Assignment #3: Slavery and Public History

       Once again we are faced with issues of determining what is the public or collective cultural memory and the issues with presenting history to this misinformed public. Largely, this book focuses on a sort of cultural fugue created by Americans who are either interested in remembering “the way we never were” or who are so paralyzed by remembering the horrors of the past that they feel it makes it difficult to focus on the fight at hand. However, I feel once again that this book reaffirmed several times that not only are the history teachers in American elementary and high-school education under qualified, but there simply isn’t any economic interest in pursuing history. This is a dilemma because of the great deal of cultural unity and understanding that can be created through proper public history education. This dilemma of improper education combines with cultural movements, such as DAR, Sons of Liberty, and the Sons of the Confederacy to allow dishonest visions of American past to disseminate and further create cultural division and stratification in favor of economic interests.

       The responsibility it seems falls on the American people to fund public history institutions simply for the sake of public education. The authors of this book also reconfirmed what has been stated in previous readings that public history professionals, ie museum staff, have a great deal of authority in shaping public conceptions of the past. However, this book clearly displayed the core of the issue with displaying slavery in specific historical contexts; those not interested in remembering the past as it was will not pay hard earned money to learn these historical truths.

        In James Horton’s chapter entitled “Slavery in American History” he describes the public outcry of a dramatization of a slave auction in Colonial Williamsburg. The protesters were objecting to the sensationalizing of such a hurtful past. However, I agree with Horton’s and his other co-author’s conclusion that education is the only way to create truly collective consciousness that can heal society’s rifts. As long as this education isn’t being filtered or interpreted to only reach a target demographic, then truthful historical presentations should stimulate real and meaningful social dialogues.

       I agree with some of the conclusions of Marie Tyler-McGraw in her chapter “Southern Comfort Levels” that regardless of whether history is economically profitable, using a favorable historical interpretation to attract a key demographic cheapens the experience and can reignite current social woes of segregation and social division (As it did in Richmond.) However, a public history presentation that negotiates the various perspectives of the viewers engaged in dialogue with these exhibits can do a great deal to stimulate understanding and promote collective consciousness. After all, “If you don’t tell it like it was, it can’t be as it ought to be.” Forgetting our history will only dooms us to not understand why we are still socially divided presently, and cause us to be unable to unify and complete the work of cultural healing that is still needs to be performed.