Shoot the Messenger

James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (The New Press, 2007)

Roger D. Launius, "American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum" The Public Historian, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter 2007)

Two readings this week, but many voices and many difficult questions. Horton and Horton's collection of essays looks at historians, curators, and museum officials attempts to better weave the history of slavery into the larger narrative of American history. The book is both a powerful corrective to the ghettoization of American slavery to the 1850s (sectionalism, Old South, cotton) and a realization of the intense, uphill battles that public historians hoping to engage with the "peculiar institution" are bound to face, no matter what their base of operations.

Further, these essays are a testament to how deep a wound the US Civil War proved to be in nineteenth century America and continues to be in contemporary American memory. Marie Tyler-McGraw's "Southern Comfort Levels: Race, Heritage Tourism, and the Civil War in Richmond" tackles those wounds head on (and for my money may be the most valuable essay included here). Tyler recounts attempts to re-imagine and revitalize Richmond, VA in the wake of de-industrialization. She explores a necessary but unwieldy alliance between municipal leaders and historians and their efforts to develop a heritage tourism industry, one that commemorates the sins and sacrifices of the Civil War while establishing a viable economic venture. Needless to say, complications arise. The burning of a large publicly displayed canvas featuring Robert E. Lee and the dispute over placement of two separate statues commemorating tennis star Arthur Ashe and Abraham Lincoln's visit to recently captured Richmond are but a few examples of the contest over public memory and Civil War in the former Confederate south. Tyler-McGraw skillfully demonstrates what's at stake in the culture wars that populate the pages of Slavery and Public History: racial justice, community wellness, economic growth and development, public identity, and responsible historical consciousness. The next time someone questions the utility of history or historical sites, point them to Tyler-McGraw's essay (it also happens to be a nice primer for next week's discussion of Cathy Stanton's examination of Lowell, MA).

Turning his lens to science and technology, but no less concerned with the public fight over national exhibition spaces, Roger D. Launius charts the rise, fall, and triumphant return of consensus history, the latter turn particularly on display at American museums. Himself a museum professional at the National Air and Space Museum, Launius is largely critical of museum's (i.e. the Smithsonian's) general unwillingness to explore controversial exhibit material, "the tough stuff of history." He then playfully provides a top ten countdown of "non-starter" exhibits that would likely be dismissed on grounds of limited relevance or political feasibility (i.e. US aircraft "nose art" or air power's role in the Vietnam war, respectively). The question posed by curator Tom Crouch when discussing the infamous 1994 Enola Gay exhibit goes to the heart of each of these essays, and in fact, many of the questions we've been pondering over the last few weeks: "Do you want to do an exhibition intended to make veterans feel good, or do you want an exhibition that will lead our visitors to talk about the consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan. Frankly, I don't think we can do both."

Crouch provides a nice template here for future exhibit planners. Essentially, do you want to make your visitors "feel good" or do you want them to consider the "consequences" of a given moment in history, whether it be the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the long shadow of North American slavery, de-industrialization in urban America. I would contend with Crouch however that we as historians can do both. There certainly is room for a subdued, celebratory tone when discussing slavery, as evidenced by the work of Ira Berlin and his contemporaries, but that doesn't deny the tough stuff, which is all, it seems, these writers ultimately are asking of public institutions. We need not be harbingers of historical doom and gloom, but we also must embrace conflict and complexity. The marriage of both, affirmation and reconsideration, can provide for a compelling and deeply valuable museum experience.