Ruth J. Abram is President of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which she founded in 1988. The Tenement Museum, whose mission is "to promote tolerance and historical perspective through the presentation and interpretation of the variety of immigrant and migrant experiences on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a gateway to America. The Museum is undertaking the nation's initial effort to preserve and interpret a 19th Century tenement building. Its building at 97 Orchard Street is the first tenement to be designated a National Historic Landmark. Using the building and its Lower East Side neighborhood, the Museum has pioneered the interpretation of the home and community life of urban, immigrant, working class and poor peoples, and it has set precedent in using history as a tool for addressing contemporary social issues.

In explaining why she founded the Museum, Ms. Abram told the interviewer for Horizon Magazine, "The tenement building represented the common ground of immigrants from everywhere. Through it, one could discuss the history of immigration and immigrant life, the role of reformers, of government, the history and our changing views as to what was an acceptable quality of life. But most of all, through a Tenement Museum, the general public, old and young alike, could be invited to consider the question: how will we be one nation and at the same time enjoy, appreciate and certainly not be afraid of the profound differences we bring to the table based on background?"

Within a short period of time, the Tenement Museum has become a national symbol. In l998 President Clinton signed legislation authorizing an affiliation between the Tenement Museum and the National Park Service's Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty sites. In his introduction of the bill, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that the Museum represented an "outstanding opportunity to preserve and present an important stage of immigrant experience and the move for social change in our cities at the turn of the century." One month later, the Museum's tenement became the 20th featured property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, joining famous homesteads such as James Madison's Montpelier, Woodrow Wilson House, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio. Demonstrating that a home of working class and urban poor people was of national significance, this event signaled a new direction in preservation, one led by the Tenement Museum.

In its first six years, the Museum grew from a storefront operation with a volunteer staff of two and opening balance of $75,000 to an important New York cultural and educational institution with staff, consultants and volunteers numbering over 100 and an annual budget of well over $3 million.

The Tenement Museum is the outgrowth of Paraphrase, Inc., not-for-profit corporation also founded by Ms. Abram to interpret scholarship to the general public. As President of Paraphrase, Ms. Abram produced "Send Us a Lady Physician: Women Doctors in America, 1835-1920." This program, including a nationally traveling exhibition, a book published by W.W. Norton; and "Tell Me Where it Hurts," a "living history" visit to a 19th century physician were all researched, written and produced by Ms. Abram and co-sponsored by the American Association of Women in Medicine.

Ms. Abram's writings have appeared in many publications. For the Tenement Museum's Tenement Times, she writes "High Stoop," a regular column. In addition to Send Us Lady Physician (W.W.Norton), Ms. Abram's published writing include " "To Do Something and to be Something," Philadelphia County Medical Society Journal; "Women's Section," Information Please Almanac, "Planting Cut Flowers," History News; "When the Sky Falls, History News; "Using the Past to Shape the Future: New Concepts for a Historic Site," Museum International as well as poetry in Midwest Poetry Review and Poetry Magazine.

A popular speaker and presenter, Ms. Abram has appeared before numerous audiences including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, the Conference Board, the Family Service Association of America, Federally Employed Women, Planned Parenthood, the Emma Willard School, the American Jewish Committee, the Council on Appalachian Women as well as numerous professional museum conferences. She has appeared on many national media shows including World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, the Today Show, National Public Radio, the PBS' Ric Burns' History of New York series and the CBS: World of Difference series.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College with an MSW from the Florence Heller School at Brandeis University, Ms. Abram has an MA in American History from New York University where she was a Kennan Fellow. In l975, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ms. Abram a Commissioner of International Women's Year. Ms. Abram is the recipient of many prestigious awards. These include the Camille Mermod Award from the American Medical Women's Association; the Aspen Institute's Alvin Brown Fellowship; New York University's Distinguished Alumni and Alumnae/I of the Year Awards; Honorary Doctor of Public Service, Russell Sage Colleges; and the Arts and Business Council Award for Excellence in Managing an Arts Organization, the Sarah Lawrence College's "Alumnae of Distinction" Award, the "Women in Preservation" Award; and the Briscoe Award of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center.

