7 Questions With Kim Campbell, Director of Interpretation and Preservation, Coastal Georgia Historical Society

 Kim Campbell is the Director of Interpretation and Preservation with the Coastal Georgia Historical Society and has managed the World War II Home Front Museum since September2018. In this capacity, she supervises daily operations on-site, assists with educational and interpretive programming, and helps maintain the Society’s historic buildings. Campbell previously served as the Director of Preservation Field Services at Historic Macon Foundation from July 2017 to September 2018 and was the Preservation and Education Coordinator at the same organization beginning in November 2014. Before moving back to Georgia, Campbell worked as a National Register of Historic Places contractor for the Historic Columbia Foundation. She holds a master’s degree in public history with a concentration in historic preservation and a certificate of museum management from the University of South Carolina, as well as a bachelor’s degree in history from Mercer University in Macon.  Campbell is a published researcher, most recently in the National Council on Public History essay collection Preserving Place and in the South Carolina Historical Quarterly. Campbell also researched and wrote the material for the National Register of Historic Places listing for the James and Olive Porter House. For more information about the World War II Home Front Museum, see their web page https://www.coastalgeorgiahistory.org/visit/world-war-ii-museum/ 

1.         How and/or when did you get you hooked on history?

I don’t really have many memories of a time when I wasn’t interested in the past. One of my first distinct memories of engaging with history was on a field trip to the Ocmulgee Mounds in Macon, Georgia as a second grader. I was fascinated by the idea that I was literally walking where people had been hundreds and thousands of years before and was so curious about their lives. I still feel that historic places offer people today a tangible connection to the past that makes history feel real in a way almost nothing else can.

2.         What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

While I largely research and present local history professionally, I engage in a much wider range of historical topics in my personal time. In the past year, I’ve read histories on everything from the role of fast foot in civil rights (I highly recommend Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain.) to a book about the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled Egypt in her own right. I’ve also watched documentaries about subjects from videogames to Malcolm X.

 

Besides providing entertainment, the practice of history informs how I navigate everyday life. Knowing how to research a topic and sort through whether or not a source is reliable are both really helpful skills in navigating the largely digital world we now live in.

3.         How will history play  a part of your professional life/career?

I’m a practicing public historian, so I’ve built my career around researching history and then interpreting and presenting it to as many people as possible, with a particular emphasis on reaching people outside of the academy. Essentially, my career doesn’t exist without history.

4.         Why is studying/knowing history important?

Imagine for a moment that you are dropped into a moving car and told to drive to a particular town. In order to navigate to where you want to go, you have to figure out where you are, and since you’re still moving, the best way to figure out where you are is to learn where you’ve already been. History is a lot like this car scenario; you can keep moving forward without bothering to figure out how you got to where you currently are, but the chances you’ll successfully find where it is you want to go without that information are pretty slim. We have to understand our past in order to make informed decisions for how to create an equitable and just future.

5.         What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

As a public historian, my work often has me study a topic briefly, interpret that history for a specific audience, and then move on to the next topic. The one subject I consistently return to though is memory. Memory is the public perception of history, and we can study it through monuments, novels, historic markers, films, and many other aspects of popular culture. In addition to sometimes having fun source material to examine, memory also gives me a view of what someone like myself may have presented to the publics of the past.

6.         How did the WWII Home Front Museum come into existence?

From 2006 to 2016, the Coastal Georgia Historical Society operated the Maritime Center at the Historic Coast Guard Station on St. Simons Island. That museum had exhibits on subjects like the Coast Guard, archeology, marsh ecology, and World War II. When the Society updated the exhibits in our other property the St. Simons Lighthouse Museum, we discovered that the World War II story in our community was far too large to fit on a single panel in that exhibit on St. Simons Island history. By 2016 it was time to update the Maritime Center, and since the Coast Guard played a major part in Glynn County’s World War II story, we decided this was the best home to share this narrative.

7.         What is the main story your museum aims to tell?

The World War II Home Front Museum brings to life Coastal Georgia’s extraordinary contributions to winning World War II. Through immersive galleries and interactives we tell the stories of ordinary Americans doing their part to win the war. While the details of our story are specific to this area, the overarching narrative of sacrifice and participation in the war effort played out in countless small towns, large cities, and rural farms across America.