Thucydides--(c460-c400 BC), greatest Greek historian and first to probe the relationship between historical cause and effect. An Athenian general exiled for his loss of Amphipolis (424 BC), he spent the rest of his life traveling, interviewing soldiers and writing his History of the Peloponnesian War, in which he stressed accuracy, objectivity end analysis of individual motivation The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition, p. 1276).

Leslie H. Fishel, Jr.

Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., received his A.B. from Oberlin College and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He served as director of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin from 1959 to 1969 before becoming president of Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. He left Heidelberg in 1980 to become director of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. He retired from the Hayes Center in 1988. He co-edited three editions of The Black American: A Documentary History with Benjamin Quarles and has published in scholarly journals. Fishel has served as a member of the Governing Council of the American Association for State and Local History , as a member of the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ohio Historical Society, in addition to his work with local historical societies and museums in Ohio (Barbara J. Howe and Emory L. Kemp, Public History: an Introduction, p. 8).

Specialty Groups that started in the first half of the twentieth century.

These were Public History groups which reflected specific needs of each group of members.

1. 1904--Confederation of State and Local Historical Societies of the AHA, later (1940) American Association for State and Local History: http://www.nashville.net/~aaslh/contents.htm
2. 1907--Mississippi Valley Historical Association, now known as Organization of American Historians: http://www.indiana.edu/~oah/
3. 1936: Society of American Archivists: http://www.archivists.org/

Prepared by Yvonne Tu, for HST 594--Independent Study--Public History, with assistance from Professor Catherine Lavender, Department of History, The College of Staten Island/CUNY. Last updated: Monday, 29 March 1999.