Prior to turning to history, Ms. Abram was the Executive Director of the Women's Action Alliance, a national clearing house on women's issues; the Program Director for the American Civil Liberties Union; Executive Director of the Norman Foundation; and Title VII Coordinator for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. As a volunteer, Ms. Abram has served as a founding member of the Independent Sector, of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger; as President of the New Israel Fund, as a reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and as a participant in the 2000 Museums and Community National Task Force of the American Association of Museums.

Since l967, Ruth Abram has been married to Herbert Teitelbaum, an attorney. They have two children. Anna who is the Director of Corporate Development at the AdCouncil and Noah, formerly stationed in Croatia with the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Refugees and now a Chancellor's Fellow in the New York City public schools.

http://www.tenement.org/

Last Updated:
Novermber 10, 2004

Ruth J. Abram, Lower East Side Tenement Museum
The Center for Architecture, where models of proposed World Trade Center replacements are displayed, was the perfect backdrop for this civic engagement conference. Ruth Abram, Founder and President of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, opened the event. Using just a couple of examples, she helped her listeners better appreciate the power of history. She used as prima facie evidence governments' determination to control history. Ruth pointed to Bangladesh from which she had recently returned. The country's ruling party ordered the nation's founding father to be excised from the history books, because he was an opposition party member. From South Africa, Nelson Mandela identifies the turning point in his nation's struggle against apartheid as a visit by South African dignitaries to the Slave House at Goree Island in Senegal. The gathering of the leaders at the site of the African slave trade according to Mandela "unlocked the door to new communication" which made his release and all that followed possible.

Title photo is of conference participants during Ruth Abram's opening keynote address. Photo directly above shows Ruth Abram on right with Catherine Turton of the National Park Service, Conference Coordinator, on the left and Liz Sevcenko of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in the middle, who was invaluable as conference host.

On a more personal note, Ruth related to her audience her own experience growing up in the l950s. In the southern community of her childhood, not one woman in her family's wide circle of friends was a "career woman." She yearned to contribute to the wider sphere and not only be wife and mother. But, she could find no evidence to suggest what she dreamed was possible. It was only when she stumbled upon the autobiography of Jane Addams, founder of Chicago's Hull House, that she first learned of other options. Thus, Ms. Abram told her listeners, the power of history transforms individuals as well as nations. It can offer comfort and role models available nowhere else.

First Ask; Then Best Serve
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum story is largely focused on immigrants. The stories told are of hardships and successes; assimilation and retained heritage; exploitation and contributions. Ruth described the surrounding community as not terribly unchanged from the history told at the museum. The new immigrant community surrounding the museum is one in which the neighbors often do not speak English and frequently live at or below the poverty line.

The Museum did what panelists and participants at this conference advocated throughout the week. Ms. Abram and her staff went out into the community and asked how the museum might be useful. Answer? Among other assimilation problems, the immigrants were waiting for up to three years to get a slot in the City's free English classes. The museum responded by starting its own. In addition to teaching English, the new curriculum used the historic apartments and the stories of earlier waves of immigrants to welcome and help orient today's immigrants. Ruth quoted a grateful graduate as saying "I not only learned English; I learned I was not alone. Others have gone through this before."

Out of class discussions an even broader initiative was birthed. Ruth quoted another student as saying, "No one was there at Kennedy airport for us, No One!" Ms. Abram went on to relate how the class, inspired by the history of immigration and understanding that a bad situation could be remedied, suggested the museum publish an immigrant guide to New York City. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum took the idea to the New York Times which was already considering a similar project. In May of 2004, together with the New York Times the first immigrant guide to New York City was published in English, Chinese and Spanish. As the students suggested, the guide includes the stories of immigrants past which had inspired them; their own stories laying out the current situation, answers to the most frequently asked questions, and an annotated resource listing.

