Commemorating Reconstruction at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home Jennifer Whitmer Taylor University of South Carolina
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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2017 Rebirth of the House Museum: Commemorating Reconstruction at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home Jennifer Whitmer Taylor University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Taylor, J. W.(2017). Rebirth of the House Museum: Commemorating Reconstruction at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4157 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REBIRTH OF THE HOUSE MUSEUM: COMMEMORATING RECONSTRUCTION AT THE WOODROW WILSON FAMILY HOME by Jennifer Whitmer Taylor Bachelor of Arts Murray State University, 2001 Master of Arts University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2006 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2017 Accepted by: Allison Marsh, Major Professor Susan Courtney, Committee Member Wanda Hendricks, Committee Member Robert Weyeneth, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Jennifer Whitmer Taylor, 2017 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION To my father, Gary. He loved history and film and instilled in me a passion for both. He knew nothing of public history’s definitions or theories yet was and will always be the first public historian in my life. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS If my father was a muse, my mother provided the foundation, work ethic, and confidence required to complete this dissertation. My husband Robert endured and earned his honorary degree beside me. Occasionally, he asked me to come down from the ivory tower to rejoin the world. Lennon, the best dog in the world, and I could not dissertate forever. My friends outside of academia also reminded me to enjoy the people and passions I have outside of history, but Libby, Felicia, and Julie provided regular support in the last year. I would like to thank my comrades in the history department: Candace Cunningham, Kate Crosby, Robert Greene, Caitlin Mans, Kate McFadden, James Risk and Brian Robinson. However, I would not have survived the last year of writing and the market without Jennifer “Bingo” Gunter, Rochelle Outlaw, and Erin Holmes. I am especially grateful to my committee and for the mentorship provided by Allison Marsh. And of course, no historian succeeds without the aid provided by archivists. The staff of the South Carolinian Library, including Graham Duncan and Nathan Saunders, and Libby Shortt, formerly of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum (WWPLM), proved no exception. I would like to thank the public historians and docents who shared their time and skills with me at Wilson homes across the South: the WWPLM, the boyhood home in Augusta, and S Street. This research would not have been possible without funding from the Institute for Southern Studies and Institute for African American Research at USC. Most importantly, I am forever grateful that the Woodrow iv Wilson Family Home (WWFH) docents, who turned an exhibit into an experience, disclosed their stories to me. Any criticism they may perceive in this work reflects on my shortcomings as their trainer. Similar to the visitors and docents of the WWFH, I, too, was taught a Dunning School interpretation by my favorite high school teacher, who also happened to worship Woodrow Wilson. As such, I must recognize the WWFH interpretative and exhibit teams and Historic Columbia’s visionary leader Robin Waites for giving me and the docents the opportunity to correct our miseducation and complicate the history of “great men.” v ABSTRACT Rebirth of a House Museum traces the transformation of the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (WWFH) in Columbia, South Carolina from an eighty year-old presidential shrine to the nation’s first museum of Reconstruction. A semi-guided house tour with limited objects and grounded in a specific time and place modernized an outdated historic house museum (HHM). The house became the primary artifact, supported by a panel exhibit and five original Wilson family objects. Critical to the exhibit’s success were the docents, who also steer this manuscript via their oral histories and fill a void in public history literature. Like Reconstruction, the reinterpretation was both revolutionary but less radical than its potential. Nonetheless, the project will assist sites seeking guidance in training and inclusivity, tackling difficult or controversial interpretative transitions, and unraveling white supremacy. The challenges of the WWFH’s interpretation transformed the training process used by Historic Columbia, the organization that administers the home. The docents who excelled were women, those who worked in education, and those holding advanced degrees. Mandatory language and cultural sensitivity training was the first exposure for many white volunteer docents to concepts such as “white privilege” and coded language. Some docents ultimately used their tours to combat their own biases and Lost Cause indoctrination. Visitor evaluations reveal that the majority of guests also were eager to learn about Reconstruction. vi HHMs limit or exclude narratives pertaining to non-elite whites and have great difficulty discussing white supremacy. The WWFH demonstrates how historiography, census records, architecture, image analysis, and docent training can illuminate the lives of unknown domestic workers. Docents were also successful in interpreting racialized and political terrorism and, for some, questioning their own privilege as white docents discussing violence. However, the museum did not prepare docents or use the exhibit to address the sexual terror and exploitation of women during Reconstruction. The site also struggled to deal with Wilson’s white supremacy. The WWFH confronted Wilson’s stance on segregation and his screening of The Birth of a Nation in the White House, which other Wilson homes rarely addressed. However, docents were reluctant to frame Wilson as a racist. Yet in the wake of student protests at Princeton challenging his memory, Historic Columbia generated new conversations with docents about his white supremacy. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iv ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. xi LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................ xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................... xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................1 1.1 THE WOODROW WILSON FAMILY HOME’S ORIGINS AS PRESIDENTIAL SHRINE ..........................................................................................2 1.2 A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE TOUR ...........................................................................5 1.3 SITUATING THE WWFH IN MUSEUM LITERATURE ................................................8 1.4 CHAPTER SUMMARIES .........................................................................................19 CHAPTER 2: THE REBIRTH OF THE WOODROW WILSON FAMILY HOME: RETHINKING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WWFH FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ....................27 2.1 WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE PRESIDENT ................................................27 2.2 OBJECTING TO OBJECTS ......................................................................................35 2.3 DEATH OF THE DOCENT? .....................................................................................46 CHAPTER 3: A NEW WAY OF THINKING: DOCENT TRAINING AND LEARNING ABOUT THE LOST CAUSE .................................................................60 3.1 DESIGNING THE TRAINING ...................................................................................61 3.2 DOCENT RESPONSE TO TRAINING ........................................................................67 viii 3.3 EVALUATING THE DOCENTS ................................................................................74 3.4 “YOU CANNOT PLEASE EVERYBODY”: REJECTING THE INTERPRETATION ..............81 3.5 WHO MAKES THE BEST DOCENT? .......................................................................89 CHAPTER 4: AREN’T I A CITIZEN: INTERPRETING VIOLENCE ............................................106 4.1 THE PROBLEM OF PRIVILEGE: LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING .....................................................................................107 4.2 A LABOR OF LOVE AND SORROW: INTERPRETING THE LIVES OF DOMESTIC WORKERS .........................................................................................117 4.3 INTERPRETING VIOLENCE AND THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION ...........138 CHAPTER 5: WRITING HISTORY WITH LIGHTNING: INTERPRETING MEMORY