The Power of History:
The Weakness of a Profession

Kenneth T. Jackson

Winston Churchill and George Burns, among others, are reputed to have said, "If I had known that I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." My revision of that sentiment is simple: "If I had had any idea that I would ever be considered for the presidency of the Organization of American Historians, I would have worked harder to deserve the honor."	1
The first meeting of this group I ever attended was in Kansas City in 1965, the place and the moment when the old Mississippi Valley Historical Association voted to become the Organization of American Historians (OAH). That name change simply ratified the fact that the Mississippi Valley Historical Association had become the most important professional society in the nation for persons interested in the history of the United States. Indeed, the long list of OAH presidents over the years is a virtual roll call of the great historians of the twentieth century—James G. Randall, Merle Curti, Walter Prescott Webb, Avery Craven, Thomas C. Cochran, C. Vann Woodward, John Hope Franklin, Gerda Lerner, William E. Leuchtenburg, Joyce Appleby, David Brion Davis, and Eric Foner among them. I am humbled to be associated with them in any way. The 1965 OAH convention also has personal significance because it led directly to the birth of my son Kevan nine months later.	2
I was tempted to follow in the footsteps of most of my predecessors at this podium and to give an address on my field of interest, urban history. In that case, I would have compared the history, geography, and present circumstances of New York and Los Angeles, the two largest metropolitan regions in the United States. They have different political traditions, different climates, different economic underpinnings, different geographical circumstances, different images, and even different rhythms. But they are more alike than different.	3
Each of course is huge. According to the 2000 census, more than 8 million people lived within the municipal boundaries of the city of New York; almost 3.7 million resided within the city of Los Angeles. Each is surrounded by a vast ring of independent suburbs. The municipalities around Gotham, with obvious exceptions like Newark, Jersey City, and Yonkers, tend to be numerous and small; in fact, there are more than 1,500 separate governments in New York's immediate orbit. By contrast, the towns around the City of Angels tend to be fewer in number and larger in population. But the bottom line is similar. Each region includes about 13 million suburbanites spread out over 14,000 square miles, or more than 120 miles from north to south and east to west. To put that into comparative perspective, the New York and the Los Angeles metropolitan regions are each twice the size of Connecticut. No other human agglomerations on earth spread over so vast an area.1	4
Both New York and Los Angeles are heterogeneous, even by the standards of a multicultural and multiracial society. Gotham has probably been the most ethnically diverse spot on the planet since its founding by the Dutch in 1624. Indeed, New York has never really had a majority culture, and at various times in its past it has included more Irish than Dublin, more Germans than Hamburg, more Italians than Naples, and more Jews than Warsaw. Similarly, the very name of the City of Angels tells us something of its ethnic diversity. Since World War II, and especially in the past quarter century, Los Angeles has become the world's new immigrant metropolis. In 2001, for example, its public schools are struggling with a student body whose members speak dozens of languages.	. . .