By Kelley Fanto Deetz
Located on nearly 2,000 acres along the banks of the Potomac River, Stratford Hall Plantation is the birthplace of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and the home of four generations of the Lee family, including two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee.
It was also the home of hundreds of enslaved Africans and African Americans. From sunup to sundown, they worked in the fields and in the Great House. Until fairly recently, the stories of these enslaved Africans and of their brothers and sisters toiling at plantations across the Southern U.S. were absent from any discussions during modern-day tours of plantations such as Stratford Hall.
Even now, with new tours and an exhibition highlighting enslaved Africans and African Americans who lived at Stratford Hall, discussions during plantation tours among visitors can often turn into visceral debates over whose history should be told or ignored.
These tensions are part of an ever-growing work of criticism directed at sites that continue to omit the history of the enslaved community. Of the 600 plantations scattered throughout the South, only one, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, focuses entirely on the experiences of the enslaved.
As a public historian and the director of collections and visitor engagement at Stratford Hall, I can attest that visitors have vastly different expectations when they visit this historic landmark. Their questions reflect their own interpretations, curiosities and political biases, often to the detriment of obtaining a richer education on every aspect of plantation life – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Awkward questions
Museum professionals at plantations hear it all and must balance viewpoints that are diametrically opposed to one another, such as the romanticized notion of antebellum gentility and the constant fear of terror and violence of the enslaved. Visitors’ expectations often collide with reality, creating tense moments on tours. Some visitors want answers and stories that sit comfortably with their ideas of slavery and of America as a whole.
“Were the Lees good slave owners?” is a frequent question.
Many visitors comment on how the slaves were treated like family, or how their housing doesn’t seem that bad. Some would rather skip the whole slavery thing altogether and just comfortably learn about the decorative arts and the often luxurious lives of the white families who lived there.
But history is not comfortable. Though he lived at Stratford Hall only during his early years, Robert E. Lee was a slave owner in his own right. The majority of the nearly 200 enslaved people Gen. Lee owned were inherited after his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in 1857.
For every question about the kindness of the enslavers are others seeking detailed descriptions of abuse and terror.
“How much abuse happened here?” is one such question.
The answer is clear about the innate inhumanity of slavery. Abuse ran rampant, everything from rape and dismemberment to separating families. Enslaved people lived in constant fear. Violence was always a threat, in one form or another.
These questions plague many historic sites. Museum professionals are then saddled with spending more time explaining the lack of specific evidence of abuse on their site – or examples in their records – and spending less time talking about the ways enslaved men, women and children used their culture and community to persevere in a system built on violence and terror.
Violence was not all enslaved people experienced on plantations. Questions that focus heavily on the treatment of the enslaved – and not the people themselves – erase their humanity and ignore their agency.
It also reduces their entire existence into a byproduct of white behavior and, worse, diminishes their cultures and their contributions to both the site and the nation as a whole.
Tour guides are pivotal in providing richer, more inclusive educational experiences. Yet we regularly endure personal attacks and offensive commentary. Historical interpreter Dontavius Williams works around the country at plantation sites, and, despite his authoritative expertise, Williams, 38, has told me and others in the field that he has been called “boy” on several occasions.
Many African American interpreters also have to address statements about how slavery was good for their ancestors.
Inclusion is not exclusion
The visitors’ role is to learn from the staff and engage in ways that generate constructive conversations. Facilitators like Williams are trained in encouraging such talks, regardless of the visitors’ preconceived notions, political agendas or fixed notions about slavery and other confirmation biases.
What brings a more nuanced and balanced tour are questions about who made the furniture, who cooked the food, what people ate, how enslaved people persevered in spite of enslavement or which West African traditions survived in the Colonies.
This inclusion does not equate to exclusion. Visitors can learn of the white family, the decorative arts – and the enslaved community.
Historic sites are not Disneyland, U.S. history is not fantasy and plantations are inherently uncomfortable places. If tourists ask the deeper, more nuanced questions, they will get answers that challenge preconceived ideas and render a more complete understanding of our nation’s history.
Kelley Fanto Deetz is a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley
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Timothy Patrick Welch says
Servitude was a societal norm prior to the creation of this great nation.
Lack of access to formal education has had the longest lasting affect.
