FtRU THE GEORGE WRIGHT M Volume 19 2002< Number 4 · Dialogue Between Continents: Civic Engagement...

T H E GEORGE WRIGHT

FtRUM Volume 19 2002< Number 4

T H E J O U R N A L O F T H E G E O R G E W R I G H T S O C I E T Y

Dedicated to the Protection, Preservation and Management of Cultural and Natural Parks and Reserves

Through Research and Education

Executive Office DAVID HARMON, Executive Director ROBERT M. LINN, Membership Coordinator EMILY DEKKER-FIALA. Conference Coordinator

The George Wright Society is a member of US/ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites—U.S. Committee), IUCN-The World Conservation Union, and The Natural Resources Council of America

© 2002 The George Wright Society, Inc. All rights reserved. (No copyright is claimed for previously published material reprinted herein.) ISSN 0732-4715 Editorial guidelines may be found on the inside back cover. Text paper is made of 50% recycled fibers. Printed by Book Concern Printers, Hancock, Micbigan

Board of Directors ROBERTJ. KRUMENAKER, President • Bayfield, Wisconsin LAURA E. S. GATES, Vice President • Pineville, Louisiana DWIGHT T. PITCAITHLEY, Treasurer • Reston, Virginia DENNIS B. FENN, Secretary • Flagstaff, Arizona GILLIAN BOWSER • Glennallen, Alaska PETER BRINKLEY • New York, New York MARIE BERTILLION COLLINS • Piedmont, California ABIGAIL B. MILLER • Alexandria, Virginia DAVIDJ. PARSONS • Florence, Montana RICHARD B. SMITH • Placitas, New Mexico STEPHEN WOODLEY • Chelsea, Quebec

P. O. Box 65 Hancock, Michigan 49930-0065 USA 1-906-487-9722; fax 1-906-487-9405 [email protected] http://www.georgewright.org

The George Wright Society Origins Founded in 1980, The George Wright Society is organized for the purposes of promoting the application of knowledge, fostering communication, improving resource management, and providing information to improve public understanding and appreciation of the basic purposes of natural and cultural parks and equivalent reserves. The Society is dedicated to the protection, preservation, and management of cultural and natural parks and reserves through research and education.

Mission The George Wright Society advances the scientific and heritage values of parks and protected areas. The Society promotes professional research and resource stewardship across natural and cultural disciplines, provides avenues of communication, and encourage public policies that embrace these values.

Our Goal The Society strives to be the premier organization connecting people, places, knowledge, and ideas to foster excellence in natural and cultural resource management, research, protection, and interpretation in parks and equivalent reserves.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.georgewright.org

THE GEORGE WRIGHT F O R U M

Volume 19 • 2002 • Number 4

Society News, Notes & Mail 2 The State of the Society: A Report from the GWS President

Bob Krumenaker 4 The G WS Strategic Statement, 2003-2007 7

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AT SITES OF CONSCIENCE Guest Editor: Martin Blatt

Introduction: The National Park Service and Civic Engagement Martin Blatt 9

InterpretingSlavery and Civil Rights at Fort Sumter John Tucker 15

Frankly, Scarlett, We Do Give a Damn: The Making of a New National Park Laura (Soulliere) Gates 32

Civic Engagement with the Community at Washita Battlefield National Historic Site

Sarah Craighead 44 The National Park Service: Groveling Sycophant or Social Conscience?

Telling the Story of Mountains, Valley, and Barbed Wire at Manzanar National Historic Site

Frank Hays 50 Activating the Past for Civic Action: The International Coalition of Historic

Site Museums of Conscience Liz Sevcenko 55

Dialogue Between Continents: Civic Engagement and the Gulag Museum at Perm-36, Russia

Louis P. Hutchins and Gay E. Vietzke 65

On the Cover: Watch tower and administrative building at the Gulag Museum at Perm-36. National Park Service photo by Louis Hutchins.

Volume 19 • Number 4 2002 1

Society News, Notes Sc Mail Kilgore, Reynolds, Emory Join GWS Board; New Officers Named

In an election which saw all four candidates run strongly, Bruce Kilgore and John Reynolds emerged as the winners in the race for the two available seats on the Board. Kilgore and Reynolds surpassed Brad Barr and Bobbi Simpson in the balloting. Kilgore retired from the National Park Service after a long career which saw him make significant contributions to science in the parks, and which earned him the Society's highest honor, the George Melendez Wright Award for Excellence, in 1997. Reynolds retired from the Park Service in August 2002 after a distinguished and extremely varied career which was capped by his leadership of the NPS Pacific West Region. In addition to these two new elected Board members, at its 2002 annual meeting the Board appointed Jerry Emory to a term. As a freelance writer, Emory has written extensively on a variety of subjects, including the personal history of George Wright. He is currently a writer/research officer with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. These new Board members replace outgoing Board members Bob Krumenaker, Laura Gates, Elizabeth Bertillion Collins, and Peter Brinkley.

For 2003, Dennis B. Fenn takes over as president of the Society. Formerly the chief biologist of the U.S. Geological Survey's Biological Resources Division, Fenn now directs the BRD's Southwest Biological Research Center. Abigail B. Miller, our new vice president, is the deputy associate director of the National Park Service for natural resource science and stewardship. Stepping in as GWS secretary is Gillian Bowser, assistant chief of resources at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Dwight T. Pitcaithley, the NPS's chief historian, remains as treasurer of the Society.

GWS Dues to Increase for First Time in Ten Years The GWS Board has approved an increase in the Society's dues schedule,

effective January 1, 2003. These increases are the first since 1992. The Board decided to raise the dues for two reasons: to keep pace with steadily rising operating expenses, and to bring our dues structure more in line with those of comparable professional societies. Annual dues for regular individual memberships go to $45 (from $35), institutional memberships increase to $100 (from $35), patron memberships will be $1,000 (from $500), and supporting memberships go to a flat $150. Life memberships will go up to $500 (from $350); these can still be paid in two annual installments. Annual student memberships remain unchanged at $25. In addition, there is now a new category: "sustaining life membership." It is meant to encourage life members to continue to contribute to the GWS on a regular basis by committing to pledge $45 per year over the cost of a life membership. This option is open to both existing life members and newly joining ones.

The George Wright FORUM 2

2003 Joint Conference Preparations in Full Swing Preparations are going full-bore for "Protecting Our Diverse Heritage: The

Role of Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sites," the joint meeting of the GWS and the National Park Service Cultural Resources 200.3 conferences. An unprecedented 134 sessions have been scheduled to accommodate a program that is at once that most diverse and most comprehensive of any meeting the GWS has been involved in. With the addition of the CR2003 conference to the event, there is fine balance in the program, with natural, cultural, and interdisciplinary sessions each occupying about a third of the program. By the time you read this, registration for the joint conference should be underway, and you will be able to view the entire program on-line. Go to the conference website at

http://www.georgewright.org/2003.html

and follow the links to the registration form and program information. Remember, GWS members attend at a discount!

Boyd Evison 1933-2002 Boyd Evison, a leading figure in the National Park Service for 42 years, died

on October 4, of cancer. He was 69. Boyd began working for the National Park Service as a fire control aide in

Grand Teton National Park, and continued as a permanent ranger in Petrified Forest National Park. He served as superintendent of Saguaro, Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Great Smoky Mountains national parks. He was also assistant director for operations in Washington, D.C. and regional director in Alaska during the Exxon Valdez oil spill episode.

When he retired from the National Park Service in 1994, he became executive director of the Grand Teton Natural History Association, and is credited for expanding scientific and educational programs there.

Boyd earned the George Melendez Wright Award in 2002.

Ray Dasmann 1919-2002 Raymond F. Dasmann, professor, and pioneer in the field of international

environmentalism, died of pneumonia November 5. He was 83. He was instrumental in the formation of several of the early conferences of the Society, and gave the paper "World Parks, People, and Land Use" at the 1986 conference in Fort Collins. Ray Dasmann wrote more than a dozen books, including "The Destruction of California," "Environmental Conservation" and "Wildlife Biology." Also, earlier this year he published his memoir "Called by the Wild: The Autobiography of a Conservationist."

He was a native of San Francisco, and after WW2 he studied under Starker Leopold, earning a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley. He was a professor of wildlife management at Humboldt State University, and later, professor of biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.


http://www.georgewright.org/2003.html

On pages 7 and 8 in this issue ofThe George Wright Forum, you’ll seethe Society’s new five-year StrategicStatement in which the Board defineswho we are as a Society and what wehope to accomplish over the next fiveyears. There’s always been some ten-sion between the pride over what weaccomplish well and the desire tobecome something more, and this sub-ject of “who we want to be” is always atopic of vigorous discussion at Boardmeetings. We have now said that wewant to grow about 50% in member-ship, and broaden somewhat who wereach out to. We’ve set some targetsfor growth that are ambitious butachievable. Critically, however, wehave said that we are proud to be thesponsor of the conferences and theForum and believe that those shallremain our primary “products.” Inother words, we do not intend tochange the face of the Society signifi-cantly. While to some that may looklike a statement of contentment andlack of ambition, I think it is a modestbut forward-looking and realisticassessment of who we are and what wedo best. Hopefully the Board willmeasure its progress against the

Strategic Statement each year so thatwe indeed do achieve the “stretch”goals within the five-year timeframe.Former Board member Neil Munroreally pushed us towards the adoptionof a simple, workable, strategic plan,and deserves all of our thanks.

The finances of the Society aresound for the time being, although thelast two years have been tough onesdue to the market’s downturn. Earlyin 2002, at outgoing Board memberPeter Brinkley’s urging, we modifiedour investment mix to reduce theSociety’s stock market exposure.That decision did the Societyextremely well this year consideringthe poor performance of the stockmarket. The anguish over that deci-sion, however, and subsequent discus-sions about further refining our assetallocation, demonstrated amply thatthe Board needs to do a regular reviewof our portfolio, and an efficientmeans of making changes when theyare appropriate. We need to measureour performance against benchmarkswe set in advance, and be dispassion-ate about decisions to hold tight ormove our assets, always while keeping

The George Wright FORUM4

Bob Krumenaker

The State of the Society:A Report from the GWS President

2

The Board of the George Wright Society recently concluded its annualmeeting and as I prepare to step down at the conclusion of my term aspresident and as a Board member, it seems appropriate to share withthe membership a status report. In my opinion, the Society is strong as

we begin 2003.

foremost in our minds the long-termgoals for the Society. I’m very pleasedthat at this meeting we adopted afinancial strategy that does just that,thanks to efforts of Dwight Pitcaithley.Still, we recognize that while we are inreasonably good financial shape forthe short term, our long-term financialsustainability is worrisome, and sowe’ve established a fundraising com-mittee, led by Rick Smith. The com-mittee’s charge is to develop realistic,achievable strategies for raising fundsthat fit within the scope of the GWSstrategic statement. Lastly, we madesome decisions about membershipdues, conference registration fees, andthe pricing of our conference servicesthat will improve our bottom line. Wehope the membership will be support-ive, particularly of the dues increase,the first since 1992 (see “SocietyNews, Notes & Mail” for details).

I’m very pleased to report that we(finally) established a framework, andset aside funds, for a modest retire-ment program for Executive DirectorDave Harmon this year, somethingthat is long overdue. We will matchDave’s tax-deferred contributions upto 5% of his salary. We also broughtEmily Dekker-Fiala onto the staff, on apart-time basis, which has been anoutstanding decision and has bothimproved our capability and providedsome modest stability for Emily aswell. Previously, Emily has been acontract employee, providing confer-ence services on a reimbursable basis.

The biannual conference, is, ofcourse, the Society’s flagship event,and in November the conference com-

mittee, led by Dave Parsons, reviewedthe abstracts and set up the frameworkof the program for the 2003 confer-ence. With the explicit addition of theNPS Cultural Resources 2003 com-ponent, this conference looks like itcould be the largest and most success-ful to date. The prospect of travelfreezes and budget cuts in the federalgovernment, however, loom over theconference and threaten to derail it,and with it, the needed influx of cashthe Society relies on in non-confer-ence years. While this makes me verynervous, I’m also confident that theconference committee and the execu-tive staff are monitoring this closelyand will do whatever is appropriate ifcircumstances change. If the confer-ence is successful, it’s my hope that wefinally lay to rest the myth that theGWS conference is primarily for andabout natural resources, and that thecultural community embraces thisvenue fully. My hope is that we con-tinue to have the broad and balancedparticipation but that we no longerneed to label the conference as a jointGWS-CR meeting—that it is under-stood that a GWS meeting is for allresource management professionals.

The Board, of course, is the leader-ship body of your Society. The 2002election was one of the most contestedin years, and we are very pleased toadd John Reynolds and Bruce Kilgoreto our midst. With Rick Smith, thatwill now make three NPS retirees onthe Board, an interesting trend. TheBoard has also appointed Jerry Emory,a research officer at the Moore Foun-dation in San Francisco. The Board atthis writing is considering one addi-


tional appointment to fill out its ranks,but has not yet make that decision.The Board will be holding quarterlyconference calls so the momentum ofthe annual meeting is not lost and wecontinue to make progress on ourgoals. It will be my pleasure to turn thepresident’s gavel over to Denny Fenn,who will have a one-year term as pres-ident since he only has the oneremaining year on the Board. In manyways, this will be a transition year asthere are many new members of theBoard and collectively the Board andthe membership will have the chanceto determine where we are heading forthe next several years. We decided tomake sure there are opportunities at

the April conference for the member-ship to talk with the Board to expressits concerns and goals for the nextyear.

In sum, I believe we are in goodshape and will be in even better shapein the next few years provided we usethe strategic statement and financialstrategy as guidelines and targets forour programs and actions, revisingand updating them as needed whencircumstances and goals change. Ithas been my pleasure and honor to bepresident of the Society these last twoyears, and a Board member for the lastsix.


Bob Krumenaker, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Route 1, Box 4,Bayfield, Wisconsin 54814; [email protected]

1

9

These notions have real implica-tions for the practice of public historyin the National Park Service. In areport published in 2001, Rethinkingthe National Parks for the 21st Centu-ry, the National Park System AdvisoryBoard called on the agency to fulfill itspromise in the 21st century. Theboard asserted that, “in many ways,the National Park Service is ournation’s Department of Heritage....Parks should be not just recreationaldestinations, but springboards, forpersonal journeys of intellectual andcultural enrichment.... [We] mustensure that the American story is toldfaithfully, completely, and accurately....Our nation’s history is our civicglue.”2

This report strongly influencedthe thinking of NPS NortheastRegional Director Marie Rust, whoconceived the agency’s civic engage-

ment initiative. In response to a num-ber of critical challenges in NationalPark Service sites and programs, sheasked that superintendents, educa-tional and interpretive specialists, andresource professionals of the North-east Region organize a workshopfocused on civic engagement and theagency. I had the distinct privilege ofserving as the coordinator of the work-shop, which was held in New YorkCity in December 2001. The meetingbrought together park managers,resource specialists, public historians,scholars, and museum professionals todiscuss how national parks canbecome centers for civic engagement.Out of that workshop the agencydeveloped the 2002 report, TheNational Park Service and CivicEngagement, which serves both as asummary of the workshop and an out-line for further steps. During the work-

Volume 19 • Number 4 2002

Martin Blatt

Civic Engagement at Sites of ConscienceIntroduction: The National Park Service and Civic Engagement

I am pleased to serve as the guest editor for this special issue of The GeorgeWright Forum which focuses on the National Park Service (NPS) and theagency’s incipient civic engagement initiative. Although civic engagement isequally relevant to sites based in natural and cultural resources, this issue

focuses on cultural resource parks and sites. Civic engagement encompassesboth the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and a commitment to actaccordingly. In a democracy such as ours, every citizen needs to make moral dis-tinctions in civic life and act upon them. In Democracy is a Discussion, SondraMyers writes that the engagement of citizens “in discussion of public issues forthe purposes of making informed decisions, resolving conflicts, seeking commonground, and affirming their rights and responsibilities, is essential to the devel-opment and sustenance of democracy.”1


shop sessions, participants sought topursue the recommendations of theNational Park System Advisory Boardand to build on similar concepts artic-ulated in NPS policy, as well as onchanges in interpretive programmingthat have been developed during thepast decade.