The staff at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum believe history has a purpose. The publication of the immigrant guide is a sterling example. History was the inspiration for a new solution to an old problem.

Banding Together
Ruth described feeling frustrated when ten years after the founding of the Tenement Museum, she was still experiencing substantial resistance in the museum community to the idea of history having a purpose. Continuing always in Jane Addams's footsteps, she took action. She wrote a letter to the directors of over 100 sites asking who saw history and historic sites as a tool for safeguarding democracy. Eight responded. They were the directors of the Slave House in Senegal, the Gulag Museum in Russia, the Liberation War Museum in Bangladesh, the Workhouse in England, District Six in South Africa, Terezin in the Czech Republic, and the Northeast Region of the National Park Service. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the eight traveled to the Foundation's conference center in Bellagio, Italy. One week later, after prolonged discussions, the International Coaliton of Historic Site Museums of Conscience emerged. Its founding document is seminal. It succinctly verbalizes Ms. Abram's passion:

We are historic site museums in many different parts of the world, at many different stages of development, presenting and interpreting a wide variety of historic issues, events and people.

We hold in common the belief that it is the obligation of historic sites to assist the public in drawing connections between the history of our sites and its contemporary implications. We view stimulating dialogue on pressing social issues and promoting humanitarian and democratic values as a primary function.

Civic Dialogue
Ruth told the conference audience that civic dialogue is the most important vehicle we have at our command for civic engagement, which she defined as "creating conditions for people to participate in shaping their environment". She challenged attendees to break into small groups and define dialogue for themselves and followed by providing the group some definitions from activists who have given a lot of thought to the subject. For instance, Animating Democracy defines it as follows:

Civic Dialogue is public dialogue in which people discuss civic issues, policies or decisions of consequence to their lives, communities and society. Civic dialogue is intentional and purposeful. Dialogue organizers have a sense of what difference they hope to make and participants are informed about why the dialogue is taking place and what may result. Civic dialogue explores the dimensions of the civic or social issue, working toward common understanding in an open-ended discussion. It engages multiple perspectives on an issue, including potentially conflicting and unpopular ones rather than promoting a single point of view.

The Power
Ruth concluded by motivating the audience gathered for the two day conference with the following:

The Museum professionals and supporters gathered here today are in the business of forming memory and therefore conscience.

We hold the power of history in our hands.

• The power to offer role models,
  
• The power to illuminate directions and strategies,
  
• The power to provide safe places for civic dialogue
  
• The power to play a central role in the ongoing task of democracy building.

She closed the keynote with this, "As the National Park Service Regional Director Marie Rust said, 'It's a tall order. But we are up to it."

Additional Online Resources

For more information about the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience:

• District Six Museum, South Africa,
• Eleanor Roosevelt NHS, US,
• Gulag Museum at Perm 36, Russia,
• Japanese American National Museum, US
• Liberation War Museum, Bangladesh
• Lower East Side Museum, US
• Maisondes Esclaves, Senegal
• Martin Luther King Jr. NHS, US
• Memorial Abierta, Argentina
• National Civil Rights Museum, US
• Terezin Memorial, Czech Republic
• Women's Rights NHP, US
• The Workhouse, England
  
  

Go to:
http://www.sitesofconscience.org/

The keynoter referenced Roy Rosenweig and David Thelen's survey described in their book, The Presence of the Past. The authors conducted the first national survey of Americans' relationship with history. A description of the book, survey results, and a description of the methodology can be found on the George Mason University website at:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/survey/

Another thought-provoking work that the speaker referenced was the article, "What Kind of Talk Does Democracy Need", in the National Civic Review. It is available online at:

http://www.ncl.org/publications/ncr/91-2/ncr91-2_
z article.pdf