Enjoy our freedom…
Jimbo99 says
Tours of historical locations are always going to be like this. I’ve found that with Fort Matanzas, Castillo de San Marcos & Fort Clinch, just to name a few within driving distance of Flagler County. I’ve had similar experiences of the mental gymnastics of trying to relate the past of history with the current of anything that I could relate to. Asking many of the questions. That era of American History, many people today simply are too soft to succeed in. I grew up in Ormond & Daytona Beach, FL, every school (K-9) that I attended lacked air conditioning and it wasn’t until Spruce Creek HS (10-12), was built that happened. Tomoka Elementary was built in my childhood, brand new school, no air conditioning. To an extent I can’t expect even this current and recent generations to be nearly as hearty.
So these historical locations that I visit, there’s a reverence for those that did what they did in American History. This was General Lee’s plantation, one that he had to inherit as the article indicates. And the reality of that is, he owned no slaves, never enslaved anyone, until he became a plantation owner thru inheritance. His parents/generations did that. Hypothetically, let’s say nothing ever changed, and then any of us inherits a plantation in 2019. In 2020, Biden is elected POTUS, then in 2021 after being inaugurated issue the Emancipation Proclamation ? There is no plan in place to transition from an era of slavery to no slavery. I mean play with the dates, for any POTUS in our lifetimes really. The same chaos and failures we’re seeing with the Border Crisis, Covid or anything else is a smaller scale for slavery back in 1861-1865. As rural as FL can be, News travel in real time, Back then how long would it take for word to travel ? Any Proclamation is instantaneous, a moment in time. The reality of anything that would ever be a real, working solution really is going to take years, decades a century plus to get to this. My perspective in this post is one of a lifetime of Post WW2 America to present, living thru the Civil Rights of the 1960’s, thru Affirmative Action, thru Equal Rights Opportunity, BLM & LGBTQ movements. History to be preserved centuries prior and thru any & all of it. Can’t be rewritten.
Nobody today can be expected to take accountability & responsibility for anything they weren’t a party to. Yet that is exactly what the emotions & sentiments of the current state have as expectations. This is where we are. Can’t erase historically accurate and can’t undo atrocities. I don’t know what the solution is, but I know that my life has been influenced by even the more recent movements. And in that regard, I refuse to give up what I was allowed to accomplish in spite of the sacrifices any of us were required to make as voluntary or involuntary. Imagine being the first generation to attain a college degree, then having to apply for employment and finding that the whole process was set up & intended to be Affirmative Action or Equal Opportunity hiring (Diversity as the term has evolved). And in the end, the hiring process was a failure, that anything along the way was eventually a maternity leave failure and the next hire was designed to replace a woman with another woman, that would yet again involve a maternity leave & vacated job opening. That perpetual cycle of a temp job. Do you think the victim of that should get reparations of some sort ? Because they certainly would be sandbagged by the entire process & have to live the repercussions of something forced upon them, voluntary or involuntary. And there are always going to be those that think there’s even more “to give up”, where does that ever end, how much more miserable would a poverty have to become ? One thing I’ve also witnessed, and this applies directly to Clinton, Bush, Obama & Biden, that’s just the last 30-35 years. Does anyone really think their offspring will ever suffer mismanaged poverty ? So the winners & losers are picked in the grand illusion of the human race. What compounds this, the realities of life that anyone endures, losing loved ones to any cause of death. It is what it is I guess, I don’t think I will miss that aspect of life ?
Sherry says
When traveling through the Everglades National Park just a couple of years ago, I heard a “Park Ranger” at a tourist information station grossly defame native Americans. He was conducting a tour of the grounds to a group of about 15 people. He told them that “those Indians should count themselves lucky”. “They are paid a lot of money every year for doing nothing. . . just for being InJins”. “They drive new pick up trucks, that WE pay for”. Here was the worst one: “If it weren’t for the AMERICANS coming here, they would still be squatting in tee pees”.
My husband held me back from confronting him then and there. However, I did write directly to the regional manager of the park service with a copy to the Secretary of the Interior. I suggested the immediate need for extensive training of all park rangers on the cultural history of the REAL AMERICANS. . . the “Native Americans” our park ranger disparaged so passionately.
While, I received several letters thanking me for bringing this problem to their attention. . . did that vital training actually happen? I doubt it!