The workshop participants rec-ommended the following preliminaryactions:

• Publishing and distributing thereport from the workshop.

• Holding additional workshops inother parts of the country.

• Providing professional develop-ment opportunities for park man-agers, interpreters, and resourcemanagers to cultivate a broadercontext in interpretation, to facili-tate work with communities oncomplex issues, and to embracecivic engagement in day-to-daypark operations.

• Convening an NPS-wide workinggroup on civic engagement toadvance the initiative.

• Creating an internal website tofacilitate communication through-out the NPS and to promote suc-cesses in the agency.3

There has been progress towardsthe realization of these preliminaryaction items. As noted above, theNortheast Region of the NPS pub-lished the workshop report in 2002.4

In December 2002, the NPS South-east Region convened a civic engage-ment workshop in Atlanta. (The pub-lication deadline for this introductionprecluded a report on this meeting.)In spring 2003, I will report on thecivic engagement initiative as part of a

panel at the annual meeting of theNational Council on Public History.Also this spring there will be a sessionon the initiative at the George WrightSociety–National Park Service jointconference, “Protecting Our DiverseHeritage.” In addition, the NortheastRegional staff of the National HistoricLandmarks (NHL) program hasrecently developed, in conjunctionwith the Lower East Side TenementMuseum in New York City, the Sites ofSocial Conscience initiative within theNHL program.

How does the present collection ofessays fit within the civic engagementinitiative? For one thing, most of theauthors—Laura Gates, Frank Hays,Sarah Craighead, Liz Sevcenko, andGay Vietzke—participated in the NewYork City workshop. All of the essayspresented here address issues at thevery core of this initiative. The Nation-al Park System Advisory Board reportstated the matter succinctly: “Thestudy of our nation’s history, formaland informal, is an essential part of ourcivic education. In a democratic socie-ty such as ours, it is important tounderstand the journey of liberty andjustice, together with the economic,social, religious, and other forces thatbarred or opened the ways for ourancestors, and the distances yet to becovered.”5 At the NPS Discovery2000 conference, John HopeFranklin, chair of the National ParkSystem Advisory Board, elaboratedupon this idea in his keynote address:“The places that commemorate sadhistory are not places in which we wal-low, or wallow in remorse, but insteadplaces in which we may be moved to anew resolve, to be better citizens....

11

Explaining history from a variety ofangles makes it not only more interest-ing, but also more true. When it ismore true, more people come to feelthat they have a part in it. That iswhere patriotism and loyalty intersectwith truth.”6

I will now turn to each essay andprovide some brief introductoryremarks that place each within theframework of the civic engagement ini-tiative.

Fort Sumter National Monumentand Cane River Creole National His-torical Park both feature slavery intheir park stories. With respect to FortSumter, Superintendent John Tuckerindicates how his park’s treatment ofslavery has shifted its focus recently toprovide greater context for how slav-ery was a root cause of the outbreak ofthe war that is commemorated at thesite. Interpreters at Fort Sumter alsorelate the park’s historical themes tomore recent issues by choosing tointerpret civil rights at the site. CaneRiver, as Superintendent Laura Gatesrelates, is expanding the context forunderstanding plantations by havingvisitors enter the cultural landscape ofthis new park through the workingpart of the plantation, thus positioningthe story of the work lives of the for-mer slaves in the forefront of the narra-tive.

In both instances, what is demon-strated is the centrality of historicalcontext. Although furnishings of his-toric houses and troop movements of aspecific battle are critically importantto a place, the value of a particular sitegoes far beyond the details of that site.Civil War-era parks that fail to addressslavery as being a chief cause of the

war tell a terribly flawed story. Theyalso fail to provide an environmentwherein visitors can have a civicengagement experience that teachesthe entire truth about the past andallows them to make linkages betweenthat past and contemporary America.

A 1998 report from the superin-tendents of Civil War battlefields,Holding the High Ground: Principlesand Strategies for Managing andInterpreting Civil War BattlefieldLandscapes, provided direction forplacing battlefield stories within thesocial, economic, and political contextof the period. In 1999, CongressmanJesse Jackson, Jr., inserted importantlanguage into the fiscal year 2000Department of the Interior appropria-tion legislation, which concluded, inpart, that “Civil War battlefields areoften weak or missing vital informa-tion about the role that the institutionof slavery played in causing the Amer-ican Civil War.” The Secretary of theInterior was directed to encourageNPS managers at Civil War sites to“recognize and include in all of theirpublic displays and multi-media edu-cational presentations the unique rolethat the institution of slavery played incausing the Civil War and its role, ifany, at the individual battle sites.”There has been significant change atNPS Civil War sites—and also resist-ance to broadening the story. NPSChief Historian Dwight Pitcaithleyhas been a national leader in this effortto transform the NPS culture at battle-field sites from places where only thestory of the battle is told to a placewhere the battle is placed within itscritical context. Pitcaithley has alsowritten about these developments.7



The report Rethinking the Nation-al Parks argues that NPS should makeefforts to connect indigenous peopleswith “parks and other areas of specialsignificance to strengthen their livingcultures.”8 Sarah Craighead, formerlysuperintendent at Washita BattlefieldNational Historic Site, and now super-intendent at Saguaro National Park,writes about the Washita site, estab-lished in 1996. It marks the place ofCuster’s 1868 attack on a sleepingCheyenne village. The collaborationwhich she describes between theCheyenne and Arapaho tribes, whilenot without problems, is emblematicof how civic engagement can work toenhance a park’s operation and itsrelationship with key stakeholdergroups.

Superintendent Frank Hays writesabout a new park, Manzanar NationalHistoric Site. According to Pitcaithley,a string of congressional acts in the1990s designated new kinds of histor-ical parks, “parks that require that weunderstand the past, not simply cele-brate it. They require us to thinkabout the past, not merely feel goodabout the past.” These new parksinclude Brown v. Board of EducationNational Historic Site, Lower EastSide Tenement National Historic Site,Little Rock Central High SchoolNational Historic Site, Tuskegee Air-men National Historic Site, Selma toMontgomery National Historic Trail,and Sand Creek Massacre NationalHistoric Site.9 The lessons of civicengagement with respect to Manzanarfocus on two important areas: how wemanage our cultural resources andhow we cooperate with key stakehold-ers. Today, very little of the cultural

landscape of this prison center forJapanese Americans remains intactand thus it is difficult for visitors tocomprehend the harsh conditions thatthe internees endured. Without thatcontext, however, visitors will also findit a real challenge to understand thestory of massive denial of civil libertiesand due process, the relevance of thisepisode to racial profiling in today’sAmerica, and more. So, largely as aresult of the active participation ofJapanese Americans in the planningprocess, the park’s general manage-ment plan calls for the reconstructionof the camp’s barbed wire fence andentrance sign, which have been com-pleted, the reconstruction of oneguard tower, and the attempt to relo-cate and restore one or more of thecamp barracks buildings.

Liz Sevcenko writes about theInternational Coalition of HistoricSite Museums of Conscience, estab-lished in 1999. It was founded by nineagencies and organizations fromaround the world, including theNortheast Region of the National ParkService and the Lower East Side Ten-ement Museum. The central purposeof the coalition is the strengthening ofconnections between the past and thepresent. Clearly, this aim is central tothe successful realization of civicengagement. In order to be active citi-zens, visitors to international sitesneed to understand the past and itsrelationship to the present. TheNational Park System Advisory Boardreport states: “Understanding the rele-vance of past experiences to presentconditions allows us to confronttoday’s issues with a deeper awarenessof the alternatives before us.”10

13

Louis Hutchins and Gay Vietzkerelate the experiences of the NPS tech-nical assistance team that visited oneof the International Coalition mem-bers. Established only a few years ago,the Gulag Museum near Perm, Russia,preserves one of the last survivingStalinist-era labor camps. Like otherCoalition members, the Gulag Muse-um not only preserves and interpretsthe powerful history of the site but alsoacts as a stimulus for discussion,debate, and civic engagement in pres-ent-day Russia. The mission of theGulag Museum is “to promote demo-cratic values and civil consciousness incontemporary Russian societythrough preservation of the last Sovietpolitical camp as a vivid reminder ofrepression, and an important histori-cal and cultural monument.”

One could easily substitute“national park” for “museum” in thefollowing: “Civic engagement occurswhen museum and community inter-sect—in subtle and overt ways, overtime, and as an accepted and natural

way of doing business. The museumbecomes ... an active, visible player incivic life, a safe haven, and a trustedincubator of change.”11 The NationalPark System Advisory Board’s 2001study concluded: “As a nation, weprotect our heritage to ensure a morecomplete understanding of the forcesthat shape our lives and future.National parks are key institutions cre-ated for that purpose, chapters in theever expanding story of America.... Bycaring for the parks and conveying thepark ethic, we care for ourselves andact on behalf of the future. The largerpurpose of this mission is to build acitizenry that is committed to conserv-ing its heritage and its home on eart-th.”12 In this sense, national parks areimplicitly centers of civic engagement.However, as these essays demonstrate,successful civic engagement requiresfocused and deliberate attention. Fullyimplemented, civic engagement willenable the National Park Service torealize its mission for the 21st century.


Endnotes1. Sondra Myers, Democracy is a Discussion—Civic Engagement in Old and New Democracies (New

London: Connecticut College, 1996), p. viii.2. National Park System Advisory Board, Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century

(Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2001), p.14.3. National Park Service Northeast Region, The National Park Service and Civic Engagement

(Philadelphia: National Park Service, 2002), p. 14.4. To obtain a copy, please write to: Northeast Regional Director, NPS, 200 Chestnut Street,

Philadelphia, PA 19106-2878.5. Rethinking the National Parks, p.14.6. Cited in The National Park Service and Civic Engagement, p. 6.7. See Dwight Pitcaithley, “Barbara Kingsolver and the Challenge of Public History,” and James Horton,

“Presenting History: The Perils of Telling America’s Racial Story,” in The Public Historian, Fall1999, Vol. 21, No. 4.

8. Rethinking the National Parks, p. 21.9. Dwight Pitcaithley, “Evolution of the NPS Since 1990,” talk at the Civic Engagement workshop, New

York, December 6, 2001.10. Rethinking the National Parks, p. 10.11. Eileen Hirzy, Mastering Civic Engagement: A Challenge to Museums (Washington, D.C.: American


Association of Museums, 2002), p. 9.12. Rethinking the National Parks, p. 30.

Martin Blatt, Boston National Historical Park, Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston,Massachusetts 02129-4543; [email protected]

1


Fort Sumter National Monumentwas authorized in April 1948 by a sim-ple act of Congress. The legislationstates that the monument “shall be apublic national memorial commemo-rating historical events at or near FortSumter.” Without further directionfrom Congress, the National Park Ser-vice (NPS) relied upon its staff to clar-ify the interpretive purposes for FortSumter National Monument. Interpre-tation consisted of guides leadingsmall groups to interesting spots with-in the fort.

During this period, the NPS inter-pretive focus for battlefields was onthe “slice of time commemorativeexperience.” In all likelihood, thisapproach to interpretation came out ofthe battlefield commemorations con-ducted by veteran’s groups such as theSons of Confederate Veterans and the

Grand Army of the Republic in thepost-Civil War period. Most efforts bythese patriotic and civic organizationsfocused on healing the divisionbetween North and South. Reunitingthe country was a top priority. Militaryparks were authorized to commemo-rate the heroic events and deeds thatoccurred on the hallowed groundswhere blood was spilled by bothNorthern and Southern soldiers. Con-gress had abandoned efforts at Recon-struction in the South and lacked theresolve necessary to guarantee therights of citizenship to newly freedslaves. The country was not ready forthe social revolution reflected in the13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments tothe Constitution. The role of slaveryand the rights promised to blackAmericans were forgotten in the rushto reunify the country and memorial-

John Tucker

Interpreting Slavery and Civil Rights atFort Sumter National Monument

As we waited for Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., to arrive late one fallday in 1997, we wondered aloud as to the real purpose of his visit. Tomy knowledge, never before had a twentieth-century African Americancongressman representing a Northern state set foot on Fort Sumter—

much less any congressman from Illinois. As with any good bureaucratic system,the park received calls from other Civil War battlefield superintendents asJackson traveled through Georgia following the trail of General WilliamTecumseh Sherman traveled some 133 years past. As he moved about the South,we heard about his impression of the battlefields and the ongoing interpretiveefforts. Was Jackson planning to lay waste to these park interpretive efforts andthe park managers? What would be his impression of Fort Sumter and the inter-pretive efforts underway? Would he be impressed with Fort Sumter and the storysurrounding its important role in American history? Would the congressmanchastise the staff for not accomplishing his agenda items? As is the case for mostVIP tours, the congressman was running late.

ize a brothers’ war. The nation’s mili-tary parks reflected this atmosphere.

Mid-twentieth century Americawas fraught with civil unrest as thefreedoms promised 100 years agobegan to emerge. It was during this eraof emerging civil rights that FortSumter’s interpretive program beganto take shape. When NPS publishedthe first master plan for Fort Sumter inthe 1950s, the fort’s interpretive pro-gram was based on the 1860 electionof President Abraham Lincoln, thesecession of South Carolina, and thesubsequent movement of MajorRobert Anderson from Fort Moultrieto Fort Sumter. The major focus wason the initial Confederate attack of1861 and the Federal bombardmentsof 1863 and 1864, known as the Siegeof Charleston. These componentsmade up the interpretive programsoffered at the fort.

During the following decade, oncethe archeology was completed, perma-nent exhibit facilities were needed toenhance the visitor experience at FortSumter. A new museum was con-structed with Mission 66 funding inthe disappearing gun position of Bat-tery Huger—an Endicott Battery com-pleted in 1899. But the focus of inter-pretation did not appreciably expandwith the museum exhibits. The eventsof 1861 and the bombardments of1863-64 remained the central inter-pretive themes. Throughout the1970s and 1980s, interpretationchanged little at Fort Sumter.

Clearly, two major influences wereat work during the early years of FortSumter National Monument. First, asarticulated by Thomas J. Pressly, was a“climate of opinion.” Immediately

after Fort Sumter was authorized, thenation was again struggling in a verypublic fashion with questions of raceand equality. From the adoption of theConstitution in 1787 to the 1950s,questions of citizenship and equalitywere enmeshed in the power of poli-tics. Although the Civil War had freedthe slaves and for a short time visitedcertain rights on them, by the turn ofthe twentieth century freedom was stillvery limited for African Americans.

As the nation entered the 1960s,Fort Sumter was preparing for theCivil War Centennial in 1961. FortSumter was sitting in CharlestonHarbor, surrounded by one of themost conservative communities in thenation, as slave descendants begandemonstrating for their rights acrossAmerica. The seriousness of segrega-tion was highlighted by events of theCivil War Centennial Commission inCharleston:

The manner in which those controver-sies and disputes could generate anatmosphere bearing at least someresemblance to a century earlier wasillustrated at Charleston, SouthCarolina, in April of 1961, at the com-memoration of the centennial of thebeginning of hostilities at FortSumter. For that occasion, the CivilWar Centennial Commission, an offi-cial body established by act ofCongress, had arranged a “nationalassembly” of centennial organiza-tions of the various States. When aNegro woman member of the NewJersey Centennial Commission report-ed that she had been denied a roomat the headquarters hotel inCharleston because of her race, theCommissions of several “Northern”States announced that they would nottake part in the assembly atCharleston. At the insistence of thePresident of the United States, the


place of meeting was transferred tothe nearby non-segregated UnitedStates naval base. Thereupon, themembers of the South CarolinaCentennial Commission, almost as ifthey had read the stage directionsfrom a script written in 1860-1861,seceded from the nationalCommission. Ultimately, two com-memoration meetings were held, oneunder the auspices of the nationalCommission at the naval base, and asecond meeting at the original head-quarters hotel sponsored by “TheConfederate States CentennialConference.” It thus seemed possibleto re-create in the United States of the1960’s a recognizable facsimile ofthe climate of opinion of the 1860’s,even if the occasion itself wasmomentous only as a symbol.1

It was in this climate that Fort Sumterbegan forming its interpretative pro-gram.

