History Lessons

A Q&A with Penn professor Tukufu Zuberi

By Anna Christopher

If pop culture portrayals of detectives hold true, it would seem as if distinctive headwear is required for great sleuthing: think Sherlock Holmes with his plaid, double-brimmed deerstalker; Indiana Jones and his rugged felt fedora; and, in the 21st century, Tukufu Zuberi, who rarely makes an appearance without one of his trademark hats.

Zuberi differs from his predecessors on two crucial points, however. He is not a fictional character, and the mysteries he investigates are real. For the second year, Zuberi -- who by day is a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of its Center for Africana Studies -- has teamed up with three other distinguished fact finders for a new season of the public television series History Detectives, which airs on Mondays at 9 p.m. on WHYY TV12.

In each episode, the detectives enlist the help of experts in architecture, archeology and forensics in an attempt to reveal the historical significance of buildings, personal artifacts and intriguing "tall tales" that have become American legends.

Here, Zuberi talks about the some of the exciting and enlightening aspects of historical mysteries:

For the second season of History Detectives, how did you choose which mysteries you wanted to pursue?

A lot of these stories came from the public. After the first show, we got about 5,000 e-mails from people sending in their stories and questions. Some come from local historians and historical societies and some are suggested by us, the History Detectives.

Many of this season's investigations explore stories which may be directly related to crucial moments in American history. How does it feel to research something that could significantly alter or further explain these moments?

This season, we investigated a flag that could be an abolitionist flag, and that story was very emotional for me because of the potential of what this flag could be. We [spoke with] another individual who believes he has some art from the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. This is a very emotional subject, a very controversial subject, and a very major historical issue. For me, it was just revealing [in terms of] some of the things we found out, and the connections between this art, this community, and how people still remember that war.

Are investigations into African-American history particularly intriguing to you?

All of them are interesting. The thing is, there is no history which stands alone. There's really no white history and no black history and no Japanese history. Those [sentiments] are really the myths that perpetrate divisions in American society.

While I get a particular joy out of those stories, I got a lot of joy out of a story I just shot this weekend about propellers that are possibly from a German U-boat [discovered] off the coast of the United States (Airdate: Monday, September 27) That's a fundamentally important thing, not because an African-American was on that U-boat, but because it's fundamentally important to understand that these U-boats were right off the coast of the United States.

In terms of shooting that story, or the story about the possible abolitionist flag, or one about Lewis and Clark's adventure, these stories are part of history that have within them connections to all of history. History is a very complete process -- it's not really disjointed. If you were to take out African-American history, it would all fall. If you were to take out white-American history, it would all fall. It only stands because of the reality of these interconnections.

Have any of the History Detectives investigations encouraged you to continue your own personal investigations or research?

A collector of old Civil War documents…had a muster roll that supposedly has listed on it a man by the name of Paul Cuffee, a very famous abolitionist and African-American who [was part of a movement] to take all the Africans back to Africa. Through the process of the investigation, we got to study Cuffee's life as well as look at the value of some of these old documents. (Airdate: Monday, September 13) The history that they unfold about the United States was very enlightening to me, so I have since committed myself to trying to find more of these hidden documents that came out of the Civil War.