THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410200003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A17 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JONATHAN YARDLEY
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
The flurry of media chatter that put Colonial Williamsburg in the spotlight for a few minutes last week has come and gone, but the serious issues remain. The staging at Williamsburg of a re-enactment of a slave auction, and the negative response this aroused among some leaders of the black community, was more than just a passing disagreement; it had to do with fundamental questions about history - its uses and abuses, its pertinence or irrelevance to the present, our capacity to ignore or reject it when it does not conform to our expectations.
Kind words about Williamsburg have rarely appeared from this writer. The Colonial capital, which annually attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors, is less a historic site than a theme park, distinguished from the various enterprises of Walt Disney's spiritual heirs by degrees more than kinds of fantasy and escapism. Yet Williamsburg has its serious side, one not given much attention by the theme park's publicists but one that has underwritten, among other things, important archaeological labors and the publication of first-rate works of history.
It was no doubt a mixture of Williamsburg's serious and commercial sides that led to the establishment a decade and a half ago of a ``living history program'' devoted to the lives of African Americans in the Colonial period. Serious, that is, in the sense that Williamsburg sought to make its Colonial studies as fully rounded and inclusive as possible; commercial in the sense that it no doubt recognized that its portrayal of a lily-white Colonial capital was offensive and off-putting to black customers.
Whatever the reasons for it, the black studies program has by now been woven into Williamsburg's fabric, which is why one event at this year's commemoration of the anniversary of George III's enthronement was devoted to the lives of the colony's black residents. Specifically, it was a re-enactment of the auction of slaves, a piece of business regularly transacted during the royal celebration. However strange and repugnant that business may seem today, in the 18th century it was part of normal life in the slave Colonies; in re-enacting it, Williamsburg merely sought to present a reasonably accurate re-creation of that life.
Word of Williamsburg's plans got out in advance. Leaders of the local NAACP expressed indignation, if not outrage, and said they would stage a protest at the re-enactment. Much to its credit, Williamsburg stuck to its plans. The director of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's department of African American interpretations and presentations, Christy Coleman, who is herself African American, said: ``Racism is the child of slavery. If you don't understand what happened during the time of slavery, then you'll never understand what's happening now with race relations in this country.''
As it happens, the re-enactment went on without incident. A few protesters did show up, but they gave the presentation respectful attention and seemed, at its conclusion, to have been convinced that Coleman and the others onstage had been faithful to known historical fact and had not exploited the suffering of black slaves for the purposes of mere entertainment. One of them even said he had found it a moving experience.
That is fine, but it is unfortunate that the NAACP felt obliged to intervene in the first place. Without for a moment belittling the sensitivity of any black American to portrayals of the black place in American history, it should be said that protesting in advance about a re-enactment that had been seen by no one except those involved in staging it serves no interests save those of the falsification or self-interested revision of history.
Precisely what it is that the protesters actually wanted from Williamsburg is unclear. One of them said: ``We've been told the auction will portray history as it happened. Whether it will or not is for us to see.'' That sounds like a threat: Portray the auction in terms acceptable to us, or we'll man the picket lines.
The irony in all this is that the re-enactment was a far more decorous affair than any real auction. If it was the purpose of the Williamsburg NAACP to bring attention to past injustices against blacks, it should have insisted that the inhumanity of a slave auction be portrayed in all its terrible detail.
Slave auctions really were only partly about African Americans. The black men and women and children who were bought and sold were instruments in the hands of the white men, mostly Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who ran the auctions and owned the plantations.
That world is what the slave auctions really were about, and it is only when we can both understand and confront the realities of this world that Americans both black and white can begin to know the exact nature of their common heritage. Until we understand the ugliness of the slave society in all its manifestations, we aren't going to be able to understand ourselves and the burden of the past under which we struggle. MEMO: Mr. Yardley writes for The Washington Post.
by CNB