The second major influence origi-nated with the commemorative activi-ties of both North and South after thewar. Efforts to honor family heroesand comrades-in-arms led the nationto view battles as important eventsrepresenting gallant behavior. It wouldhave been far more difficult forAmerica to discuss the causes of thewar and the still-unfulfilled guaranteesof citizenship. Similarly, the NationalPark Service followed this coursethroughout most of the 20th century.Park rangers preferred to discuss bat-tlefield strategy and gallant actions byfallen heroes rather than discuss theactions and events that truly led to theopening shot at Fort Sumter.

To further confound the issue, inthe 1970s NPS issued a new masterplan for Fort Sumter. In this planmuch of the emphasis was on Fort


Figure 1. Mission 66 exhibit at Fort Sumter. National Park Service photo.

Moultrie to ready it for the bicentenni-al of the nation. It is interesting thatFort Moultrie was to be developedmuch as an outdoor museum depict-ing seacoast defenses from 1776 to1947. However, “Fort Sumter on theother hand, will be maintained andinterpreted for public use and enjoy-ment as a ‘slice of time’— [a] singular-ly significant period during the 200years of coastal fortifications that isfound in the history of the Civil War atCharleston.”2 Still the fundamentalquestion of why the war started inCharleston was not answered.

Fort Sumter and Charleston’s re-evaluation of the Civil War could notwait any longer. With the election ofMayor Joseph P. Riley in 1975,Charleston would soon recognize thatits early economy was actually basedon rice, not “King Cotton.” From thisunderstanding, Charlestonians havebegun to realize that highly skilledslaves were imported from the GoldCoast of Africa to cultivate the manyrice fields of the Lowcountry, makinglarge profits for the planter class. Therevelation that African slaves were notimported just for their laboring abilitybut for their intellect as well has madea significant difference in presentingthe story of the Atlantic slave trade.What has long been obvious in acade-mia and confirmed by oral traditions isfinally making its way into the streets.Now we all can learn about the contri-butions of our ancestors.

By the 1990s, NPS interpretiverangers were beginning to make a re-evaluation of the role of holistic inter-pretation in programming within thenational parks. Those responsible forinterpretation began this re-evaluation

long before Congress or the NPSWashington office identified it as aneed. Interpretive efforts such as thosebegun at Fort Sumter in the early1990s were reflected in many CivilWar sites around the country.Washington supported these individ-ual park efforts. NPS regional officeshelped formalize the efforts with amulti-regional conference of battle-field superintendents, held inNashville during the summer of 1997.

In this new environment, the inter-pretation at Fort Sumter began tochange. At the beginning of the lastdecade, the park interpretive programconsisted of Lincoln’s election and theCivil War era. Interpretive staffing wasmarginally sufficient to keep the visitoruse sites open on a day-to-day basis.The park did not have a historian onstaff. When the question “Why did thenation separate?” was asked, it couldnot be adequately answered.

Another of the driving forces in theFort Sumter interpretive plan was aneed to change the vintage Mission 66exhibits that had served the park since1961. The exhibit space did not meetthe basic Life Safety Code, nor was itfully accessible. In addition, it was rec-ognized that “the exhibits have a verynarrow focus on Civil War events1861-65, with little information on theconstitutional issues of the precedingdecades that led to the conflict. In thesame manner, the significance of ante-bellum Charleston as a powerful andindependent social, economic, andpolitical force is not emphasized.”3

The objective outlined in the interpre-tive plan was to “enhance publicunderstanding of the social, econom-ic, and political events leading up to


the Civil War.”4 From this exercise,three basic questions arose: Why didthe nation separate? What role didFort Sumter play in the Civil War?What will the visitor see at FortSumter today?

The 1960s-era museum at FortSumter was redone by park staff in theearly 1990s. Completed in 1995, thenew museum retained many of thetreasured artifacts that were a part ofthe old museum, exhibited in freshsurroundings with a more sweepingstory line. Blocking out damaging sun-light and providing handicap accessi-bility were important prioritiesdesigned to safeguard artifacts andimprove the visitor experience.Another high priority was bringingthe text in line with current scholar-

ship. New exhibit text and graphicsincludes an introductory section thatdeals with the growth of sectionalism,antebellum politics, and slavery as thecauses of secession and war. Most ofthe exhibit remains site-specific, deal-ing with topics such as the fort’s con-struction, people and events leading tothe firing of the first shot of the CivilWar, and what happened to the fortduring the ensuing war. A section wasadded on the participation of AfricanAmericans in the war, highlighting therole of the 54th Massachusetts onnearby Morris Island.

An even more ambitious exhibitproject began in the fall of 1999 withexhibit planning for the new FortSumter tour boat facility at LibertySquare. The new building was sched-


Figure 2. 1990s renovation of exhibits. National Park Service photo.

uled to open in June 2001. Here wasthe opportunity to prepare the visitorfor the Fort Sumter experience on themainland before boarding the ferry.Decades earlier, planning had begunto locate a new Fort Sumter departuresite in downtown Charleston. Firstconceived in 1961, it was not to be areality until 40 years later. Two majorobjectives were included at the outsetof the 1990s planning effort. One, theoriginal garrison flag would be dis-played in the new facility. The garrisonflag that flew over Fort Sumter fromDecember 26, 1860, until April 11,1861, had been on display at the fortfrom 1961 until 1980. It was removedand sent to the NPS conservation cen-ter in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Prior to the planned opening of thenew tour boat facility, the flag wouldbe treated and placed in a permanentcontainer for exhibit. Secondly, thenew dock facility exhibit wouldemphasize the causes leading to theoutbreak of the Civil War. Theexhibits at Fort Sumter would contin-ue to provide interpretation regardingthe events of the war in CharlestonHarbor.

About the same time, NPS direc-tors such as Roger Kennedy began tochallenge the field ranger to do a betterjob of relating sites to the changingdemographics in America. DirectorKennedy wanted the parks to bettermeet the needs of the American popu-lation by the year 2000. We were


Figure 3. Liberty Square ferry terminal. National Park Service photo.

encouraged to not repeat the mistakesof 1970s environmental education bypreparing “stand-alone” programs butrather to fully integrate interpretiveefforts with professional scholarship.The parks were encouraged to stepinto the professional community todiscuss interpretive ideas andapproaches taken in the parks to pro-vide visitor understanding.

Parks were looking for ways toensure full implementation of a newinterpretive effort centered around theconcept of holistic interpretation.After the 1994 reorganization of thenational park management system,parks were aligned within geographicgroups called “clusters.” Fort Sumterwas a park of the Atlantic CoastCluster. During a meeting of parkmanagers representing the twenty-fourparks in the cluster, the managers real-ized that, thematically, these parkscould not be easily linked because ofthe multitude and variety of interpre-tive themes arrayed among them—themes that were themselves represen-tative of a geographic diversity thatranges from Cape Hatteras south toCape Canaveral and inland toTuskegee, Alabama. However, theparks could be linked through honestand forthright interpretation at eachsite that included all people and allthemes appropriate to each park. So inMay of 1998 each superintendent inthe Atlantic Coast Cluster agreed tofive principles:1. We will enlighten our visitors with a

holistic interpretive experience, welltold and rooted in the park’s com-pelling story.

2. We will not be deterred by controver-sy in presenting the park’s com-pelling story.

3. We will seek to make the story inter-esting to the visitor.

4. We will seek to share with all visitorsthe exclusiveness and plurality thatthe park’s story represents.

5. We will ensure that the story is factu-al and based upon the highest-quali-ty research available.5

One of the first major efforts tobegin implementing a broaderapproach to Civil War interpretationin parks began with a conference inNashville originally intended to dis-cuss external land issues surroundingparks. However, the managers repre-sented there chose to include propos-als for interpreting Civil War battle-fields in the conference proceedingsand recommendations. The publishedfindings captured the basis for mostCivil War interpretation. “We havereplaced the reminiscences of return-ing veterans with the interpretationstressing military tactics and strategythey so loved. In so doing, we have for-gotten that the audience of the veter-ans knew the context of the war. Weoften do not provide adequate contextfor the site-related stories we tell.”6 Asa result of this thoughtful observation,a guiding principle was developed tohelp with interpreting the Civil War:

Battlefield interpretation must estab-lish the site’s particular place in thecontinuum of war, illuminate thesocial, economic, and cultural issuesthat caused or were affected by thewar, illustrate the breadth of humanexperience during the period, andestablish the relevance of the war topeople today.... They [museum, his-toric sites, and classrooms] shouldspark or encourage or provide a per-sonal journey of historical inquiry....Changing perceptions about the past,broadening our understanding ofwhat history is and how it is construct-


ed, is at the core of our profession.7

Soon following the Nashville con-ference, several major events hap-pened in the National Park Servicethat would have a lasting impact on theway Civil War history is interpreted.With Congressman Jackson’s visit andsubsequent legislation, the efforts ofmany in the National Park System tochange interpretation came to the fore-front. In an NPS report to Congress,Interpretation at Civil War Sites (pub-lished in 2000), an overview of currentNPS Civil War site interpretation wasincluded.

A review of the survey reveals thatthere is room for improvement in allcategories including exhibits, way-sides, films, web sites, publicationsand personal service programs. SomeCivil War sites clearly are covering thecauses of the Civil War better that oth-ers. In general there is a desire on thepart of battlefield managers toimprove all areas of interpretation.This desire is thwarted primarily bylimited staff and resources in relation-ship to the amount of media thatneeds to be made current both tech-nically and academically.8

The next major step in battlefieldinterpretation was “Rally on the HighGround,” a conference held in Wash-ington, D.C., on May 8 and 9, 2000.In the introduction, CongressmanJackson’s legislative language wasnoted. It directed the Secretary of theInterior “to encourage Civil War battlesites to recognize and include in all oftheir public displays and multimediaeducational presentations the uniquerole that the institution of slaveryplayed in causing the Civil War.”Although simple in content, it hasraised a public debate regarding prop-

er interpretation at Civil War battle-fields. Some still believe that the warwas about glory and battle tactics andshould remain a “slice of time” com-memorating the events and men whoplayed them out on the battlefield.Others “begged to differ” on the caus-es of the war, referring to “states’rights” versus “slavery” as the realcause. This is illustrated in a letterfrom Dwight Pitcaithley, chief histori-an of the National Park Service, to aconcerned citizen who had objected toNPS’s interpretation at Civil War bat-tlefields and raised two points oftendebated in the public arena. “Your let-ter,” Pitcaithley wrote, “raises twoconcerns.”

The first is that Civil War battlefieldswere established so that future gener-ations could learn about militaryactions and remember and honor themen who fought in these specialplaces.... Your second concern is thatthe National Park Service should notaddress causes of the war at theseplaces and that, in any event, slaverywas not the immediate cause of thewar.9

Pitcaithley went on to point out thatNPS will continue to provide the his-tory of Civil War battles. This is a fun-damental part of the need for battle-field interpretation. In reference to thesecond concern, he went on to say:

National Park Service interpretive pro-grams throughout the country aredesigned to explain what happenedat a particular park, discuss why ithappened, and assess its signifi-cance. We do this at parks as diverseas presidential birthplaces, the site ofthe battle of the Little Bighorn and atthe U.S.S. ARIZONA in Pearl Harbor.Understanding why an event hap-pened is essential to making mean-ingful an event as tragic as the


American Civil War. It is also impor-tant to distinguish between the caus-es of the war and the reasons whyindividuals, North and South, fought.The first has to do with political inter-est and leadership while the secondstems from varied political, personal,and individual responses to theunfolding secession crisis.10

Last year, the National Park SystemAdvisory Board’s report Rethinkingthe National Parks for the 21stCentury made these observations ofthe National Park Service:

The public looks upon national parksalmost as a metaphor for Americaitself. But there is another imageemerging here, a picture of a NationalPark Service as a sleeping giant—beloved and respected, yes, but per-haps too cautious, too resistant tochange, too reluctant to engage thechallenges that must be addressed inthe 21st century.11

In other words, it is time for the ParkService to move out of the “box.” Todo this, the Advisory Board recom-mended two specific items very perti-nent to battlefield interpretation. NPSshould:• Embrace its mission, as educator, to

become a more significant part ofAmerica’s educational system byproviding formal and informal pro-grams for students and learners ofall ages inside and outside parkboundaries.

• Encourage the study of the Americanpast, developing programs based oncurrent scholarship, linking specificplaces to the narrative of our history,and encouraging a public explo-ration and discussion of America’sexperience.12

It was in this context that FortSumter National Monument wasrethinking its overall managementefforts as well. Long-range planning

within NPS had evolved since thepark’s 1974 master plan was issued.By the early 1990s it became apparentthat development pressures surround-ing the park and a dramatic increase invisitation necessitated changing parkmanagement. No longer could FortSumter sit on the sidelines with a lim-ited presence in Charleston. Followinga management objective workshop inNovember 1994, the park began realplanning that would lead to a new gen-eral management plan (GMP) for FortSumter. More than twenty-five organi-zations and individuals were invited toparticipate in this workshop and sub-sequent public planning efforts.

The new GMP provides guidanceto establish and direct the overall man-agement, development, and uses inways that will best serve visitors whilepreserving the historic resources con-tained within the park. In addition toplanning elements, the document con-tains a statement of the park’s missionand of its compelling story. The mis-sion statement reads:

Fort Sumter National Monumentcommemorates defining momentsin American history within a militarycontinuum spanning more than acentury and a half. Two seacoast for-tifications preserve and interpretthese stories. At Fort Moultrie, thefirst American naval victory over theBritish in 1776 galvanized the patri-ot’s cause for independence. Lessthan a century later, America’s mosttragic conflict ignited with the firstshots of the Civil War at FortSumter.13

The GMP is not an action plan.Action plans emanate from the GMP.For interpretive actions, the compre-hensive interpretive plan is preparedand a long-range interpretive plan is


developed. During the GMP effort,the park staff also prepared the park’scompelling story. The compellingstory is used to succinctly tell theimportance of the resources protectedand is at the heart of the interpretiveeffort. It is used to train rangersregarding the importance of site-spe-cific resources and is a significant partof the foundation for defining the

park’s interpretive themes. It focusesthe park’s message on the essential,most relevant stories the site has to telland how these stories fit into a largerscientific, historic, social, and eco-nomic context. Every visitor shouldreceive the compelling story prior tohis or her departure from the park.This is Fort Sumter’s compellingstory:

History provides us with definingmoments from which we judge wherewe are with where we have been. TheCivil War provides the United Stateswith one of its critical definingmoments that continues to play avital role in defining ourselves as aNation. Fort Sumter is the placewhere it began.

America’s most tragic conflictignited at Fort Sumter on April 12,1861, when a chain reaction of

social, economic, and political eventsexploded into civil war. At the heart ofthese events was the issue of states’rights versus federal authority.

Fueled by decades of fire and con-frontation, South Carolina seceded inprotest of Lincoln’s election and thesocial and economic changes sure tofollow. With Fort Sumter as anunyielding bastion of Federal authori-ty, the war became inevitable.

A powerful symbol to both the


Figure 4. Panorama of Liberty Square. National Park Service photo.

South and the North, Fort Sumterremains a memorial to all who foughtto hold it.14

With these documents underway orcompleted, the park embarked on amission to answer the burning ques-tion, Why did the nation separate?

