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The Representation of Slavery at Historic House Museums : 1853-2000

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The Representation of Slavery at Historic House Museums : 1853-2000 The representation of slavery at historic house museums : 1853-2000 Author: Bethany Jay Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1365 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of History THE REPRESENTATION OF SLAVERY AT HISTORIC HOUSE MUSEUMS: 1853-2000 a dissertation by BETHANY JAY submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May, 2009 © copyright by BETHANY WAYWELL JAY 2009 The Representation of Slavery at Historic House Museums: 1853-2000 Bethany Jay Advisor: Dr. James O'Toole This dissertation examines the development of historic house museums in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present to unravel the complex relationship between public presentations of slavery and popular perceptions of the institution. In conducting the research for this project, I examined the historic and contemporary public programming at nineteen separate museums. This sample of museums includes both publicly funded and private sites in both the North and South. By bringing together a diverse group of museums, this project examines national trends alongside regional traditions as well as the role of organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, and a host of private institutions in determining different interpretive foci. This project represents the intersection of two different historiographies. The first of these is the literature on American memory and tradition that examines the different trends in the relationship between Americans and their history. Specifically, this project is concerned with the place of race in American history and memory. This project builds on existing works, such as David Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, by examining the way in which race and slavery have been historically represented outside of the context of the Civil War.t In this way, it is able to draw conclusions about the role of slavery within alarger narrative of American history. ' David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001). In addition to the historiography of race and American memory, this project also intersects with the historiography of museums by examining how different institutions have responded to the increased incorporation of slavery into the American narrative. As educational sites that rely on public patronoga, museums have a more difficult task than the historian who aims to create an objective narrative for a small audience of academics and sfudents or the movie or television producer who abandons a commitment to the facts in favor of an emotional or entertaining story. For more than a cenfury, the presentation of slavery in museums was shaped by the need to promote a celebratory narrative of American history and an understanding of the past that unified white Americans. Any mentions of slavery reflected the perspective of scholars such as U.B. Phillips and William Dunning who argued that inherently inferior slaves benefited from the benevolent institution. In the last several decades, as a consequence of the civil rights movement and the rise of the new social history, museums have begun to address slavery more openly and more critically. Each museum faced different challenges as it tried to incorporate slavery into their interpretations. These challenges offer insight into the place of slavery within concepts of regional and national identity. Many southern museums, for example, have had to strike a balance between the difficult subject of slavery and idyllic narratives of the Old South, a compromise which is often counterproductive. Northern museums have had to re-imagine significant portions of both their site history and regional history, abandoning the once-dominant narrative of an abolitionist North in favor of one that recognizes the varied and multiple ways in which northerners benefited from slavery. Organrzations with a national focus, such as the National Park Service and National Trust for Historic Preservation, have tried to use their museums to uni$r American history by merging the experiences of many diverse groups into one narrative. Last, the homes of the founding fathers have had a particularly difficult time reconciling their subject's slaveholding with a celebratory narrative of the nation's founding. Despite these individual challenges, the net result of this process has been similar, creating interpretations that focus on traditional American history and give short shrift to the enslaved population. In many ways therefore, Americans are still wrestling with the place of slavery within a fundamentally celebratory conception of American history. CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………….…….1 Chapter 1: Preserving Sacred American Places: Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Arlington House………………………………………………………………….11 Chapter 2: “My Gawd they’ve sold the town:” Expanding Historic Representation at Colonial Williamsburg and Philipsburg Manor………………63 Chapter 3: Representing the Nation at the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation…………………………………...……………..108 Chatper 4: Founding Fathers and “Living Slavery:” New Directions in Interpretation…………………………………………………………………....200 Chapter 5: Slavery at “Tara:” Plantation Museums and Selling the South ……… …....257 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………...304 - i - - - INTRODUCTION No institution has had a greater impact on the development of American society than slavery. From its American beginnings in seventeenth-century Virginia until its demise amidst the chaos of the Civil War, slavery rested on a web of social relations, public discourse and government policy that systematically subjugated African Americans. The result of this web is the racial division that is still evident today. Even a cursory glance at recent political debates, ranging from the demand for reparations to African Americans as compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid slave labor to the controversy over the continued display of the Confederate flag in Southern states, serves as proof that slavery still plays a role in contemporary American society. Slavery’s place in American culture and memory has been far from static, however. In fact, since the Civil War, there have been great changes in the perception of the institution of slavery in particular and African Americans in general. This dissertation examines historic house museums to unravel the complex relationship between public presentations of slavery and popular perceptions of the institution. Museums play a large role in forming Americans’ understandings of their collective past because the millions of visitors who take part in museum tours each year are particularly invested in the history that they hear and see at these sites. Historians Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelan reported in their study Presence of the Past that eighty percent of the respondents to a survey believed the history that they were told in museums. On the other hand, only slightly more than half of the respondents believed - 1 - their college professors and just over a third of the respondents believed their high school teachers.1 The sheer number of museum tourists and the relative resonance of the history that they are told in museums make these sites ideal ways to gauge the ways in which Americans have understood their racial past. In conducting the research for this project, I examined the public programming at nineteen separate historic house museums that have or currently are interpreting slavery.2 This sample of museums includes both publicly funded and private sites in seven different states in both the North and South.3 By bringing together a diverse group of museums, this project examines national trends alongside regional traditions as well as the role of organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, and a host of other private institutions in determining different interpretive foci. Museums are not exempt from Michael Kammen’s assertion, “We arouse and arrange our memories to suit our psychic needs.”4 In a continuing dialogue with notions of regional and national identity, museum interpretations have been variously patriotic, selective, nostalgic, and materialistic. 1 Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelan, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 21. 2 I have purposely only examined the programming that is part of the average public visitor experience at museums. Many of the sites included in this project offer separate slavery-themed education programs for school kids. I chose not to include those programs because they are not available for the general public and are catered to a specific educational agenda and not the average visitor. 3 The principal sites included in this project and their locations are as follows: Bush-Holley House (CT), Philipsburg Manor Upper Mills (NY), Jay Homestead (NY), Decatur House (Washington, D.C.), Arlington House (VA), Mount Vernon (VA), Monticello (VA), Colonial Williamsburg (VA), Stratford Plantation (VA) Edmonston-Alston House (SC), Middleton Place (SC), Boone Hall Plantation (SC), Drayton Hall (SC), Shadows-on-the-Teche (LA), Oak
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