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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-07/remnants-of-black-church-uncovered-in-colonial-williamsburg
When I saw the headline, I immediately thought, yeah, if Williamsburg wants to continue on, it really needs to do something about its racial problems. However, I comprehensively underestimated just how bad the situation really was with respect to this particular site.
The article starts strong:
“ The brick foundation of one of the nation's oldest Black churches has been unearthed at Colonial Williamsburg,”
But then:
“By 1818, the church had its first building in the former colonial capital. The 16-foot by 20-foot (5-meter by 6-meter) structure was destroyed by a tornado in 1834.
First Baptist's second structure, built in 1856, stood there for a century. But an expanding Colonial Williamsburg bought the property in 1956 and turned it into a parking lot.”
The rapidity with which Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was followed by _literally_ _replacing_ a 100 year old church with a parking lot in an outdoor historical museum cannot possibly have been an accident, and yet this aspect of the story remains entirely unmentioned, beyond this quote which is really a gem, and which captures the outrageousness more concisely than I ever could:
“First Baptist Pastor Reginald F. Davis, whose church now stands elsewhere in Williamsburg, said the uncovering of the church's first home is “a rediscovery of the humanity of a people.” “This helps to erase the historical and social amnesia that has afflicted this country for so many years," he said.”
I’m sure there’s something pat I could say here, some trite Let Us Make Sure We Learn a Lesson from This, but I’m starting to feel like maybe that Learning a Lesson thing is part of the problem. Walking around asking annoying questions and complaining feels a lot more useful and, honestly, constructive.
Basically, if you think history told you something, that is someone editing history to tell you what they thought. That’s fine. We should listen to each other and it’s important to be validating … and then also to compare what people say to reality and insist on some fidelity.
I’ve got some real issues with this quote:
“Jody Lynn Allen, a history professor at the nearby College of William & Mary, said the excavation is part of a larger reckoning on race and slavery at historic sites across the world.
“It's not that all of a sudden, magically, these primary sources are appearing,” Allen said. “They’ve been in the archives or in people’s basements or attics. But they weren’t seen as valuable."”
I mean, sure, yeah, obviously true, all of that. Equally, _couldn’t we just say, they were actively suppressed_? Why can’t we admit that? Probably, Allen would be happy to, but getting it into an news article is more challenging (<— and I mean that in every way). Truly, the people most harmed by the weaponization of history and doing the most to undo the damage are far more diplomatic than I am.
I keep going around telling people about all the paintings by women in older Baedeker’s that were removed in later editions, so young men on their Grand Tour (ETA: maybe not — probably a different class of tourist) didn’t visit them anymore, so people quit displaying them, and then they were forgotten. History as consumed in books and museums and Baedeker’s and Colonial Williamsburg is a cultural construct, a business, and functionally political. Sure, let’s celebrate that we are moving the narrative closer to an accurate reconstruction of the past. But part of accurately reconstructing the past does actually need to be about why we told these lies so relentlessly.
ETA:
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/02/951479764/where-are-the-women-uncovering-the-lost-works-of-female-renaissance-artists
That’s not actually the article I’m looking for, but it is about the same organization.
The website of the now-defunct organization: http://advancingwomenartists.org/
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/advancing-women-artists-1313612
When I saw the headline, I immediately thought, yeah, if Williamsburg wants to continue on, it really needs to do something about its racial problems. However, I comprehensively underestimated just how bad the situation really was with respect to this particular site.
The article starts strong:
“ The brick foundation of one of the nation's oldest Black churches has been unearthed at Colonial Williamsburg,”
But then:
“By 1818, the church had its first building in the former colonial capital. The 16-foot by 20-foot (5-meter by 6-meter) structure was destroyed by a tornado in 1834.
First Baptist's second structure, built in 1856, stood there for a century. But an expanding Colonial Williamsburg bought the property in 1956 and turned it into a parking lot.”
The rapidity with which Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was followed by _literally_ _replacing_ a 100 year old church with a parking lot in an outdoor historical museum cannot possibly have been an accident, and yet this aspect of the story remains entirely unmentioned, beyond this quote which is really a gem, and which captures the outrageousness more concisely than I ever could:
“First Baptist Pastor Reginald F. Davis, whose church now stands elsewhere in Williamsburg, said the uncovering of the church's first home is “a rediscovery of the humanity of a people.” “This helps to erase the historical and social amnesia that has afflicted this country for so many years," he said.”
I’m sure there’s something pat I could say here, some trite Let Us Make Sure We Learn a Lesson from This, but I’m starting to feel like maybe that Learning a Lesson thing is part of the problem. Walking around asking annoying questions and complaining feels a lot more useful and, honestly, constructive.
Basically, if you think history told you something, that is someone editing history to tell you what they thought. That’s fine. We should listen to each other and it’s important to be validating … and then also to compare what people say to reality and insist on some fidelity.
I’ve got some real issues with this quote:
“Jody Lynn Allen, a history professor at the nearby College of William & Mary, said the excavation is part of a larger reckoning on race and slavery at historic sites across the world.
“It's not that all of a sudden, magically, these primary sources are appearing,” Allen said. “They’ve been in the archives or in people’s basements or attics. But they weren’t seen as valuable."”
I mean, sure, yeah, obviously true, all of that. Equally, _couldn’t we just say, they were actively suppressed_? Why can’t we admit that? Probably, Allen would be happy to, but getting it into an news article is more challenging (<— and I mean that in every way). Truly, the people most harmed by the weaponization of history and doing the most to undo the damage are far more diplomatic than I am.
I keep going around telling people about all the paintings by women in older Baedeker’s that were removed in later editions, so young men on their Grand Tour (ETA: maybe not — probably a different class of tourist) didn’t visit them anymore, so people quit displaying them, and then they were forgotten. History as consumed in books and museums and Baedeker’s and Colonial Williamsburg is a cultural construct, a business, and functionally political. Sure, let’s celebrate that we are moving the narrative closer to an accurate reconstruction of the past. But part of accurately reconstructing the past does actually need to be about why we told these lies so relentlessly.
ETA:
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/02/951479764/where-are-the-women-uncovering-the-lost-works-of-female-renaissance-artists
That’s not actually the article I’m looking for, but it is about the same organization.
The website of the now-defunct organization: http://advancingwomenartists.org/
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/advancing-women-artists-1313612