Wisconsinites who keep journals during coronavirus could be part of history
When soldiers were training at Camp Randall in 1861 to fight in the Civil War, the founding director of the Wisconsin Historical Society gave them journals to write down their thoughts.
A century later when Freedom Riders, including many University of Wisconsin students, headed to Southern states to work in the civil rights movement, a group of UW grad students collected thousands of pages of contemporary documents that otherwise might have been lost.
So it’s no surprise that the Wisconsin Historical Society is now asking Wisconsinites to keep journals during the coronavirus pandemic to document history as it’s happening.
The society on Thursday launched its COVID-19 Journal Project seeking folks in all 72 counties to write down their experiences and thoughts either on actual paper, digitally or in video blogs.
“By collecting these journals now it gives a voice to people today for people in the future who can look back at the lessons learned,” said Wisconsin Historical Society Director and CEO Christian Øverland.
The project will also be a gift to future historians who won’t have to rely on the things most historians use to glean information — newspapers, records, indexes — but can use the actual voices of people living through the global pandemic.
“This is the part of the history that disappears. Capturing it now is important,” Øverland said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon.
Yes, historians a century from now will be interested in how leaders around the world handled the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s the memories and reflections of people working from kitchen tables and homeschooling their children, employees out of work from shuttered businesses, health care professionals, first responders and grocery clerks on the front lines and folks who post funny videos and pictures on Facebook that will give a more complete picture of what it was like in 2020.
Otherwise the stories of the resourcefulness of Wisconsinites — like the distilleries switching from making vodka and whiskey to hand sanitizer — might get lost to history.
“We want to collect those now because they will go away. We want to show how Wisconsinites were innovative and show our true ingenuity of how we dealt with the epidemic,” Øverland said.
The Wisconsin Historical Society is asking participants to keep a 30-, 60or 90-day journal in whatever format works best. Journalers should provide a summary of their day and over time document how COVID-19 affects their lives, their families and their perspective of the world.
Participants are asked to download a sign from the Journal Project page, write why they’re participating, and take a photo of themselves with the sign to post on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #BigHistoryIsHappening.
Øverland is hoping hundreds, if not thousands of Wisconsinites — even Cheeseheads living in other states during the epidemic — will participate. A large collection of journals will help historians in the future better understand what it’s like living through this global pandemic.
Besides, plenty of folks have a lot of time on their hands now.