As work began on the exhibits, thequestion of what to name the newfacility arose. Since the site was devel-oped in partnership with the city ofCharleston, applying a name by eitherorganization would likely have result-ed in “Aquarium Park” or “FortSumter Park.” However, MayorJoseph Riley and the author agreed atthe outset to eliminate either of theseextremes and look for something inthe middle ground. Out of these jointefforts came the name “Liberty” assuggested by Robert Rosen, aCharleston historian and lawyer.“Square” was added to the name todifferentiate between terms used with-in NPS (such as “Park”) that mightconfuse the general public as to therole the site plays in Fort SumterNational Monument. Today the devel-opment site is known as “LibertySquare.”

As it turned out, this choice ofname was fortunate since the word“Liberty” became a unifying conceptthat finally brought into focus theinterpretive themes of CharlesPinckney National Historic Site, FortMoultrie, and Fort Sumter NationalMonument under a single umbrella. Amain objective for the new develop-ment site was to provide a gateway forthe NPS in Charleston as well as toother NPS sites in the area. LibertySquare was able to do just that.

The word “Liberty” also provideda platform that allowed the staff to

explore the advancements of this idealfrom our birth as a nation through theCivil Rights movement in the twenti-eth century. This idea was developedwhen Mayor Riley suggested the cen-tral fountain in the Liberty Squarecomplex be dedicated to SeptimaClark (1898-1987), a lifelong educatorand civil rights activist. Clark lived inCharleston and worked closely withDr. Martin Luther King to extend realvoting rights to the African Americanpopulations in the South. One of thequotes to be used at the fountain isfrom Clark: “Hating people, bearinghate in your heart, even though youmay feel that you have been ill-treated,never accomplishes anything good....Hate is only a canker that destroys.”15

From this, a draft long-range inter-pretive plan was completed for LibertySquare and work began to implementits recommendations.

Liberty Square is also important asan appropriate location for the inter-pretation of liberty, a broad, regionaltheme in terms of Charleston’s peo-ple, geography, and nearly four cen-turies of European and African set-tlement. Here, visitors will learnabout people and events associatedwith the liberty theme expressed atany number of locations, includingFort Sumter National Monument,Fort Moultrie, and Charles PinckneyNational Historic Site.16

With this charge the staff chose to usefixed media in the landscaped area tohighlight contributions to America’sliberties from the Constitution era tomodern times. With the basic under-standing that generally only whitemale property-owners over 21 years ofage had any real liberties in 1787, thestaff began to look at other moments inhistory to identify those who made


significant contributions to expandingthe cause of liberty. Thirteen quota-tions from authors such as HarrietTubman, Benjamin Franklin, W.E.B.Du Bois, Pearl S. Buck, and others arefound on bronze markers scatteredthroughout outdoor garden rooms ofLiberty Square. Each marker invitesthe visitor to reflect on the meanings ofliberty. An introductory marker byNPS Chief Historian Pitcaithleyreads:

In 1776 this nation embarked on agreat experiment, an experimentbased on the self-evident truth that“all men are created equal.” It has notbeen a steady progression, there havebeen many bumps in the road, butalong the way this country’s sense ofequality and liberty and justice havebeen expanded to include a broadrange of people, people not originallyenvisioned in that original Declarationof Independence. The past, like thepresent, was filled with choices. Weare not accountable for decisionsmade by those who came before. Wedo have a responsibility to study thosedecisions and learn from them, tounderstand them in context of thosetimes, and to apply the lessonslearned to better nurture this experi-ment in democracy we call the UnitedStates.

The exhibit plan for the new FortSumter visitor education center anddock facility at Liberty Square evolvedout of a fall 1999 meeting betweenpark staff and NPS personnel from theDenver Service Center and HarpersFerry Design Center. The interiorexhibits would provide orientationand enticement to visit the fort, exhib-it and interpret the Garrison flag, andinterpret the causes of the Civil War,with a special emphasis on the role ofslavery in America and the role of

Charleston in particular.The next planning meeting at the

park was in February 2000. Park staffmet with exhibit designer KristerOlmon from California; Anita Smith,the contracting officer and exhibitdesigner from the NPS Harpers FerryInterpretive Center; NPS staff fromthe Denver Service Center; and histo-rian Marie Tyler-McGraw of the NPSHistory Office in Washington, D.C.An outline and major themes came outof this meeting. Tyler-McGraw com-pleted the initial research and writingfor content development. Park staffalso submitted research materials andpotential graphics to Olmon that wereincorporated in his concept package.Exactly two years later, in February2002, the exhibits were finallyinstalled. The interim period wasfilled with five major text revisions andnumerous editorial changes, graphicselection and acquisition, and peerreview as park staff writing exhibit textgrappled with sensitive topics in apolitically charged atmosphere.

Assigning both a military historianand a social historian to editing andwriting the text meant that while itwould be a cumbersome and at timescontentious process, the end productwould satisfy diverse interests. Andthis has happened. The use of lan-guage and graphics has been painfullyexamined. Terms such as “enslavedAfricans,” “slaves,” “free persons ofcolor,” and “African Americans” wereused with the knowledge that theexhibits will date themselves to 2001.The staff has used images of scarredbacks as well as an enslaved body ser-vant armed to fight for theConfederacy; they have incorporated


women’s voices and used first-personquotes to flesh out the narrative. Thevoices calling for secession were veryopen about what institution they feltwas threatened.

The final product closely resem-bled the original outline. Entitled“The First Shot: What Brought theNation to Civil War at Fort Sumter?”,the exhibit contains six sections, pro-gressing from the wide Atlantic worldof colonial times to the specific site ofFort Sumter in 1861. The sections aretitled “Colonial Roots of the Conflict,”“Ambiguities of the Constitution,”“Antebellum United States,”“Charleston in 1860,” “South Caroli-na Declares its Independence,” and“Fort Sumter: Countdown to Con-flict.” The introductory text reads:

When the Civil War finally exploded inCharleston Harbor, it was the result ofa half-century of growing sectional-ism. Escalating crises over propertyrights, human rights, states rights andconstitutional rights divided the coun-try as it expanded westward. Underly-ing all the economic, social and politi-cal rhetoric was the volatile questionof slavery. Because its economic lifehad long depended on enslavedlabor, South Carolina was the firststate to secede when this way of lifewas threatened. Confederate forcesfired the first shot in South Carolina.The federal government respondedwith force. Decades of compromisewere over. The very nature of theUnion was at stake.17

The input of Walter Edgar of theUniversity of South Carolina andBernard Powers of the College ofCharleston was invaluable. They bothreviewed the text over their semesterbreaks during Christmas 2000 andoffered insightful suggestions toimprove the content. Tyler-McGraw

and Pitcaithley were also instrumentalin refining the text. Everyone on thepark staff had an opportunity to cri-tique the drafts. The problem withgetting park historians to write exhibittext is that they tend to be wordy andnitpicky. Further, writing by commit-tee can end up destroying any flow inthe material. After all the agonizingand creative work, a product has beenproduced that will engage the visitingpublic.

As the draft progressed, the projectattracted the interest of local politi-cians who wanted to review the park’sfederal viewpoint of the “RecentUnpleasantness.” So far, the percep-tion has passed muster. But there arerumblings. A week after the opening ofthe exhibits in mid-August 2001, ayoung woman darted into the exhibithall and took a photograph of the large20x36 replica of Major Anderson’s33-star garrison flag. The large flaghangs above the fragile original lyingin a protective case to illustrate the sizeof the flag as it flew over Fort Sumter in1861. The woman told the ranger onduty: “We will be back to protest thesize of that flag.” Since the September11th attacks, no one has complainedabout the size of that U.S. flag.

Interpretation at Liberty Squarehas taken on a “shakedown” mode asoperations begin to approach 100%.Ferries began departing the site onAugust 15, 2001. Permanent exhibitinstallation was completed on Febru-ary 22, 2002. During the interveningmonths, between the time the facilityopened and the permanent exhibitswere installed, full-scale vinyl colorprints of each permanent exhibit werehung on temporary plywood frames.



This gave visitors a chance to see andcomment on the exhibit program priorto its production. Several commentswere received, ranging from glowingto condemning. Most were positive,appreciative, and constructive. Butthen there was the indignant professorfrom an unnamed university “fromoff ” who also resides in the fair city ofCharleston. He wrote a blistering cri-tique in a letter to the editor of thelocal newspaper, referring to the “ten-dentious text,” “single-visioned inter-pretation,” and “biased political agen-da.”18 The lack of Confederate flagson exhibit caused him to urge readersto send letters of protest to InteriorSecretary Gale Norton. On the otherhand, an elderly black man asked for a

copy of the text dealing with the Con-stitution’s treatment of slavery, and of aLibrary of Congress photograph of anenslaved family. He wanted to take thedocuments home and show his grand-children.

Historian Gaines Foster is quotedin Interpretation at Civil War Sites,the 2000 NPS report to Congress:

The rapid healing of national divisionsand damaged southern self-image ...came at the cost of deriving littleinsight or wisdom from the past.Rather than looking at the war as atragic failure and trying to understandit or even condemn it, Americans,North and South, chose to view it as aglorious time to be celebrated. Mostignored the fact that the nation failedto resolve the debate over the natureof the Union and to eliminate the con-

Figure 5. The 33-Star Garrison Flag. National Park Service photo.

tradictions between its egalitarianideals and the institution of slaverywithout resort to a bloody civil war.Instead, they celebrated the War’s tri-umphant nationalism and martialglory.19

Change is difficult. Even for thededicated staff assembled at FortSumter, changing Civil War interpre-tation was difficult. Each of us bringsto the table a particular set of experi-ences, differing education, and variedcultural backgrounds depending on towhom we were born, where we lived,and how we were educated. Much hasbeen done over the past ten years toimplement an expanded interpretiveprogram. It has involved increasingstaff understanding and perceptionand broadening our community part-nerships. The staff has participated inconferences, training programs, dedi-cations, special resource studies, sen-sitivity sessions, and diverse culturalevents to help with the transition.Today the staff sits on the “point of thesword” for the National Park Servicedoing its job. They are prepared to tellthe story faithfully, completely, andaccurately.

In 1997, as Congressman Jacksonwalked through the Fort Sumter muse-um exhibit, he noted the introductorypanel outlining slavery and the war.He smiled and said, “Good.” Thenfollowed three hours of debate anddiscussion as we stood on the FortSumter parade ground. Our thoughts,beliefs, and opinions were challenged

time and time again. It was obvious:Jackson had done his homework.

The Civil War still molds andshapes opinions about people and sec-tions of the country. Its influencereigns over the country as an unseenspirit. The war was not an isolatedevent that occurred 140 years ago andis now forgotten. The politics of thewar and its repercussions remain withus and influence us every day, from thepresident to the homeless drug addictsleeping on a park bench. It is time forus to understand and place in perspec-tive the American Civil War.

National Park Service interpreta-tion began at Fort Sumter during aperiod of major civil strife and demon-stration. Fifty years hence, that inter-pretation is clearly articulating thecauses of the war in an open forumnever before seen in the NPS. Timeshave changed, staff have changed, andunderstanding and appreciation havechanged as well. Maybe 50 years fromnow we will finally grasp the impor-tance of the Civil War in American life.

Today, the park has made manychanges to expand its interpretive pro-gramming. Revisions have occurredwith the introductory program for thevisitor to Fort Sumter, exhibits in theFort Sumter Museum, the NPS hand-book for Fort Sumter, the Fort Sumterbrochure, as well as the production ofmany site bulletins. Minority visitationhas increased from two to seven per-cent. But much remains to be done.


[Ed. note: this paper was originally presented at the Organization of AmericanHistorians / National Council on Public History annual meeting, April 2002,Washington, D.C.]


Endnotes1. Pressly, Americans Interpret, p. 8.2 National Park Service, Master Plan, Fort Sumter National Monument, 1974, p. 2.3. National Park Service, Interpretive Prospectus, 1990: Fort Sumter National Monument, Fort

Moultrie and Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, p. 5.4. Ibid., p. 9.5. National Park Service, Atlantic Coast Cluster agreement, July 15, 1998.6. National Park Service, draft Nashville Cconference summary, “Holding the High Ground,” August

1998, p. 8.7. Ibid., p. 8. Draft Nashville conference summary, “Holding the High Ground,” August 1998, p. 8 8. National Park Service, Interpretation at Civil War Sites: A Report to Congress, March 2000, p. 5.9. Official correspondence from Dwight Pitcaithley to Ms. Lee, October 24, 2000.10. Ibid.11. National Park System Advisory Board, Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century

(Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society), p. 8.12. Ibid., p. 65.13. National Park Service, General Management Plan, 1998, p. 17.14. Ibid., p. 40.15. Fort Sumter National Monument park files.16. National Park Service, “Draft Long-Range Interpretive Plan,” p. 3.17. Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center Exhibit text, Liberty Square, 2001.18. Letter to the editor, Charleston Post & Courier, Charleston, S.C., September 7, 2001.19. Interpretation at Civil War Sites, p. 44.

ReferencesBeck, Larry, and Ted Cable. Interpretation for the 21st Century. Champaign, Ill.: Sagamore Publishing,

1998.Causey, M. Lander, and Beth G. Causey. Fort Sumter—Fort Moultrie. Mt. Pleasant: Holt Publishing, 1966.Comstock, Rock L., Jr. “Short History, Fort Sumter.” Unpublished paper, 1956. Fort Sumter National

Monument library.Catton, Bruce. America Goes to War: The Civil War and its Meaning in American Culture. Hanover, N.H.:

Wesleyan University Press, 1958.———. The American Heritage Short History of the Civil War. New York: Dell, 1967.Donald, David. Divided We Fought. New York: Macmillan, 1952.Edgar, Walter B. South Carolina: A History. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.Everhart, William C. The National Park Service. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983.Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper & Row,

1988.Fort Sumter National Monument. Interpretive Tour, Master Plan. NM-SMM 2007C. Charleston, S.C.: Fort

Sumter National Monument, 1959.———. The Master Plan, Revised. NM-SUM 3001A. Charleston, S.C.: Fort Sumter National Monument,

1965.———. Master Plan. Charleston, S.C.: Fort Sumter National Monument, 1974.———. Interpretive Prospectus, 1990: Fort Sumter National Monument, Fort Moultrie and Charles

Pinckney National Historic Site. Charleston, S.C.: Fort Sumter National Monument, 1990.———. Fort Sumter Museum exhibit text, 1995.———. General Management Plan. Charleston, S.C.: Fort Sumter National Monument, 1998.———. Long Range Interpretive Plan, Liberty Square. Charleston, S.C.: Fort Sumter National Monument,

1999.———. Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center exhibit text, 2001.National Park Service. Atlantic Coast Cluster agreement, July 15, 1998.———. Draft Nashville Conference, “Holding the High Ground,” August 1998.———. Interpretation at Civil War Sites: A Report to Congress. Washington, D.C.: NPS, March 2000.———. Washington History Office correspondence, various dates.National Park System Advisory Board. Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century. Washington,

D.C. National Geographic Society, 2001.Pressly, Thomas J. Americans Interpret Their Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1962.Pollard, Edward A. Southern History of the War. 1977 facsimile of 1866 edition, Fort Sumter National


Monument library.Robertson, James I., Jr. The Concise History: Illustrated History of the Civil War. Harrisburg, Pa.:

Telegraph Press, 1972.Tilden, Freeman. Interpreting Our Heritage. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.

John Tucker, Fort Sumter National Monument, 1214 Middle Street, SullivansIsland, South Carolina 29482-9748; [email protected]

1

Natchitoches, Louisiana, is in thenorthwestern part of the state, about afive-hour drive from both NewOrleans and Dallas. Settled by theFrench in 1714 and known as the firstpermanent European settlement inLouisiana Purchase Territory, aFrench fort developed near the loca-tion of a large Caddo Indian village.Cane River originally was the mainchannel of the Red River, but naturaland human-caused alterations duringthe 19th century changed the courseof the river, so Cane River becamemore of an oxbow, although itremained a functional shipping routethrough the early 20th century.Natchitoches prehistorically and his-torically was a crossroads of overlandand water trade routes.

