Public History and Interpretive Stances

[spork]

Pointing out which streets are named after slave traders is a good start. There are a lot of them.

[fourhats]

Mamselle, how can I PM you? I have something to add to this discussion.

To the forum: There's a difference between being given a lecture on the evils of slavery, which are certainly very true, and letting visitors know who lived and "worked" there, and the work they did and how they lived. It's not like a trip to the beach, but a chance to learn something.

[mamselle]

Mamselle, how can I PM you? I have something to add to this discussion.

To the forum: There's a difference between being given a lecture on the evils of slavery, which are certainly very true, and letting visitors know who lived and "worked" there, and the work they did and how they lived. It's not like a trip to the beach, but a chance to learn something.

I PM'd you; you can reply to it. For future notice, you can click on that little balloon beside the posting frame and it will take you to your PMs, or you can click on the "My Messages" item on the menu to the right of the "HOME" button and that will take you there as well.

I'll look forward to hearing from you!

M.

[polly_mer]

To the forum: There's a difference between being given a lecture on the evils of slavery, which are certainly very true, and letting visitors know who lived and "worked" there, and the work they did and how they lived. It's not like a trip to the beach, but a chance to learn something.

That assumes we tourists really did sign up to learn something in painful detail instead of having more like Hegemony's spa experience with a handful of factoids we can then use in our nightly Jeopardy! fix.

Although I will have to say that visiting the whispering hall in a Springfield museum devoted to Lincoln is pretty entertaining to remember as I watch the news related to Trump.  The take-home lesson was clearly that being attacked in the media and all the important places is not the same as being wrong.  Trump is certainly using that message to his advantage.

[larryc]

The other thing going on here is that as we move from a white-majority to a white-minority country, white fragility is getting more, well, fragile and vocal. White supremacy is not going down without a fight.

[mamselle]

Just took part in an excellent mini-tour in which the focus for my character was on gravestones for a female schoolteacher who wrote a deed of gift--settling her home on the recipient In exchange for live-in health care until her death--on a midwife she names as her sister (c/b an in-law or another female church member, however, too).

In preparing for the tour the fellow doing the 17th c. part took me down to an area he remembered as a teen, when kids were employed on summer upkeep projects.

Two mid-19th c. stones identified their originals as "an honest black man" and "an honest person of colour."

We agreed to start researching them and include them in next year's tour.

M.