and more walkable streets. If I were to jump into two areas. Well, Bill, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time and all that you bring to the city. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Public Hearing, our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM and wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you to Bill Wallace for joining us today. I have been Joshua Croke and I mean, this has been the Public Hearing podcast. I am your host, Joshua Croke. Public Hearing is created and produced by Action! by Design a design studio that facilitates community engagement and social change innovation and provides equity centered design branding and storytelling services. Our audio producer is Giuliano D'Orazio. Thank you to Eric Gratton, Molly Gammon and Shawn Chung, who also support the production of Public Hearing. And as always, thanks for listening.