In 1721 the Spanish established apresidio at Los Adaes, about 15 mileswest of Natchitoches, with the intentof halting French expansion intoTexas. The proximity of the Frenchand Spanish military installationsbrought about a frontier interactionamong the French, Spanish, and

Native Americans in the area. And thisis part of the cultural complexity of theCane River area. But to understandbetter the complexities of race and cul-ture, let us run through a very shortcourse in Louisiana history.

During the time of French rule inLouisiana (1718-1763), the Code Noirof 1724 enforced Catholicism on allsettlers. As Caryn Cosse Bell noted inher book The Afro-Creole ProtestTradition in Louisiana, the code “rec-ognized the moral personality of theslave ... [and] required that bondsmenbe instructed in the Catholic religionand administered the sacraments ofbaptism, marriage, penance, andextreme unction. Other provisionsforbade the separation of a marriedcouple and their children under four-teen years of age and prohibited slavesfrom laboring on Sundays and otherCatholic holy days. The code soughtto ensure social and political stabilityby assimilating slaves and free blacksinto the Christian community.”1 TheFrench, in theory, believed that theenslaved were human beings with


Laura (Soullière) Gates

Frankly, Scarlett, We Do Give a Damn:The Making of a New National Park

In this paper I will be discussing how the National Park Service (NPS) cameto Natchitoches, Louisiana, and what I have learned from the experience. Iwill discuss how I learned that the concepts of race and culture are far morecomplex in Louisiana, especially in that part of Louisiana, than I ever could

have imagined. I will look at more lessons in something we all know: that it is theresponsibility of managers to seek out the best available scholarship, that moreinclusive knowledge of history is as difficult to learn as it is difficult to interpret,and that the subtleties of history and culture are the things that make it signifi-cant.

souls.French soldiers and adventurers

had settled first at Arkansas Post in1686 and then in Old Mobile in 1702,Natchitoches in 1714, and NewOrleans in 1719. Consider how earlythis was on the interior of the NorthAmerican continent, and consider thecircumstances. In general, the earlyFrench colonists did not bring womenwith them, and although the Code Noirforbade both interracial marriages andliaisons, the secular male-dominatedsociety of French colonists tended toignore that. As both Bell andGwendolyn Midlo Hall have noted,interracial liaisons were common bythe middle of the 18th century inLouisiana.

Under Spanish rule (1763-1800),cultural influences evolved further.Las Siete de Partidas allowed for slaveself-purchase (coartacion), andallowed slaves to sell extra labor totheir masters or others. A lack ofskilled white laborers had broughtabout the French government’s policyof apprenticing slaves to white trades-men, and this continued underSpanish rule, which allowed manyslaves the opportunity to purchasetheir freedom. Also under Spanishrule, Bell noted that “slaves and freemen of color monopolized many of theskilled trades.”2 The French had cre-ated a permanent free black militaryforce, and the Spanish brought thisgroup into their military. All of thesewere reasons that a large population offree people of color developed inLouisiana.

Following the Louisiana Purchaseand the gradual influx of lesAmericains into Louisiana—despite

the long period of Spanish rule,French remained the primary lan-guage and the primary cultural influ-ences in Louisiana—the culturally andracially more fluid society began totighten up. Free persons of color wererequired to identify themselves onpublic documents as “f.p.c.” or“h.c.l.” (homme de couleur libre). TheLouisiana Code of 1828 prohibitedthe legitimization of children ofmixed-blood liaisons that had beenallowed under Las Siete de Partidas,which authorized such children tobecome legal heirs. Hiram “Pete”Gregory, an anthropologist atNorthwestern State University inNatchitoches, has noted that in the1840s “priests were writing to theirbishops about how to solve the prob-lem of it being illegal to marry mixed-race couples—it was forbidden byAnglo-American law, not Churchlaw!”3 Other changes, too, were appar-ent on Louisiana plantations.

During 2001 I perused the earlyslave records for one of the former cot-ton plantations of Cane River CreoleNational Historical Park. Some of therecords of Bermuda Plantation, whichbecame Oakland Plantation shortlybefore the Civil War, had beenacquired by the Historic New OrleansCollection and held considerableinformation about cultural change.Just studying the names of theenslaved circa 1820 revealed thestrength of the French culture despitethe nearly 20 years since the Louisianapurchase. Names were, for the mostpart, of French origin, including“Marie,” “Elise,” “Josephe.” By the1830s many of the enslaved came fromVirginia, North Carolina, and


Tennessee, with such names as“Sarah,” “John,” “Job,” and “Esther.”4

According to Norman Marmillion,proprietor of Laura Plantation, anoth-er Creole plantation near Vacherie,Louisiana, the same trends appearedin the records for that plantation.5

What we were witnessing was onevestige of the gradual “Americaniza-tion” of Louisiana. That Americaniza-tion brought with it deep-rooted dif-ferences in the ways that enslaved peo-ple were perceived. The French andthe Spanish made nominal efforts torecognize the enslaved as humanbeings who had souls, who should bebaptized and partake of the othersacraments. The Americans tended tosee the enslaved as property, equiva-lent to livestock. Yet in northwestLouisiana the French influences pre-vailed well through the nineteenthcentury, and even through the earlytwentieth-century French was the lan-guage of choice along Cane River formost people.

Now let us turn to trying to under-stand the term “Creole.” With originsin the Portuguese and Spanish, theterm has had quite a semantic evolu-tion. Dana Lee, anthropologist andfolklorist at Northwestern StateUniversity in Natchitoches, definesthe word as follows:

Creole simply indicates a new worldproduct derived from old world stock—people, produce, livestock, architec-ture, whatever. It was a label appliedby Spanish administrators to distin-guish Old World (superior, purer) fromNew World (inferior, impure). Rarelydid people of French extraction referto themselves as Creole. They calledthemselves French for the most part.In its present use in Louisiana, it sim-ply indicates descent from colonialEuropeans, whatever the admixture.On Cane River and other Louisianacommunities, Creole is cultural, notracial. It is tied to genealogy, Frenchheritage, and Catholicism.6

Lee’s colleague Gregory sees“Creole” as meaning “New Worldadaptations of French, Spanish and


Figure 1. Cotton field, Cane River. National Park Service photo.

African cultures both to the naturalworld and to each other. So all the eth-nic and racial interaction that did, ordid not take place, still partook of thatcultural blend.”7 To me, the key pointto remember about the term “Creole”is that it is a cultural term rooted inFrench Colonialism and Catholicism.

All of this was part of the context inwhich a thriving cotton economydeveloped during the first half of the19th century. Laid out on Spanish andFrench land grants, the cotton planta-tions had access to Cane River for easyshipment of goods to New Orleans.The cotton plantations were verylabor-intensive operations thatexpanded the numbers of enslavedpeople in the parish (in Louisiana aparish is a county). While most planta-tions were owned by French Creoleswhose families had little or no racialmixing, Yucca Plantation, which later

became Melrose Plantation, wasowned by Creoles of color who alsohad slaves.

Marie-Therese nee Coin-Coin wasthe daughter of African parents whowere the slaves of Louis Juchereau deSaint-Denis of the French fort inNatchitoches. Her liaison with an offi-cer of the fort, Pierre Metoyer, resultedin eight children. Metoyer bought thefreedom of Marie-Therese Coin-Coinand that of their children and estab-lished this family on a small propertyon Cane River. Coin-Coin received anadditional land grant in 1794 from theSpanish colonial government andexpanded her holdings. Eventually herfamily founded Yucca Plantation.When she died in 1816, she owned12,000 acres and ninety-nine slaves.Betje Black Klier noted in Pavie in theBorderlands that “Marie-ThereseCoin-Coin and her children and


Figure 2. The Oakland Plantation Store. National Park Service photo.

grandchildren were the wealthiestslave-owning free family of color in thenation in 1830.”8

The early plantations along CaneRiver grew tobacco and indigo, but bythe 1820s a transition into cotton wasunderway. This became the primarycrop for the plantations in the region,although all kept some agriculturaldiversity—timber, grains, cattle,hogs—to support the large popula-tions required at each plantation tobring in this labor-intensive crop. Thetwo plantations included in the park,Oakland and Magnolia, were exam-ples.

The Cane River area was hit hardduring the Red River Campaign of theCivil War. Properties and crops werelooted or burned by both sides—eachnot wanting the other army to gainpossession. Reconstruction was diffi-

cult for all who remained, and povertyaffected even those who had earlierconsidered themselves untouchableby that blight. Tenant farming andsharecropping were extensions of theearlier institution of slavery, and plan-tation commissaries that had servedthe enslaved evolved into plantationstores that served the tenant farmersand sharecroppers, and were also thesocial centers of the small village com-munities of each plantation.

Just across the Red River in GrantParish is the town of Colfax. Theparish was named for Ulysses S.Grant, and the town was named forGrant’s vice president during his firstadministration, Schuyler Colfax. Ashistorian James Loewen notes in LiesAcross America:

How did it come to pass thatLouisianans might name a parish and


Figure 3. Overseer’s House and Slave Hospital, Magnolia Plantation. National Park Servicephoto.

town after these Republicans so soonafter the Civil War? The answer is thatblack men were in on the naming.African Americans were voting duringReconstruction, and voting freely....Based on ‘one man, one vote,’Republicans were narrowly in themajority. But signs in Grant Parishindicated that Democrats were organ-izing to take away that privilege.9

When both parties declared victoryin a gubernatorial race in 1873,President Grant told Congress that hewould recognize the Republican can-didate as governor. That governorreplaced the sheriff and parish judgewith Republicans. Fearing violencefrom the Democrats, AfricanAmericans around Colfax “raised amilitia under the command of blackveterans, posted pickets at the majorroads, fashioned two makeshift can-nons from pipes, and fortified thecourthouse against attack.” Otherblack farmers joined them, and theyheld the town for three weeks. OnEaster Sunday, white Democratsattacked and slaughtered 150 peoplein what Eric Foner described as the“bloodiest single act of carnage in allof Reconstruction.”10 Loewen notedthat the Colfax riot was the beginningof the end of Reconstruction. It alsoshowed the lack of federal enforce-ment of Reconstruction laws, includ-ing the 14th and 15th amendments.Most likely some of those killed werefrom Cane River.

These are all pieces of the historyof that part of Louisiana, and all neces-sary parts to understand in this com-plex equation of what makes up asense of place. As Cane River itselfchanged in the late 19th century,Natchitoches became a small

Louisiana community with consider-able history and cultural diversity, but,lying as it did in the backwater of theRed River, it was in general left behindby 20th-century development.

Yet there were benefits to lack of“progress.” What remained inNatchitoches was a cultural mélangeof people, many with Creole roots,and many of whom spoke French.What remained were buildings thathad architectural elements taken fromFrench and African traditions, for theplantations continued as working cor-porations or leased farm properties.Deterioration set in to those buildingsno longer used, but local traditions of“Waste not, want not, use it up, wear itout, make it do or do without” pre-vailed.11 That continued use savedhundreds of historic buildings.Creoles of color recognized their cul-tural importance and in 1979 formedthe St. Augustine Historical Society topreserve a property of cultural signifi-cance to them, and they initiated aCreole Heritage Day festival eachJanuary to serve as a homecoming cel-ebration for all Cane River Creoles.Like the Cane River AfricanAmericans, many of the Creoles hadleft during the out-migration to jobselsewhere when farming was mecha-nized, yet their roots remained strongin Cane River.

In the white community, theAssociation for the Preservation ofHistoric Natchitoches acquiredMelrose Plantation and began tellingthe stories of Marie-Therese Coin-Coin and her family, of Cammie Henryand her small arts-and-crafts colony ofthe early 20th century, and of theAfrican American painter Clementine


Hunter, whose primitive paintings ofCane River life depict her perspectiveon the world.

This is the rich cultural area whereCane River Creole National HistoricalPark came into being.

In 1994 Congress passed legisla-tion creating both the park and CaneRiver National Heritage Area. Thelegislation authorized the park to“serve as the focus of interpretive andeducation programs on the history ofthe Cane River area and to assist in thepreservation of certain historic sitesalong the river,” to preserve Oaklandand the outbuildings of MagnoliaPlantation, and to use a culturally sen-sitive approach in the partnershipsneeded for addressing the preserva-tion and education needs of the CaneRiver area. The legislation also calledfor the National Park Service to coor-dinate a comprehensive research pro-gram on the complex history of theCane River region.

This was the first time that I hadever seen cultural sensitivity andresearch mandated in legislation creat-ing a new park.

Most people understand the con-cept of national parks, but what arenational heritage areas? The nationalheritage area program is administeredthrough the National Park Service.NPS defines national heritage areas asfollows:

A National Heritage Area is a placedesignated by the United StatesCongress where natural, cultural, his-toric and recreational resources com-bine to form a cohesive, nationallydistinctive landscape arising from pat-terns of human activity shaped bygeography. These patterns makeNational Heritage Areas representa-tive of the national experiencethrough the physical features thatremain and the traditions that haveevolved in the areas. Continued useof the National Heritage Areas by peo-ple whose traditions helped to shapethe landscapes enhances their signif-icance.


Figure 4. Carpenter’s Shop and Mule Barn, Oakland Plantation. National Park Service photo.

While the national heritage areaprogram is administered throughNPS, most heritage areas themselvesare directly administered throughcommissions, not-for-profit agencies,and private staff. Most have a 50/50matching requirement for any federalfunds they receive. The legislation forCane River National Heritage Areadoes not have that requirement.

An additional aspect of nationalheritage areas that appears common toall is the concept of local, grassrootspreservation efforts. In heritage areaslocal people have strong traditions ofhistoric preservation and, quite often,landscape conservation efforts thatwere underway long before federaldesignation. It is apparent that mostheritage areas sought federal designa-tion to increase awareness of thoselocal or regional resources and pro-grams, to enhance opportunities forfederal funding, or to tap into othertypes of technical assistance that mightbe available through the National ParkService. Often the local people whopush for designation of heritage areasseek to provide recognition of the sig-nificance of the resources in that com-munity to other residents who eithermay not recognize their significance orwho may not have the same level ofconcern for those resources. Nationalheritage area designation brings with ita meaningful title, access to federalfunding and technical assistance, andthe opportunity to enhance preserva-tion and conservation efforts withinthat heritage area on local, regional,and national levels.

And my park was located smackdab in the middle of one.

Now on to the development of the

park. Following land acquisition, thefirst broad step upon which theagency embarks is the general manage-ment planning process. For CaneRiver we were fortunate to have con-siderable interdisciplinary back-ground research on history, ethnogra-phy, architecture, and archeology informulating the vision for the park.That, combined with the publicinvolvement required under theNational Environmental Policy Actand the strong community involve-ment required by common sense, gavethe direction the park should take.

Although both the Oakland andMagnolia Plantation units had historicstructures and a very significant cul-tural landscape, changes to them overtime and lack of information on theirexact configuration in earlier periodsresulted in only one appropriateaction: Both properties were to lookmuch as they did circa 1960 when thelast of the tenant farmers and share-croppers—most of whom weredescended from former slaves—leftthe two plantations. That is the timewhen mechanization replaced mulesand hands, and when the large cotton-picker shed (large enough to hold amachine the size of a combine)replaced the long, low tractor shed. Itwas the end of an era, and an appropri-ate end date that offered tremendousopportunities for interpretation, forwe were not limited by a set momentin time. We had continuum.

Most visitors to southern planta-tions have little interest in anythingother than the “Big House,” and somuch of that is something that we as anation have brought upon ourselves.One well-meaning Natchitoches resi-


dent who is a stalwart preservationistin the white community mailed me aflyer of another Louisiana plantation.She attached to it a note stating thatshe hoped the park would be up andrunning soon, looking like that attach-ment. In the photograph, a youngwhite woman in hoopskirts and bon-net stood on the massive front porchof a Big House and cordially greetedvisitors, who all happened to be white,as they walked up the front steps fromgarden, replete with azaleas and springfloral displays.

If you knew the park staff at CaneRiver, you would know that none of usdo hoopskirts.

