Race and Remembrance

"Presenting Slavery: The Perils of Telling America’s Racial Story" by James Oliver Horton, in The Public Historian (Fall 1999), Dept. of History, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93106–9410. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Educating the public about slavery is no easy matter, writes Horton, a professor of American studies and history at George Washington University. Not only do most Americans know little about the history of the institution, but, as interpreters and guides at historic parks, houses, and other such sites have discovered, the subject makes many, both white and black, very uncomfortable.

"Traditionally, northern public schools taught almost nothing about slavery, and southern schools taught even less," Horton notes. "When slavery was discussed, it was generally only as a problem that surfaced during the sectional struggle just prior to the Civil War." Not surprisingly, Americans today, he says, generally "believe that slavery was a southern phenomenon, date it from the antebellum period, and do not think of it as central to the American story." They don’t realize that slavery in British North America was a century and a half old at the time of the American Revolution, and "a significant economic and social institution in every one of the 13 colonies." And [as recent debates about the Confederate flag have shown] "many Americans do not wish to discuss slavery at all," particularly in connection with the Confederacy and the Civil War.

Nevertheless, the subject comes up. At Arlington House, the pre-Civil War home of the Lee-Custis family, now a National Park Service historic site near Washington, D.C., "white visitors often bristle at the mention of [Robert E.] Lee as the owner of slaves," Horton says, while "black visitors expected to be told about the atrocities of slavery." Yet many black visitors found the subject too painful after it was introduced a few years ago, and visitors generally were uneasy discussing it, especially in interracial groups.

At Colonial Williamsburg, the restored capital of colonial Virginia, a mock slave auction was held in 1994 to reenact an event that was part of the annual commemoration of King George III’s ascension to the English throne. "At the end of the extremely moving reenactment of a family being broken apart through the sale, the crowd of visitors grew silent, and many wept," Horton reports. Some visitors objected to the " ‘racist show.’ " Civil rights groups charged that the reenactment "glorif[ied] the horrors and humiliation of the evil of slavery." Yet some critics were won over, Horton reports, and academic historians generally approved of the careful reenactment, at least so long as it did not turn into "entertainment."

"Slavery is so uncomfortable a subject, both for interpreters and visitors," Horton writes, "that some have understandably asked, ‘why confront it at all?’ " Why not, as a black woman demanded at a recent lecture he gave, " ‘ put slavery behind us’ "? Because, Horton answers, Americans cannot address present-day concerns about race "while ignoring the institution that has been so central to American race relations."