Stephen P. Hanna, Derek H. Alderman and Amy E. Potter are co-authors of “Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum.”
We are cultural geographers on the faculty of the University of Mary Washington, University of Tennessee and Georgia Southern University who are also research fellows at Tourism RESET, an interdisciplinary initiative devoted to developing socially responsible approaches to heritage tourism, among other things. For several years, we have been part of a large team of researchers intensively studying how the history of enslavement is narrated in incomplete ways at dozens of plantation museums and other historic sites across the Southeastern United States.
A few years ago, we partnered with Montpelier, Mount Vernon, Monticello and James Monroe’s Highland to document and analyze visitor reactions to the ways these museums incorporated the history of enslavement and stories of enslaved people into their tours and exhibits. The goal was not to gauge customer satisfaction but to help museum staff be accountable to public groups increasingly demanding a more racially just story. To that end, we surveyed 1,124 visitors as they left these four presidential museums and asked them to reflect on and evaluate what they learned and felt about enslavement.
Montpelier stood out in our results mostly because of the powerful “Mere Distinction of Colour” exhibit, an installation featuring the voices of descendants talking about their enslaved ancestors. Survey respondents reported learning more about the lives of enslaved people at Montpelier than at Mount Vernon, Monticello and Highland. In addition, more Montpelier respondents stated that slavery has had a great deal of impact on the development of the United States than their counterparts did at the other three sites. Finally, and clearly indicative of the emotive power of the “Mere Distinction of Colour” exhibit, 84 percent of respondents stated that they left Montpelier feeling more empathetic for the people once enslaved on this plantation. This percentage was considerably higher than found at Highland and Mount Vernon and a bit higher than at Monticello.
These results reflect the Montpelier staff’s groundbreaking efforts in what we call “reparative memory-work.” They recognized that the plantations preserved to honor four of the country’s first five presidents are also places where Black people suffered, resisted, persevered and survived. Yet a just commemoration of the lives of enslaved people cannot be achieved if undertaken only by museum professionals. It requires building relationships with descendants of people enslaved by America’s founding presidents. Montpelier staff forged such connections to help descendants recover their family histories and create an exhibit that was powerful because it featured and reflected descendants’ voices.
Montpelier’s collaboration between museum management and descendant communities represented a major innovation in heritage tourism, and we frequently touted it as a role model for other historic sites we visited and assisted. The “Mere Distinction of Colour” exhibit is only one facet of that collaboration. Perhaps more significant was the 2018 publication of “Engaging Descendant Communities in the Interpretation of Slavery,” a guide for museums willing to build relationships with descendant communities to interpret more inclusive histories for the public.
To its credit, the Montpelier Foundation and the professionals working at the site did not rest on these accomplishments. Instead, they followed their own recommendations, which culminated in the historic but now damaged agreement forged between the Montpelier Descendants Committee and the Montpelier Foundation last June.
A plantation museum is the place where the role of slavery in the history of the United States should be more evident than practically anywhere else. Our research at Montpelier shows that when tour and exhibit content develop through equitable collaborations between museums and descendant communities, visitors learn more about and empathize with people who experienced, resisted and survived slavery. By revoking its agreement with the Montpelier Descendants Committee and firing the staff responsible for forging such collaborations, the Montpelier Foundation disenfranchised the very voices that should be telling America’s story, thus perpetuating rather than repairing the wounds of enslavement at this presidential museum.