Over an extended period of timethe local resident and I have had longdiscussions, and now she understandswhy the National Park Service isapproaching its visitor services in adifferent manner. You will note that Idid not say that she necessarily agreedwith our approach, but she doesunderstand the reasoning behind it.

The beauty of Oakland andMagnolia Plantations and a largeaspect of their significance are thenumber of outbuildings that remain.Quarters occupied by enslaved peopleand then tenant farmers and share-croppers, a blacksmith shop, a ginbarn and a mule barn, a carpenter’sshop, plantation stores, cisterns, andremnant landscapes are all manifesta-tions of the lives of people whose fam-ilies lived and worked the plantationsfor 200 years. Sixty-two historic struc-tures at the park’s two units not onlyallow but also encourage or even forcevisitors to understand that a plantationwas more than a Big House.

At Oakland Plantation the design

for our visitor parking, for a number ofreasons, is in a field at the back of theproperty. Visitors will park there, enterthrough an entrance pavilion, andthen walk to the historic portion of theunit from “back of the Big House.” Inour interpretive programs we tell thestory Solomon Williams, the enslavedblacksmith from Bermuda (laterOakland) Plantation who took outsidecontracts during his period of enslave-ment and who stayed at Oakland fol-lowing the Civil War. When hisdescendents came looking for himthey told us that they would havefound him sooner but all familyrecords indicated that he came fromBermuda, and they thought it meantthe island in the Atlantic instead ofthis small plantation community ofLouisiana. We also discuss thePrud’homme family, who held theplantation for more than 200 yearsand who remain deeply committed tothe property’s preservation. We havesimilar approaches at MagnoliaPlantation that assist us with moreinclusive approaches to history andinterpretation.

Constant vigilance is required indealing with well-meaning people topromote dialogue and understandingof history, of people, of events. Thismay be in a one-on-one situation, as inthe hoopskirt issue, or it may be inarchitectural and design manipulationto force visitors’ attention to a differentfocus.

It is the responsibility of NPS todiscuss slavery and Reconstruction.When two plantations includedamong their property lists 175 and275 enslaved people, respectively, itwould be ludicrous to think that our


interpretive programs would not dis-cuss this issue. In an area just up theroad and across the river, it is ourresponsibility to discuss the Colfaxmassacre that changed the way civilrights were administered in the UnitedStates.

It is our responsibility to talk open-ly about slavery. We have found thatmost people breathe a sigh of reliefwhen they realize it’s okay to discussthe subject. They visibly relax whenthey discover that they can ask ques-tions about it, and when they getanswers based on historical researchrather than conjecture. The one differ-ence is that we make a point of refer-ring to “enslaved people” rather than“slaves,” thus putting the emphasis onthe concept of the enslaved as peoplerather than property.

It is imperative that we deal withthe reality of the communities inwhich we live. As the federal agency in

the community responsible for pro-viding a culturally sensitive approachto park development and interpreta-tion, it is our responsibility to bring allparties to the table to discuss sensitiveissues. This process is underway rightnow in the development of a masterinterpretive plan for Cane RiverNational Heritage Area. About 20people representing an inclusivegroup of Cane River interests is work-ing together on this project.

Explaining the complexities of raceand culture in that area of northwest-ern Louisiana is not an easy task. Itinvolves obtaining a grasp of Frenchand Spanish colonialism and theirlegal systems. It involves comprehend-ing the ways that those cultures adapt-ed to the New World. It includesunderstanding how earlier culturesrationalized slavery and the oppres-sion of people of color. But it alsoincludes bringing those discussions


Figure 5. Big House, Oakland Plantation. National Park Service photo.

out into the sunshine. And I havefound that we have to explain thesecomplexities to Park Service profes-sionals from a variety of disciplines, totravel writers for newspapers and mag-azines, to visitors who come to thepark and the heritage area, and to our-selves on the park staff. The process isan iterative one of constant refinementas the results of new research come tolight.

Through the use of interdiscipli-nary research, some done locally andsome completed by outsiders, the parkhas aimed to contribute to that body ofknowledge of all of the resources ofCane River, and in doing so has triedto keep in the forefront a dialogue ofsocial conscience. One cannot tell thehistory of two cotton plantations with-out discussing enslaved labor. Onecannot discuss the cultural history ofLouisiana without addressing the gensde couleur libre. One cannot under-

stand Cane River without havingbroad discussions on historical andcultural perspectives.

So yes, Scarlett may remain in theSouth throwing her temper tantrums,but at this small park in Louisiana weare not walking away slamming thedoor behind us. Rather we work witheveryone. We work with all of theaffected communities. We work hardat developing opportunities to expandthinking, to improve citizenry, to gen-erate more excitement in the phenom-enal resources of the park and the her-itage area. At Cane River we have achance to show that the roots ofAmerican’s problems with race andethnocentrism are byproducts of colo-nial order, not something inherent inhuman biology. That is what we arestriving to do.

Frankly, my dears, we do give adamn.


[Ed. note: this paper was originally presented at the Organization of American Historians /National Council on Public History annual meeting, April 2002, Washington, D.C.]

Endnotes1. Caryn Cosse Bell, Revolution, Romanticism and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana 1718-

1868 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), p. 12.2. Ibid., p. 16.

Figure 6. Brick slave quarters, later used as housing for tenant farmers, Magnolia Plantation.National Park Service photo.


3. Personal correspondence, Hiram Gregory to author, August 1, 2000. Gregory is a professor ofanthropology at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.

4. Prud’homme Family Papers, Historic New Orleans Collection.5. Multiple discussions between the author and Norman Marmillion during 2001 confirmed and recon-

firmed this trend.6. Personal correspondence with the author, April 27, 2000.7. Personal correspondence with the author, August 1, 2000.8. Betje Black Klier, Pavie in the Borderlands: The Journey of Theodore Pavie to Louisiana and Texas

1829-1830 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2000).9. James Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (New York: The New Press,

1999), p. 212.10. Ibid., 212.11. According to Margo Haase, who lived on the Oakland Plantation property for a number of years,

Alphonse Prud’homme quoted that saying frequently; and he lived by it. The eight generations ofPrud’hommes who lived at Oakland used and reused items and never threw anything away. Part ofthe legacy of Oakland Plantation includes a huge museum collection conservatively estimated at250,000 objects.

Laura (Soullière) Gates, Cane River Creole National Historical Park, 400Rapides Drive, Natchitoches, Louisiana 71457; [email protected]

1

It is easy to tell the story of Washitain a one-sided fashion. In developingthe park’s interpretive media, we madeevery effort to tell a balanced story ofthe Southern Plains Indian Wars andof the bloody atrocities that werebeing committed by both the Ameri-can military and the Plains tribes thatled up to the Washita attack. We did,however, make every effort as theNational Park Service to engage theNative Americans that are affiliatedwith this site in the park’s develop-ment. And so I speak in this article pri-marily from the tribal perspective.

Washita was designated as a nation-al historic landmark in 1965 andnational park status had been dis-cussed even earlier. With the electionof Congressman Frank Lucas, whogrew up within a few miles of the his-toric site, the park was established in1996. The Oklahoma Historical Soci-ety worked closely with a few of the

elders of the Cheyenne and Arapahotribes on Washita’s establishment, andone Cheyenne elder testified beforeCongress supporting the park. Thelegislation for the park was drafted toinclude the participation of the tribesin the park’s development and educa-tional programs. The legislation statesthat one of the purposes of establish-ing the park is to “establish the site ofthe Battle of the Washita as a nationalhistoric site and provide opportunitiesfor American Indian groups includingthe Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribe to beinvolved in the formulation of plansand educational programs for thenational historic site.” So in this case,meaningful civic dialogue is both leg-islated and the right thing to do.

When I arrived at Washita I camewith the intention of gaining substan-tive, consistent involvement by thetribes in developing the park. I wantedour Native American partners to be at


Sarah Craighead

Civic Engagement with the Communityat Washita Battlefield National Historic Site

Washita Battlefield National Historic Site, located in western Okla-homa, was created on November 12, 1996, to interpret the attack ofLt. Col. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry on Black Kettle’s sleep-ing Cheyenne village in 1868. The word “Battlefield” as part of the

name for the park may be debatable, because the park interprets an unprovokedattack on one of the greatest peace chiefs of the Cheyenne tribe. The Cheyennepeople have certainly never agreed with the park’s nomenclature, and it becamea strong point of contention when we began the discussions, negotiations, andcollaboration to develop the story of this important time of American history.John Cook, who at the time of the park’s creation was the director of the Nation-al Park Service (NPS) Intermountain Region, dubbed Washita “a site of shame”and declared that we must be assertive about interpreting as well as learning fromWashita’s history.

the table helping to make plans anddecisions, not at the receiving end of adraft document that we expect them toapprove. We had some successes andwe made some mistakes. I’d like toshare some of both of those with you.

I’ll start with mistakes. One of thebiggest problems that plagued theprocess was finding the right person totalk to. The political turnover withinthe Southern Cheyenne and Arapahotribe made it very difficult to get strongconsistent involvement. By executiveorder we must deal with tribes on agovernment-to-government basis. Wewere asked very early in the process toalso work with the religious leadershipof the tribe and in fact were asked topay a visit to the sacred arrow keeper,an important spiritual leader. We didso, but then received some backlash bythose in the tribe that thought that itwas improper for a religious leader towork on this type of process. Other

religious factions were also unhappythat they had not been consulted. Wereturned to the government-to-govern-ment relationship as our main consul-tation relationship, although a repre-sentative of the sacred arrow keeperdid attend many of our meetings. Thepark’s contact with elders and otherleadership positions in the tribe hasimproved recently with the hiring ofan education technician, Craig Moore,whose relationship with tribal eldershas been strong for many years.

The successes that we achievedthrough this dialogue brought thepark beyond telling a basic interpre-tive story to relating a way of life. I’lltalk about two of these successes here.

Because we had such difficulty inengaging the tribe on a consistentbasis, we felt like we needed a personto help us to make sure that parkissues were being taken seriously with-in the tribe and that tribal issues were


Figure 1. Native American Heritage Group from Norman, Oklahoma, on the site ofBlack Kettle’s camp, Washita Battlefield National Historic Site. Photo by LawrenceHart.

being addressed within the park. Thetribe had assigned Gordon Yellowmanas the Native American Graves Protec-tion and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)coordinator to work with the park, butwhen the tribe changed NAGPRAcoordinators several times within athree-year period, thus changing ourcontact person, we tried to find a bet-ter way of collaborating. Yellowmandevised the idea of a cultural liaisonposition for the tribe who would workwith the park. In Fiscal Year 2001 wereceived an NPS challenge cost sharegrant to fund half of the position. Thetribe agreed to fund the other half ofthe salary and benefits. We workedtogether to create a cooperative agree-ment and a simple position descrip-tion. We jointly hired Michael White-cloud for one year as a tribal employ-ee. His main objective was to developa consultation guideline that is realis-tic for all parties and affordable foreveryone involved, allows the tribe totell the park staff how they would liketo collaborate, and gives the park staff

the important information they needto develop the park and educate thepublic. The position, dedicated toforming a strong bond between thetwo entities, gained unparalleled goodwill for both the park and the tribes.The park hopes to fully fund the posi-tion beginning in Fiscal Year 2003.

The second success story is a proj-ect that we call the Cheyenne HeritageTrail. The tribe has been very clear ontheir belief that Washita needs to edu-cate the public about the Cheyennetribe’s living culture as well as theevent in 1868. They also stronglybelieve, as does the park staff, thatsome of Washita’s stories need to betold with a tribal voice. In addition, wefelt that it was important to interpretthe Washita attack in context ratherthan as an isolated event.

We were very fortunate to have aman by the name of Lawrence Hartliving in the community. He is aCheyenne, one of the traditionalCheyenne peace chiefs, and serves asone of the four principal chiefs. Hart is


Figure 2. Ranger Steve Black giving a tour of Washita to a history group from BethelCollege, Kansas. Photo by Lawrence Hart.

also the executive director of theCheyenne Cultural Center, a non-profit corporation he founded 24years ago. He also serves on thenational review committee of NAG-PRA.

Hart created the concept of devel-oping a Cheyenne Heritage Trail. Weworked with him on the concept forthe trail, which would take visitorsthroughout western Oklahoma to var-ious sites that were historically impor-tant to the tribe. Over the course oftwo years we developed a partnershipthat included site managers from fed-eral, state, tribal, and private partnersand entities such as the OklahomaDepartment of Tourism and Recre-ation and the Oklahoma HistoricalSociety. The partners determinedtheir purpose to be the protection ofthe cultural heritage of western Okla-homa and education of the publicabout the rich Native American occu-pation there. The goal was to do thisthrough increased and more effectivedomestic and international visitationto the area, to help those visitors toexperience the heritage of theCheyenne tribe, and to learn about theArapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, andPlains Apache people.

The Cheyenne Heritage Trail wasestablished as the first Native Ameri-can Cultural Route in the state ofOklahoma. The trail is a 420-mileroute that passes through historic andcultural sites that are significant to theCheyenne people and to other tribesthat lived in the historic tribal lands ofwestern Oklahoma. The trail includestwelve sites that interpret significantportions of the Cheyenne story. Thetrail gives visitors the opportunity to

explore not only Native American cul-ture but also the idea of westwardexpansion, cultural conflict, and thePlains Indian Wars as a part of West-ern history.

Visitors may travel the trail in theirown vehicles using a brochure as aguide, or they may participate in a bustour provided by companies that pur-chase a guided program. Each venuealong the route has different activities,some of which are interactive, all ofwhich teach visitors about Cheyenneand Native American cultures. Eachpartner in the Cheyenne HeritageTrail is responsible for orienting visi-tors to their site and to the overall con-cept of the trail. Washita is, of course,one of the stops on the trip.

Because a project like this hadnever been done in Oklahoma andbecause of Hart’s relationships withstate government, we were able toobtain the assistance of the TourismDivision. They planned and conduct-ed debut tours with Oklahoma digni-taries and media. They retained a con-sultant to train the tour guides, andthey developed the color brochure forthe trail.

The Oklahoma Historical Societyis an essential partner. Theyresearched a historical chronology ofthe major events of the CheyenneIndians in Oklahoma, which was pro-vided for use in training the tourguides so that they can narrate the his-tory of the culture as the coach travelsbetween the sites. The informationwas also used to develop the brochure.Hart worked with a state senator topass legislation directing the Okla-homa Department of Transportationto mark the trail with signing. The


signs have a trail logo that we devel-oped by holding a Native American artcontest.

Approximately 20,000 visitors peryear see some or all of the CheyenneHeritage Trail and that number isincreasing. Tour groups have includedNative American elementary and sec-ondary students, college students fromother states, Native American culturalorganizations, Elderhostel groups,and museum groups.

The park could never have accom-plished alone what this partnershiphas achieved to interpret this era ofAmerican history. Because of that fact,the partnership was awarded with theNational Park Foundation’s 2001 ParkPartnership Award for Heritage Edu-cation, one of only four nationalawards given to recognize partnershipefforts within the National Park Ser-

vice. It also received the OklahomaRedbud Award, which is the state’stourism award.

The benefits of this endeavor havebeen substantial. The partnership hascreated a high degree of cooperativespirit between local, state, federal, andtribal agencies in Oklahoma. Collabo-ration and contact between the part-ners has created a sense of ownershipof the Cheyenne Heritage Trail and afeeling that all parties are concernedabout the best interests of educatingthe public about Native American her-itage. This is particularly advanta-geous to NPS as we strive to develop anew national park site at Washita andlook for creative ways to enhance part-nerships and interpretive techniques.

The trail has facilitated an increasein tourism in this sparsely populatedarea of western Oklahoma, bringing


Figure 3. Connie Yellowman, director of Fort Reno Visitor Center, giving a program atFort Reno cemetery. Fort Reno is the first stop on the Cheyenne Heritage Trail.Photo by Lawrence Hart.

tourist dollars and thus economicdevelopment to the communitieslocated there. It is giving impetus tostructural restoration and rehabilita-tion at four of the historic sites. It isalso assisting with protecting the cul-tural heritage of the area and educatingthe public about the rich Native Amer-ican occupation here.

