Week 7: Slavery and Public History

            In The Power of Place by Dolores Hayden, chapter 7, “Rediscovering an African American Homestead” looks at the creation and development of the Biddy Mason project.  Hayden first discusses the area surrounding the Biddy Mason homestead painting a picture of the area.  Some information about Biddy Mason is also provided and the few attempts made to mark Biddy’s life.  Hayden then goes on to discuss the work The Power of Place and others did during the Biddy Mason project.  The project consists of several exhibits: Biddy Mason: House of the Open Hand, and Biddy Mason: Time and Place, are just a couple of the exhibits.  This project tells the story of Los Angeles’s development into a thriving city and commemorates Biddy Mason. 

Courtesy of ethicsalarms.com

Courtesy of Wiggins Battery.

            The other reading was chapters 1 through 6 in “Confederates in the Attic” by Tony Horwitz.  Chapter one Confederates in the Attic introduces Horwitz to the world of southern confederacy culture.  Horwitz had always had a fascination with the Civil War and joins a group of hardcore civil war reenactors for a weekend drill held by the Southern Guard.  This is the beginning of his journey through the South.  In chapter two North Carolina: Cats of the Confederacy, Horwitz recalls his time spent in Salisbury, North Carolina.  There he meet Ed and Sue Curtis and others from the Sons of Confederacy, Daughters of the Confederacy, and Children of the Confederacy and discussed why remembering the Civil War was so important to them.  Chapter three South Carolina: In the Better Half of the World looks at how people in Charleston, South Carolina view the war differently.  In Charleston the Civil War does not encompass daily life.  Many people have similar attitudes towards the war as Mrs. Wells, “defeat and devastation were the true legacy of the War, they set the South apart from a nation accustomed to triumph.” (56).  Chapter four South Carolina: Shades of Gray, Horwitz remarks, “hardly a day had passed without some snippet about the Civil War appearing in the newspaper.” (71).  One of the stories was how a statue in York, Maine resembled a confederate soldier while a statue in Kingstree, South Carolina looked like a union soldier.  Horwitz also attends a demonstration for the Confederacy flag and discusses the differing opinions surrounding the flag.  Chapter five Kentucky: Dying for Dixie Horwtiz travels to Guthrie, a town on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky.  In Guthrie, black teenagers shot a white teenager for flying the rebel flag from his pickup.  In Guthrie there is a lot of racial tension between blacks and whites and this incident only increased that tension.  Chapter six Virginia: A Farb of the Heart Horwitz returned to Virginia to take a break from his southern journey, he received a call from Robert Lee Hodge about an upcoming Civil War reenactment: the Battle of Wilderness.  Horwitz joins in on the reenactment and experiences what it is like during one of the enactments.  The groups of reenactors are made up of hardcore and normal reenactors, some taking their roles so seriously that fifty-seven people were hurt and a couple were hospitalized.  In some reenactments, some people had died from heart attacks while others froze to death during an unreasonably cold night. 

            The web reading, “Never mind the slavery, have you dipped a candle yet?” by Historiann.com, discusses how many of the historic museums in the United States do not effectively tell history.  In many southern museums, slavery is not mentioned.  Plimoth Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg are two of the southern museums that incorporate slavery in their historic village and museum.  “It’s not just southern public history sites that “whitewash” history.”

            The next reading, “A white man remembers slavery in the Shenandoah Valley,” by Coffman is an excerpt from Jacob Coffman’s (1852-1938) letter to the Page News and Courier in 1932.  In this excerpt Coffman describes the different kinds of owner/slave relations and how some owners treated their slaves.  He wrote about some slave owners who would beat their slave and were very cruel, “it was said that he tied them over a barrel in the barn and after beating their backs raw, he put salt and pepper on their bleeding wounds.”  He also wrote about some owners who were kind to their slaves. 

            The last reading “Retouching History: The Modern Falsification of a Civil Was Photograph,” discusses the falsification of a photo of Union soldiers.  The photograph is of a group of black Union soldiers posing with a white officer and is believed to be the 1^st Louisiana Native Guard. 

“Given the enormous number of publications and known photographs of Civil War soldiers, it is more than slightly curious that a photograph as striking as one showing armed black soldiers in the Confederate Army has apparently not surfaced in these publications.”

Courtesy of people.virginia.edu. 

Courtesy of people.virginia.edu.