Dr. Oscar Chamberlain, senior lecturer emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is the featured speaker for the Jan. 30 Thursdays at the U lecture at UW-Eau Claire – Barron County.
Dr. Oscar Chamberlain
He will present “Minnesota’s Flag and Conflicting American Dreams” from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall in Ritzinger Hall. The presentation also will be livestreamed at ricelaketv.com.
The recent change in the Minnesota flag is part of a centuries-long struggle over a profound and simple question: What is the true story of the U.S.? Chamberlain will examine the stories that flags were meant to tell and identify other stories we can glimpse today.
Why change the Minnesota flag? That’s a lot of money to spend on flags, seals and stationery. The primary reason is simple and divisive: Many people wanted to strike out the story that it told of a virtuous, free farmer triumphing over the land and evicting its inhabitants.
Chamberlain will use the old flag and other state images from that era to examine that story and discover other stories they tell. He hopes to leave the audience with a better understanding of the challenge of finding the true story of our nation.
Chamberlain grew up in Texas and arrived in Wisconsin in 1991. He taught at UW-Eau Claire – Barron County regularly from 1998-2005 and at UW-Eau Claire from 1997-2020. Much of his research focused on the state constitutions in the Antebellum Era (1789-1860).
“It’s at the state level in this period that the big debates happened,” Chamberlain says. “Each state determined who could vote and who could hold office. Each state decided whether to embrace or reject slavery. “
His interest in this era’s state seals and flags began when he was asked to write an article interpreting Wisconsin’s flag. He compared Wisconsin’s design with the Antebellum state flags and seals of the states entering the Union from 1800-1861 to put the Wisconsin symbols in context.
He found that taken together, the images tell stories. Some of the stories are deliberate. Others are not. All are fascinating and are relevant to our fractured politics today. Why is this relevant? Because one of our biggest fights is over what is true about our history. Eliminating that image from the Minnesota flag was one part of that struggle.
The Thursdays at the U weekly series is free and open to the public thanks to support from the UW-Eau Claire – Barron County Foundation. Neither seating reservations nor parking permits are needed for in-person attendees.
Although in-person attendance is encouraged, most talks in the series are livestreamed. They also are archived and can be watched later on the Thursdays at the U webpage.
The next lecture in the series will be Feb. 6, with Dewey Johnson presenting “Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls.”
For more information, contact Laura Holden at 715-788-6207 or holdenlk@uwec.edu.