Site presentations and interpreta-tion have been enriched and enhancedthrough the research done on behalf ofthe trail and through the continuity ofthe interpretation from site to site. Par-ticipants on the tour have called thetour a “classroom on wheels.”

This partnership is unprecedentedin Oklahoma. The work that has beenaccomplished on the Cheyenne Her-itage Trail is making a difference in theeducation of visitors. It is a model ofhow national parks should be workingwith our partners and what can beaccomplished.

However, do we always take on thehard issues? Not always. MichaelWhitecloud asked me soon after theSeptember 11 tragedy how I thoughtit compared with the Washita. I waspractically insulted and respondedrather tersely that I didn’t think it was

fair to compare them, that they weretotally different events. And then Istarted thinking. At Washita, approxi-mately 1% of the Cheyenne peoplewere killed. On September 11, lessthan 0.001% of the American popula-tion lost their lives. We need to helppeople make connections, and torelate historic events to contemporaryevents. Our interpretation needs to becompelling and it needs to be provoca-tive.

Alexa Roberts, superintendent ofSand Creek Massacre National His-toric Site, points out that it is not theamount of consultation that we dowith tribes but the degree of honestythat we have going into the discus-sions. True collaboration involvesrevealing all of the relevant informa-tion without a hidden agenda.

The National Park System Adviso-ry Board’s report Rethinking theNational Parks for the 21st Centurycalls on the National Park Service toconnect native and ancestral people tothe parks. I believe that this can bedone through honest and meaningfulcollaboration and civic dialogue withthese important partners.


Sarah Craighead, Saguaro National Park, 3693 South Old Spanish Trail, Tuc-son, Arizona 85730-5601; [email protected]

1

Stegner’s perspective of the valueof national parks encounters a paradoxat Manzanar National Historic Site.Manzanar, located at the foot of theSierra Nevada in eastern California,tells the story of Japanese Americanswho were denied constitutional rightsand were interned in one of ten WarRelocation Centers because of theirethnicity.

How the National Park Service(NPS) tells the story of the internmentis an issue currently being addressedat Manzanar. Some people advocatean active role for NPS in informingsocial conscience through its interpre-tations of the internment of JapaneseAmericans at Manzanar. While animage of the NPS’s role as social con-science resonates with many, a recentletter to the park reflects the oppositesentiment. Calling the National ParkService “a groveling sycophant,” thewriter of the letter suggests that NPShas succumbed to the “JapaneseAmerican propaganda machine” andneglects and even refuses to tell thetruth about the War Relocation

Centers. In this paper, I focus onefforts the NPS has taken and is takingto engage the public in a dialogue as itdevelops the overall management planfor and interpretation of Manzanar.

The first challenge at Manzanar isto provide an adequate contextthrough which the public can beengaged in a discussion of social issuesrelated to the internment of JapaneseAmericans. Manzanar NationalHistoric Site is characterized by anabundance of sagebrush and dust;only a few remnants of the camp arevisible. Without physical reminders itis difficult to explain to visitors thatthis was indeed an internment camp.

When you visit Manzanar today,you can be so inspired by the loca-tion’s beauty that you miss the impor-tant story told there. Manzanar islocated in one of the primary recre-ation areas for millions of SouthernCalifornians. The park is surroundedby recreational opportunities such asfishing in countless alpine lakes andstreams, hiking in the Sierra Nevada,and climbing Mount Whitney. In fact,


Frank Hays

The National Park Service: GrovelingSycophant or Social Conscience?

Telling the Story of Mountains, Valley, and Barbed Wireat Manzanar National Historic Site

Arevolutionary idea came to fruition in the 1870s, when the UnitedStates became the first country to designate areas to be preserved asnational parks. National park units preserve some of America’s mostimportant cultural and natural resources. Wallace Stegner called

national parks America’s best idea and noted that parks “reflect us at our bestrather than our worst.” Without parks, Stegner continued, “millions of Ameri-can lives ... would have been poorer. The world would have been poorer.”

some visitors have mentioned that,with its location near such beautifulmountains, the camp experiencecouldn’t have been so bad. The camphas been likened to a summer camp inthe mountains rather than an impor-tant site in the history of the strugglefor civil rights.

To ensure that visitors gain a senseof history and place, the JapaneseAmerican community pushed veryhard for reconstruction of variouscamp features. These include thebarbed wire fence that surrounded thecamp, one of the eight guard towers, abarracks building, and other signifi-cant camp features.

Reconstruction, as many readerswill know, is one of four treatmentoptions for historic sites; the othersare preservation, rehabilitation, andrestoration. Reconstruction representsthe alternative with the least historicauthenticity and is defined as “thedepiction of one period in historyusing new materials based on archae-ology and other research findings.”

Usually, NPS discourages recon-structions. The following abstractfrom a session on reconstruction at the1997 Society for American Archaeol-ogy outlines the debate:

The reconstruction of historical andarchaeological sites and features haslong been a controversial subjectamong professional archaeologistsand historians. Some preservationpurists claim that the public is unnec-essarily misled by many reconstruc-tions that have not been absolutelyverified by archaeology and documen-tary records.

The abstract goes on to note that oth-ers have advocated a more liberalapproach, emphasizing the education-

al and interpretive value of reconstruc-tions.

The National Park Service hasclear management policies aboutreconstruction. As stated in its 2001Management Policies, “[n]o matterhow well conceived or executed,reconstructions are contemporaryinterpretations of the past rather thanauthentic survivals from it.” Thus,NPS will not reconstruct a missingstructure unless four criteria are met:there is no alternative that wouldaccomplish the park’s interpretivemission; there is sufficient data toenable an accurate reconstruction; thereconstruction occurs on the originallocation; and the NPS directorapproves the reconstruction (NPS2000). Thus, members of the JapaneseAmerican community and others hadto demonstrate cause to allow recon-struction be made a part of the park’sgeneral management plan.

As I mentioned earlier, not muchphysical evidence of the campremains. Only three of over eight hun-dred buildings still stand. Neverthe-less, there is abundant evidence offoundations, sidewalks, rock gardens,and the camp road network. Thatthese remnants speak volumes can beheard in this quote from Farewell toManzanar by Jeanne WakatsukiHouston and James D. Houston:

It is so characteristically Japanese,the way lives were made more tolera-ble by gathering loose desert stonesand forming with them somethingenduringly human. These rock gar-dens had outlived the barracks andthe towers and would surely outlivethe asphalt road and rusted pipesand shattered slabs of concrete. Eachstone was a mouth, speaking for afamily, for some man who had beauti-


fied his doorstep (Houston andHouston 1973, p. 191).

However, not everyone sees thecrumbling foundations, rockwork, andother physical remnants from the sameperspective. One Los Angeles Timesarticle from 1997 criticized the lack offacilities at, and the appearance of, thesite:

Manzanar National Historic Site wascreated as a memorial to remindfuture generations that in times of cri-sis, the constitution can be danger-ously fragile. Yet today, Manzanarlooks more like a vacant lot than ahallowed memorial. The site is litteredwith beer bottles and graffiti. Thereare no visitors’ centers, no rangers onduty, no guided tours or displays.Cattle graze the area, tramplingarchaeological sites, while touristswho pull off the highway leave con-fused and disappointed.

We have taken great strides to beginto address the problems noted in thisarticle. Many people, particularly inthe Japanese American community,have long recognized the problemsnoted in the Los Angeles Times articleand have been actively engaged in thedevelopment of Manzanar’s generalmanagement plan. Even at that time,people like T. Shiokari expressedstrong support for reconstructionefforts, noting: “I strongly urge theNPS to depict the typical conditionswhen the Japanese race was first evac-uated into the centers, and also theconditions near the end of the warwhere gardens, schools, recreationfacilities were made available.”

The current chairperson of a citi-zen’s advocacy group known as theManzanar Committee, Sue KunitomiEmbrey, also participated in the dia-logue about the park’s management

plan. In fact, the Manzanar Committeewas instrumental in having one of theten former internment camps desig-nated as a national park unit. Embreyreported the sense of the group thisway:

We strongly recommend the recon-struction of some of the rock gardenslocated throughout the camp area togive the viewer an enhanced visitorexperience. We support the place-ment of one or more barracks in thedemonstration blocks.... A demon-stration block would not be completewithout the inclusion of latrines, messhall and laundry building. We encour-age the addition of these structures inthe demonstration block. It isabsolutely essential that one or moreguard towers be reconstructed.

These and other similar viewsgreatly affected the general manage-ment plan for Manzanar. Theapproved plan for the park calls forreconstruction of the camp’s barbedwire fence, camp entrance sign, guardtower, and barracks buildings. Thefence and camp entrance have alreadybeen reconstructed and we will bereconstructing one guard tower in thenext few years. We will relocate andrestore one or more of the camp bar-racks buildings that still exist in thelocal area.

The National Park Service hasworked closely with the JapaneseAmerican community in determiningthe initial development and manage-ment of the site. However, I mustreject “groveling sycophant” as anaccurate description of NPS efforts todevelop and interpret the site. Evenwithin the Japanese American com-munity, there are disagreements abouthow to tell the internment story. Theseoften focus on whether the relocation


centers such as Manzanar ought to becalled “concentration camps.” Twoquotes from the Rafu Shimpo, a news-paper published in Los Angeles, illus-trate each side of this controversy. Aletter by Kelly Shinatku on stated that:

You may say ‘bah humbug,’ but Ibelieve that future generations mustnot forget what this government did toits own citizens. Using the term con-centration camps when referring tothe internment of JapaneseAmericans imparts to those who didnot live through the camps an unam-biguous picture of what happened.

In response, the editor, GeorgeYoshinaga, reported a conversation hehad with another former internee, alsonamed George:

Like this writer, George is dead setagainst referring to the relocationcamps as ‘concentration camps.’ Hewas in Manzanar.

At the present time, NPS has decidedto use “internment” as the best way toavoid being caught up in a whirlwindof controversy that could obscure thesignificance of the site.

Since the designation of Manzanaras a unit of the National Park System,the Manzanar Advisory Commission,with members from the JapaneseAmerican, Native American, ranching,and local communities, has activelyparticipated in a dialogue about thedevelopment, management, and inter-pretation of the site. And of course, inaccordance with the 1969 NationalEnvironmental Policy Act, publicinvolvement has been solicited for allmajor management actions.

The National Park Service contin-ues to consult with a variety of groupsand individuals in the development ofthe park’s interpretive programs.

Much like the Manzanar AdvisoryCommission, the review panels arecomposed of different groups withinthe Japanese American community,veterans, local Owens Valley residents,Native Americans, academics, andNPS staff. Mock-ups of the park’s pro-posed interpretive exhibits wererecently produced and displayed inLos Angeles and the Owens Valley inorder to solicit public comment abouttheir content.

I believe this extensive review andplanning process will facilitate, if notensure, that a truthful, balanced con-text will be presented to the visitingpublic. It is through such efforts thatNPS can fulfill what I believe must beits role as the caretaker of sites of socialconscience rather than, as some fear,becoming the source of that socialconscience.

The forthright, candid interpreta-tion of sites such as Manzanar willhelp us avoid repeating the mistakes ofhistory. A statement by Robert Sproulof the Fair Play Committee in 1944eloquently summarizes a longstandingand powerful goal for parks such asManzanar:

Whenever and wherever the consti-tutional guarantees are violated inthe treatment of a minority, no mat-ter how unpopular or helpless, thewhole fabric of American govern-ment is weakened, its whole effec-tiveness impaired. Each such viola-tion establishes an evil precedentwhich is inevitably turned againstanother minority later and eventuallythe very principle on which ourNation is founded, namely, the digni-ty and worth of the human individ-ual.

Manzanar National Historic Siteand similar sites should help to com-


municate the lessons of history, toensure that the dignity of the humanindividual is upheld, both in Americaand in the world.

It is important to remember thewords of United States SupremeCourt Chief Justice Charles EvansHughes, as quoted by Michi NishuraWeglyn in the book Years of Infamy:

You may think that the Constitution isyour security—it is nothing but a piece

of paper. You may think that statutesare your security—they are nothing butwords in a book. You may think thatthe elaborate mechanism of govern-ment is your security—it is nothing atall, unless you have sound and uncor-rupted public opinion to give life toyour Constitution, to give vitality toyour statutes, to make efficient yourgovernment machinery (Weglyn1996, p. 32).


[Ed. note: this paper was originally presented at the Organization of AmericanHistorians / National Council on Public History annual meeting, April 2002,Washington, D.C.]

ReferencesHouston, Jeanne Wakatsuki, and James D. Houston. 1973. Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Houghton

Mifflin.NPS [National Park Service]. 2000. Management Policies 2001. Washington, D.C.: NPS.Weglyn, Michi Nishura. 1996. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps.

Updated edition. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Frank Hays, Manzanar National Historic Site, P.O. Box 426, Independence,California 93526-0426; [email protected]

1

On February 14, 2002, the LowerEast Side Tenement Museum invitedan unusual group to pay a visit to therecreated 1897 home and factory ofHarris and Jennie Levine. Packed inan intimate circle, leaders of conflict-ing sectors of the garment industrytoday—workers and manufacturers,retailers and union organizers—lis-tened to the story of how this Russianimmigrant family slept, ate, raised afamily, and turned out hundreds ofdresses in a tiny 325-square-footspace. Why did these people, whospend most of their time attacking oravoiding each other, want to cometogether to talk here? As one partici-pant put it, “the Museum provides aneutral environment that facilitatesdiscussion among all of us in the gar-ment industry. The tour is extremelybalanced, making people from all sidesof the issue feel included. The envi-ronment here puts everyone a little off-balance, in a way that really opens dis-cussion. It provides a wonderful

opportunity to look at all these issuestogether.” After a day-long summitabout what new perspective could begained by looking at the garmentindustry in the past, the participantsemerged with new ideas about how allsides could work together to preventsweatshop conditions in the future.

What these two stories tell us isthat historic sites have a special powerto inspire and shape important newdialogues on pressing issues thatdivide us. The Lower East SideTenement Museum was founded in1988 to offer our visitors a usablepast—that is, to offer history as aresource for considering and address-ing issues in the present. Located in aneighborhood whose residents todayhail from 36 different countries, theheart of the museum is a tenement at97 Orchard Street where an estimated7,000 immigrants from over 20 differ-ent nations made their homes between1863 and 1935. Entering the carefullyrestored apartments of families who


Liz Sevcenko

Activating the Past for Civic Action:The International Coalition of Historic

Site Museums of Conscience

In 1987, Nelson Mandela organized an unprecedented meeting of promi-nent Afrikaaners and top leaders of the African National Congress. Hechose to hold it at the Slave House at Gorée Island in Senegal, where slavetraders and slaves lived cheek-by-jowl in the 18th century before slaves were

transported to the Americas. The meeting proved to be the turning point in thestruggle against apartheid. Nelson Mandela later told French President FrançoisMitterrand that the haunting site of the African slave trade served as one of thekeys that unlocked the door to new communication, making his release andeverything else possible.1

actually lived in our building, you willmeet America’s revered immigrantancestors before they were accepted,before they lost their heavy accents—for some, before they were considered“white.” Our families’ stories touchthe most pressing issues of our time,but allow visitors to consider themthrough the lives of individual people,and from the safe distance of peopleliving generations ago. On one tour,we introduce two families strugglingto make ends meet and be accepted inAmerica during economic crises.You’ll meet Nathalie Gumpertz, aGerman single mother who struggledto raise her three children as a dress-maker after her husband abandonedher after the Panic of 1873, speakingGerman in the face of the first English-only law to be imposed in the UnitedStates. You’ll then visit the SicilianBaldizzi family, who went to greatlengths to enter the country illegally,only to be forced to go on governmentrelief during the Depression. Anothertour brings you to Harris and JennieLevine, the Russian immigrants whoopened a dressmaking shop with threeemployees in their tenement apart-ment in 1892—creating the very typeof space the word “sweatshop” was, inthat moment, coined to describe. Afterhearing of all the reforms that wereintroduced to eradicate the sweat-shop, you’ll be able to visit theRogarshevsky family in 1918, andhear how Abraham, who worked as apresser in a new modern factory, nev-ertheless fell victim to tuberculosis,alternately called the “tailor’s disease”or the “Jewish disease.”

