Our PhD student, Jacob Harver, has had a busy year. Having successfully passed his prospectus defense, he’s teaching American History survey courses for the department and is writing his dissertation on Northeast Ohio economic history. But more than that, he is also a part of the fabric of Youngstown civic life. A recent interview with Youngstown’s CBS affiliate WKBN, and an article in the Youngstown paper The Vindicator, has raised his profile. Dr. Steigmann-Gall interviewed Jacob on his commitment to Northeast Ohio life and heritage.
Richard Steigmann-Gall (RSG): So Jacob, tell us about the focus of your academic work.
Jacob Harver (JH): The neighborhood I study was very much a melting pot, but also had inside this pot its little enclaves, kind of like the sociological idea of a “salad bowl” more than an actual pot where the “ingredients” blend in imperceptibly. Irish-American immigration first defined this neighborhood, called “the Monkey’s Nest,” but then other ethnicities moved in, like Slovaks and Italians, and finally African Americans in the Great Migration. So that neighborhood has been the subject of my research.
RSG: Congrats on your recent press coverage. Has that coverage been due to this research?
JH: Yes, but I also gave a talk to the McGuffey Society in Youngstown, which is the home of the famous children’s books, the McGuffey Readers. Since McGuffey was from Youngstown originally, they asked me to give a talk there. They’re a kind of local civic society. Some sixty people showed up for my talk, which was great.
RSG: So cool that you’re getting this exposure. Can you tell us a bit more about what your dissertation is about? What’s the question it seeks to answer?
JH: So, I’m interested in what I call the kinetics of racial capitalism, specifically how it played out in this neighborhood. You could think of it as a kind of microstudy that illuminates a particular story of the United States. Youngstown becomes a very central example of understanding this larger nationwide process.
RSG: Can you tell us more about what “kinetics” means?
JH: Yes, I really love this essay called “The Kinetics of Our Discontent,” by Mehmet Döşemeci. Everyone talks about confrontation with an established order as social movements, but in these struggles there’s also an element of “arrest”, in the sense of interrupting. He argues that capitalism is a regime of movement, and that social protest is actually about stopping that movement so it does not overtake you. So, when you think of a sit-down strike during the days of the CIO, or the struggle against the Dakota pipeline and fossil fuel extraction – Döşemeci would call these moments of stoppage, of stasis, of arrest. It’s the literal opposite of “movement.”
Anyway, this “Monkey’s Nest” neighborhood in Youngstown embodies these tensions of place and mobility, movement and arrest. For many residents there, a sense of place, of family lore, of storytelling – all things that give a sense of community – are told by people who established place. And yet the neighborhood was demolished for a freeway in 1962.
RSG: It’s ironic because these are also places of migration, right? People who literally move to the neighborhood because of capitalism being an actual “movement” of people across regions and countries, and yet wanting to “arrest” any further movement.
JH: Yes that’s right. And the racial dimension then comes in. Because even before World War Two, with the Great Migration of African Americans from the South, and the New Deal, “White Flight” becomes part of this story. Of those “salad bowl” enclave communities, the Slovaks and Irish and Italians, moving out of the neighborhoods that had defined them. The history of transportation also becomes part of this story, because paths of migration actually start off with Native American footpaths and then waterways in early American colonization.
RSG: Oh wow, this sort of sounds like the “Big History” that someone like me, who does European history, associates with the French “Annales” school of thought.
JH: Well, given the chronology I’m working with in my dissertation, that certainly would be a label that fits. I take it from the canal era and railroads, to automobile transportation. The key is when these highways then run right through these old neighborhoods that get demolished. So I end it right around the mid-60s, at the peak of this demolition period. The Great Migration kind of serves like a conceptual bridge between the railroad era and the automobile era. The third chapter of my dissertation, on the railroads, is my longest chapter.
RSG: So, what’s the big argument of your thesis? Or dissertation, rather?
JH: It’s to show how Monkey’s Nest is a kind of cauldron for understanding American History overall. To understand how the United States was formed – notions of industrial transformation and the frontier – you need to look at this area, West Appalachia, to fully grasp what is happening. It’s a story of the tension between movement and arrest. And all of these pieces become inseparable, inexplicable without each other.
RSG: What do you see yourself doing once you graduate and become Dr. Harver? What will be next for you?
JH: So, after I graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Youngstown State, I started a café in downtown Youngstown. I don’t talk about it in the department really, but it’s in the Knox Building. My original place was in this really tiny shotgun place that charged a lot of rent. Then two doors down, there was this big building that had a restaurant on the first floor, that went out of business. I realized I could pay less in a mortgage than I was paying in rent! If you’re familiar with the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, this building is named after the same Knox. He was a cousin of the Woolworths. The building my café occupies became a Woolworth’s in 1912, then went under in 1984. I bought the building in 2012. When I bought it you could even see where the old dumbwaiter was that connected the kitchen on the third floor with the lunch counter.
RSG: So this constitutes a whole career separate from getting a PhD in History. Tell me how this connects with your academic work?
JH: My dissertation is very much driving by wanting to understand Youngstown. I really want to connect my academic interests with public history, and reveal to a broader public the benefit of doing such deeper research to the life of the community. Youngstown holds an almost allegorical place in Rust Belt history. Workers have a very large role to play in that history the famous shutdowns, and efforts to buy the mills and continue operating them. So, I do some work for the Historical Center for Industry and Labor, back in Youngtown, and would look into a future in curation at a museum like that one.
RSG: I remember over the summer you telling me about a bike trip you took up to Canada? And you asked me for some suggestions since you know I was born in Montreal?
JH: Yes, I did that trip and loved it. Biking is a great way to hit up historical markers along the path, and I did quite a bit of that, especially as it relates to the War of 1812. I also visited Fort Ticonderoga along the way, on Lake Champlain. That history fascinates me for itself, but I also see the connection to our own pathway and trail history in NE Ohio, especially in the Mahoning Valley. Bike trails form a useful vessel for the larger history of transportation for the whole region. Advocating for bike trails is in fact a way of presenting and preserving that history. I hope to advocate for more bike trails in Youngstown, as a form of advocating for public history. Also you were right, Montreal bagels are great!
RSG: Ha! Glad to hear it. Good luck on your future Jacob – great talking to you.
