Read Online Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan - Free Book Online
Authors: Margaret MacMillan
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vigilant in monitoring school curricula to ensure that their approved version of the past was taught in Southern schools. Textbook publishers complied, publishing different versions of the American history texts: one for the South, which downplayed slavery and ignored its brutality, and the other for Northern schools. And so, even black children in their segregated schools were presented with a picture of the South in which slavery and racism were largely absent. They were told, though, that Africans were fortunate because they had been brought to America and so into contact with European civilization. It was a pity, the texts concluded sadly, that the Africans had not had the innate capacity to take advantage of the opportunity. Black teachers did their best to counteract such views by introducing African and African American history into their schools, but it was not always easy because the curricula had to be approved by white school boards.
Public commemorations, museums, and archives reinforced the white version of Southern history. Throughout the South, such public spaces as parks and squares were named after Confederate heroes and filled with their monuments. In 1957, the state of Virginia held a ceremony to celebrate the 350th anniversaryof the first settlement at Jamestown. The past being celebrated was entirely white; there was no mention of the local Indians or the African slaves who were going to be brought there a few years afterward. No blacks were among the invited guests in 1957; six had been invited by mistake, but their invitations had been hastily rescinded.
In the 1960s, with the growth of the civil rights movement, the balance of power in the South began to shift and Southern history shifted along with it. As state after state integrated its schools, the old-style textbooks became an embarrassment. Museums started to acknowledge the black presence in the South in their displays and exhibitions. It was surely a sign of changing times when the Museum of the Confederacy put leg irons on display. Southern blacks pushed to get their own museums of black history and the history of civil rights. Their task was not always easy, and not just because of diehard white opposition. Because black history had not been valued by white-dominated institutions, much documentation and many artifacts which could have illuminated the history of blacks in the South had simply not survived. Blacks increasingly demanded that their heroes be commemorated in public spaces. In Richmond, Virginia, which first elected a black-majority city council in 1977, a monument to the great black tennis player Arthur Ashe has been added to those to Civil War heroes along Monument Avenue, and in 2000 two bridges over the Potomac named after the great Civil War soldiers Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart were renamed after local civil rights fighters.
Recently whites and blacks in the South have tried to share a common history. In 1999 blacks and whites stood together at the unveiling of a roadside plaque in Georgia to mark the lynching of two black couples half a century before. It was the first time the infamous history of lynching had been publicly recognized in the state. “It is time,” said a local paper, “to heal the wounds.”In Williamsburg, Virginia, where the carefully preserved colonial town once had no reference to its large slave population and where the historical reenactments showed only whites, the newer history depicts the relationship between slaves and slave owners. At times angry tourists have intervened when beatings of runaway slaves, for example, have been too realistic. And not everyone appreciates the more rounded view of the past. History, many maintain, should be uplifting, not depressing. Opponents of a monument in Virginia to a failed slave revolt argued that it was glorifying violence.
Feeling part of something, in our fluid and uncertain times, can be comforting. If we are Christians, Muslims, Canadians, Scots,
Public commemorations, museums, and archives reinforced the white version of Southern history. Throughout the South, such public spaces as parks and squares were named after Confederate heroes and filled with their monuments. In 1957, the state of Virginia held a ceremony to celebrate the 350th anniversaryof the first settlement at Jamestown. The past being celebrated was entirely white; there was no mention of the local Indians or the African slaves who were going to be brought there a few years afterward. No blacks were among the invited guests in 1957; six had been invited by mistake, but their invitations had been hastily rescinded.
In the 1960s, with the growth of the civil rights movement, the balance of power in the South began to shift and Southern history shifted along with it. As state after state integrated its schools, the old-style textbooks became an embarrassment. Museums started to acknowledge the black presence in the South in their displays and exhibitions. It was surely a sign of changing times when the Museum of the Confederacy put leg irons on display. Southern blacks pushed to get their own museums of black history and the history of civil rights. Their task was not always easy, and not just because of diehard white opposition. Because black history had not been valued by white-dominated institutions, much documentation and many artifacts which could have illuminated the history of blacks in the South had simply not survived. Blacks increasingly demanded that their heroes be commemorated in public spaces. In Richmond, Virginia, which first elected a black-majority city council in 1977, a monument to the great black tennis player Arthur Ashe has been added to those to Civil War heroes along Monument Avenue, and in 2000 two bridges over the Potomac named after the great Civil War soldiers Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart were renamed after local civil rights fighters.
Recently whites and blacks in the South have tried to share a common history. In 1999 blacks and whites stood together at the unveiling of a roadside plaque in Georgia to mark the lynching of two black couples half a century before. It was the first time the infamous history of lynching had been publicly recognized in the state. “It is time,” said a local paper, “to heal the wounds.”In Williamsburg, Virginia, where the carefully preserved colonial town once had no reference to its large slave population and where the historical reenactments showed only whites, the newer history depicts the relationship between slaves and slave owners. At times angry tourists have intervened when beatings of runaway slaves, for example, have been too realistic. And not everyone appreciates the more rounded view of the past. History, many maintain, should be uplifting, not depressing. Opponents of a monument in Virginia to a failed slave revolt argued that it was glorifying violence.
Feeling part of something, in our fluid and uncertain times, can be comforting. If we are Christians, Muslims, Canadians, Scots,
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