History Matters: The Origins and Development of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society

JUNE GRANATIR ALEXANDER

THE IMMIGRATION AND ETHNIC HISTORY SOCIETY came into existence during an era of intellectual ferment that spawned new approaches to the study of the past and rekindled an interest in the history of ordinary people. Although it has changed names, for four decades since it began life in the 1960s as the "Immigration History Group," the society has promoted the study of international migration and immigrant and ethnic history. To date, however, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society's own history has gone largely untold and unrecorded. By providing a brief description of the society's origins and subsequent development, the following account attempts to endow an organization long dedicated to furthering the study of history with a modest history of its own. This preliminary foray into the society's past is an attempt to relate how, as the organization struggled to establish a functional administrative structure and secure a loyal membership base, it also grappled with more perplexing issues of its identity, objectives, and visibility. In hindsight, it becomes apparent that embracing diverse ideological orientations and varied scholarly interests has long been a hallmark of the organization and a factor that has stirred and enlivened constructive debate. While the narrative of any organization's past is necessarily and mostly institutional history, to gain a more complete picture requires placing that story within a broader context. For the Immigration and Ethnic History Society (IEHS), that context spans the academic world and beyond. Since its formative years, the organization has been significantly affected not only by shifting scholarly trends but also by social and political realities confronting American society.