I am rather fortunate, in that aside from a few trips back east and to the south, I have never been forced to confront slavery head on. Academically I’ve considered it, particularly when studying the Civil War and the rise of its romanticism in the south. I’ve read through databases of shipping manifests from Trans-Atlantic slaving companies and looked at plantation agriculture from an environmental perspective. However, living in the west for my entire life, I’ve been rather sheltered from the ever-present knowledge that this country that so loves its freedoms (or claims to, anyway) was built on the backs of those who had every freedom stripped from them. This series of essays was eye-opening to me, as I had never had to consider what difficulties interpretive sites in formerly slave-holding areas would have to confront in telling the story not just of our soldiers or presidents but of the people they owned as well.
This made me rethink the last trip I took, which was not to a place where slavery was legal for a time, but to the battlefield at Little Bighorn. It was quite a few years ago, but I seem to remember that it had surprisingly little information on Native Americans for a site commemorating a cavalry unit that was ambushed by them. I have a more difficult time remembering the Civil War sites I visited (that trip was nearly 15 years ago), but I don’t recall seeing much on slavery at any of them, either in the North or the South. I certainly have a new appreciation for the difficulty the National Park Service has in attempting to present a factual and uncontroversial site. Unfortunately, it is clear from these essays that some controversy is going to be unavoidable, whether you choose to only present the positive or appealing history of a place, or attempt to include all of it, and I agree that we should be working toward a more inclusive and accurate depiction of our own history.
I fear that this will continue to be the case for quite some time (forever?). Americans specifically, and really people in general, want their history wrapped in a cute box with a bow on it. I constantly found myself going back to when Kenneth Moynihan said that “He hoped that Americans were weaning themselves from a “just-get-the-facts-straight history” and reaching an understanding that history is “an ongoing conversation that yields not final truths but an endless succession of discoveries that change our understanding not only of the past but of ourselves and of the times we live in.” (101) I hope it does but worry that people simply want “answers” and even then only if they fit the narrative the way they want. Most people put history in the boat with politics and religion, don’t talk about it.
I can only imagine the fury from parents, taking their kids on vacation and having to be “subjected” to something like the brutality of slavery. I personally think we aren’t teaching kids about slavery at a young enough age, but I know I’m in the minority on that one. I guess that’s why it doesn’t shock me to read that slavery isn’t talked about on battlefields and such. Maybe we should let “Alt-National Parks” take over those tours 😉
Having visited Little Big Horn this last summer there was far more about the Native participants on both side of the conflict than I imagined there would have been. Much of the discussion I had with my children after that was directed towards the Native people who sided with the United States. It changed the narrative from white bad guys and native good guys to something far more nuanced, and I would have to thank the Park staff who created the exhibit for it…
I too visited the Greasy Grass Battlefield, but with my grand daughter. The presenter was a Native American, which brought a twist into the discussion. We had earlier visited both Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore and the differences in both style and content were startling. Rushmore was narrative told by a NPS European-American who provided a once over lightly presentation when it came to Native Americans. The Crazy Horse monument talk focused on two things, how this monument was different because no public funds were being used, and then a more complete telling of the history of Native American peoples in the area. The Little Bighorn presentation was somewhere in between. I believe that people in general, and Americans in particular, are intellectually lazy. The “just the facts, mam” approach is what most people still prefer. If you introduce nuance it requires people to think and most will turn away, as they did at the Little Bighorn while I was there. Here’s where “Letting Go?” provides historians and institutions alike with other ways to address this shortcoming.