Each of our families had a totallypersonal, idiosyncratic experience. At

the same time, these individual peo-ple, whether they knew it or not, wereat the center of national debates takingplace from Congress to the cornerstore. Their stories provide a safe yetgenerative place from which to explorepressing questions we’re still grap-pling with today, including: Who isAmerican? Who should help peoplewith economic needs—the neighbor-hood, private charities, the govern-ment? What are fair labor practices?What is a sweatshop?

The Tenement Museum offer pro-grams that invite people of all ages andbackgrounds to address these ques-tions in different ways. After hearingthe stories of 97 Orchard Street’s for-mer residents, visitors can participatein public dialogues about their ownfamilies’ immigration experiences andlarger immigration issues. In “Tene-ment Inspectors,” a collaboration withNew York City’s Department of Hous-ing and Preservation, we invite schoolchildren to learn about how housingstandards and conditions changedover time in our building, who organ-ized to change them, and how they cantake action against violations in theirown homes. The museum establishedan Immigrant Programs Departmentto serve the 37% of our neighborhoodwho are recent arrivals to this countryand to showcase the cultural expres-sions of contemporary immigrant the-atrical, visual, literary, and digitalartists. Through this department, wehost English and civics classes for newimmigrants. Students learn how previ-ous generations of immigrants facedthe challenges of settling in a newcountry, finding a job, making ahome—and how they organized to win


many of the basic rights in labor, hous-ing, and cultural expression that allAmericans now enjoy. Each class thenparticipates in a discussion of chal-lenges immigrants face today, anddevelops ideas for how to face them,leaving the program with practicalinformation about rights andresources found in the first guide fornew immigrants in New York City,published by the Museum with TheNew York Times.

To us, the connections betweenpast and present, between history andcivic participation, are absolutely nat-ural, and quite inseparable. Accordingto a recent national study conductedby David Thelen and RoyRosenzweig, thousands of Americansfeel the same.2 Thelen revealsAmerica’s “participatory historicalculture,” documenting countless waysin which diverse Americans use thepast in their everyday lives, individual-ly and collectively. After analyzing theways respondents turned to history todecide how to raise their children,where and with whom to live andwork, and how to organize for socialchange, Thelen and Rosenzweig dis-covered that overwhelmingly “thepoint of engaging the past was tounderstand choices in the present toshape the future.”3

Museum professionals increasing-ly got the point, and new conversa-tions began to emerge about the iden-tity of the museum. Lone, but signifi-cant, voices in the museum field beganto talk of moving the role of the muse-um beyond its 19th-century identityas a keeper of relics, and even beyondits hard-fought 20th-century identityas a trusted educational institution.

More than places for passive learning,we could re-imagine museums as cen-ters for active exchange on issues thatmatter outside their walls. TheAmerican Associations of Museums(AAM) published Mastering CivicEngagement: A Challenge to Museums,in which it envisioned the museum as“a center where people gather to meetand converse ... and a participant incollaborative problem solving. It is anactive, visible player in civic life, a safehaven, and a trusted incubator ofchange.”4 Announcing the publicationof the book, AAM’s president andchief executive officer, Edward Able,boldly declared that “the timesdemand that museums take this [civic]responsibility seriously as a corevalue.”5 The Ford Foundation articu-lated its own vision of the civic muse-um space, celebrating “a growingnumber” of cultural institutions that“are moving to claim an active, inten-tional role in public dialogue aroundthe kinds of contemporary issues thatprovoke multiple viewpoints.” Suchinstitutions are “an extraordinary civicforce, and one whose potentialremains significantly underacknowl-edged.”6 To promote greater acknowl-edgment of this potential, the founda-tion spearheaded the AnimatingDemocracy Initiative, which provideda wide range of resources to arts- andhumanities-based civic dialogue proj-ects.

Yet outside of professional confer-ences, our practice remained anathe-ma. Comparing their collections of,say, Wedgwood china or paintings byVermeer, to ours, which includes a fewhundred buttons, a laundry ticket, anda mummified rat found in our ceiling,


many of our fellow museums couldn’tsee how we had anything in common.While some found our inclusion ofcontemporary immigrant stories“funky,” few gave any serious thoughtto playing a similarly active role intheir own communities. Those whodid embrace the general idea of civicengagement interpreted its meaning sodifferently from us and from eachother that no consistent set of prac-tices was emerging to give the ideaweight. On the other side, humanrights and social welfare agencies oftenrefused first invitations to visit and dis-cuss collaborations with us, consider-ing museums effete, precious, and abig waste of time. Accepted neither asmuseum nor as advocate, yet feelingstrong in our identity, we searched fora crowd, and a name, to call our own.

Founding a CoalitionThe Tenement Museum’s presi-

dent, Ruth Abram, put out a call tomuseums around the world describingthe role she felt historic sites couldplay in their societies, and asking ifanyone else felt the same. Eightresponded: the District Six Museum(South Africa), remembering forcedremoval under apartheid; the GulagMuseum (Russia), the only Stalinistlabor camp to be preserved in Russia;the Liberation War Museum(Bangladesh), excavating killing fieldsand memorializing the genocide of theBangladeshi people during the Libera-tion War of 1971; the Maison DesEsclaves (Senegal), an 18th-centuryslave transport station; the NationalPark Service (USA), representing theWomen’s Rights National HistoricalPark in Seneca Falls and other sites;

Memoria Abierta (Argentina), com-memorating the “disappeared” duringthe dictatorships of the 1970s and1980s; Terezin Memorial (CzechRepublic), a labor camp used to modelthe “humane practices” of the Naziregime to the Red Cross; and TheWorkhouse (United Kingdom), a19th-century solution to poverty. Sup-ported by the Rockefeller Foundation,we organized a meeting at the founda-tion’s villa and study center in Bella-gio, Italy. Realizing that our newapproach to museum work requirednew support, we unanimously decid-ed to form the International Coalitionof Historic Site Museums of Con-science.

Our founding declarationdescribed the role we believed historicsites should play in civic life. It reads:“We hold in common the belief that itis the obligation of historic sites toassist the public in drawing connec-tions between the history of our siteand its contemporary implications. Weview stimulating dialogue on pressingsocial issues and promoting humani-tarian and democratic values as a pri-mary function.”

We established strict criteria formembership in the coalition as a wayof challenging ourselves, and othermuseums around the world, to meetour civic obligations. We defined a siteof conscience as a museum that:• interprets history through historic

sites; • engages in programs that stimulate

dialogue on pressing social issuesand promote humanitarian anddemocratic values as a primary func-tion;

• shares opportunities for public


involvement in issues raised at thesite.

In our view, there was nothinginherent in a site that guaranteed itwould play the civic role we envi-sioned, and nothing that precluded itfrom doing so. Instead, for us a site ofconscience was defined by the com-mitment of its stewards to play anactive role in engaging its audiences incivic dialogue around contemporaryissues. The most powerful site of theAtlantic slave trade cannot sponta-neously inspire democratic exchangeabout contemporary racism, and riskslying dormant at the margins of civiclife. On the other hand, there arealmost no limits to the stories andthemes that can inspire important dia-logue. Sites representing the triumphof democracy, social justice, or humanrights, such as the Eleanor RooseveltNational Historic Site, where theInternational Declaration of HumanRights was drafted, are as powerful assites representing their failure, such asthe Maison des Esclaves in Senegal.Sites representing the histories ofhuman interaction with the naturalworld, like the Thoreau Institute atWalden Woods, are as important assites interpreting humans’ interactionwith one another. The door was wideopen to any site: the onus was on thestewards to activate these sites as dem-ocratic forums.

Giving a Site Conscience:Moving from Temple to Forum

What’s involved in establishing asite of conscience? Member sites haveworked to make their sites centers forcivic dialogue on three levels: openingnew perspectives on civic issues by

writing new narratives; activatingthese new narrative perspectives byfostering civic dialogue; and buildinga forum by designing new spaces fordialogue to happen.

Opening new perspectives oncivic issues. For many sites emergingfrom repressive political contexts,their first task was to write new nation-al and community narratives, identifynew actors and heroes, and exposetruths that had been long denied.Rewriting these narratives is the firststep in liberation; writing these narra-tives into the public memory byinstalling them in a museum is the firststep in guaranteeing that liberation forfuture generations. The District SixMuseum in South Africa tells the storyof how the apartheid governmentrazed a racially integrated neighbor-hood and displaced its thousands ofresidents. The museum’s aim is “toensure that the history and the memo-ry of forced removals in South Africaendures and in the process will chal-lenge all forms of social oppression.”Similarly, Memoria Abierta inArgentina recovers documentation ofabuses under the military dictator-ships of the 1970s and 1980s in orderto “promote a social conscience thatvalues active Memory as a means toavoid history from repeating itself.”For these and other sites, simplytelling the story is a radical politicalact, when many of the perpetrators arestill in power and the line between his-torical artifact and legal evidence isblurred. For sites in more stable, butunfinished, democracies, rewritingnarratives is an important first step increating opportunities for broadercivic engagement. The Tenement


Museum challenges the canonic storyof European immigrant success andinclusion in America, often usedagainst new immigrants from Asia orLatin America struggling today.Instead, we introduce visitors to immi-grant families before they were accept-ed in this country, when they faceddiscrimination, labor abuse, andpoverty.

Activating new perspectives:Dialogues for Democracy. Telling anew story is critical, but to foster newcivic participation and generate newdemocratic processes, it is notenough. Sites of conscience are com-mitted to making explicit connectionsbetween the past and the present,actively engaging visitors in discussingthe future, and inspiring and equip-ping them to participate in shaping it.Together, directors designed a seriesof programs, called Dialogues forDemocracy, to take place at each site.In developing its dialogue for democ-racy, each site was asked to consider:• What is the story you want to tell?• Why do you need to tell that story;

that is, what is the contemporarypolitical and social context in whichyou are working that makes thisstory important to tell?

• What civic questions do you wantyour visitors to consider during avisit to your site?

• How will you engage them in dia-logue around these questions?

• What impact do you hope to haveand how will you measure it?

The Workhouse in England pre-serves a rare surviving example of aVictorian “solution” to poverty, struc-tures that once loomed on the out-skirts of every town as threats to the

“idle and profligate.” After touring thesegregated quarters and forced laboryards of the workhouse, visitors enteran exhibit titled “What Now? WhatNext?” that compares the classifica-tion and segregation of Britain’s poorfrom the Victorian era through thepresent. The Workhouse invites poli-cy makers and advocates such as theinternational leadership of Oxfam andrepresentatives of Britain’s welfare sys-tem, as well as their general public, toengage in dialogue around the follow-ing questions: Where would the peo-ple of the workhouse be today? Howhave things improved, or becomeworse? What solutions to poverty andits related issues may we try in thefuture—is there anything new that hasnot been tried before?

The District Six Museum coveredits floor with a map of the destroyedneighborhood, and invited former res-idents to place their homes, streets,stores, and community spaces. Thismemory mapping project became thebasis for land reclamation claims, andthe museum organized and hosted oneof the Land Courts on its site. Formerresidents sat in chairs directly on themap of their old neighborhood, as thecourt granted them, in the words ofone, “our land back, our homes back,our dignity back.”7

The Gulag Museum hosts interna-tional conferences on human rightsissues, inviting policy makers andadvocates to use the story of the gulagto imagine the future of democracy inRussia.

Alarmed by the rise in racist vio-lence in Czech Republic and the lackof public discussion around it, theTerezin Memorial designed a series of


teacher training workshops andschool programs that use the perspec-tives of the Holocaust to foster opendialogue on the current situation.Stressing the importance of individualcitizen participation, and the conse-quences of inaction, the workshopsanalyze recent patterns of discrimina-tion and violence against Roma peo-ples, as well as emerging neo-Nazimovements, and ask students and edu-cators to develop ideas for how tobuild a pluralistic and tolerant societyfor the future.

Just a few weeks after the attackson the World Trade Center, inresponse to the dragnet for Arab andMuslim immigrants and the nationalanxiety around potential terrorists inour midst, the Japanese AmericanNational Museum held a public townhall meeting, also broadcast on localradio. The museum invited a repre-sentative from the Immigration andNaturalization Service (INS), togetherwith former internees of Manzanarand other camps, to engage a live andcall-in audience in a discussion ofmaintaining democracy and nationalsecurity.

Building a forum: designing aspace for dialogue. What does a siteof conscience—a forum–museum—look like? Many sites have realized thata commitment to serving as a forumfor civic dialogue requires a new phys-ical design. Traditional museumdesign has focused on passive learn-ing, guiding visitors along a linear pathof panels or cases in which the interac-tion is solely between the visitor andthe information presented. But what ifthe mission of the museum is toengage visitors with each other?

Several sites are struggling withhow to build dialogue into theirdesigns. In the architectural plans forits new National Center for thePreservation of Democracy, theJapanese American National Museumis incorporating both a “forum,” a200-seat auditorium that “serves asthe centerpiece for the NationalCenter’s Commitment to discourse,dialogue, and community engage-ment,” as well as a “democracy lab”designed for “group discussions, pollsof current national and local issues,and more.”8 Brown v. Board ofEducation National Historic Site, ded-icated to preserving sites related to thelandmark U.S. Supreme Court deci-sion that brought an end to segrega-tion in public education, is building anew visitor center in the formerMonroe elementary school, a segregat-ed school for African Americans inTopeka, Kansas. The visitor centerwas designed under an overarchingconcept of “discovery and discourse,”and “will include spaces for individualreflection and group discussion.”9

While these sites model theirdemocratic forums after spaces of offi-cial public deliberation, such as thetown hall or the legislature, othersrecreate the more intimate, sponta-neous, and marginal places whereimportant civic engagement happens.The Tenement Museum’s dialoguespace is called “the kitchen”; theroom’s soft lighting, kitchen tables,and mismatched chairs welcome visi-tors to participate in an informal dia-logue that begins with personal expe-riences—those histories that are toldand retold in the kitchen—and usesthem as the starting point for a discus-


sion of larger issues around immigra-tion. The Liberation War Museum inBangladesh created a mobile museum,a sort of democratic forum on wheels,that travels to schools around thecountry. According to Director AkkuChowdhury, the space of theBangladeshi classroom remains unde-mocratic: desks are arranged in rows;students must stand up to speak andmust speak directly to the teacher; freeexchange and inquiry are not encour-aged. Rather than conduct its pro-grams in the classroom spaces,Liberation War Museum staff park thebus on school grounds and invite stu-dents to board. In the intimate spaceof the bus, surrounded by exhibits onthe genocide of Bengali people andtheir struggles for democracy, the rulesand culture of the classroom don’tapply. Students sit in a circle andengage in open discussions aroundquestions including Who isBangladeshi? Which of the country’sfounding ideals has been realized?Which have not? Where do you seeevidence of that? Why do you thinkthis is the case? What can I do to helprealize them?

Defining democracy: truth-seeking vs. dialogue. The coalitionitself has provided a spirited forum inwhich to debate how historic sites canserve as democratic institutions anddemonstrate democratic processes. Atthe heart is a debate over what democ-racy looks like, and what is the mosteffective path to reaching it. Coalitionmembers come from a wide variety ofpolitical contexts. All sites interpretexperiences and events that relate topressing issues of today, but some, likeMemoria Abierta, are living in the

immediate aftermath of these events,while others, like the 18th-centurySlave House in Senegal, are lookingback on a longer legacy. This differ-ence in distance informs how differentmembers view the role of their site intheir society, what they view as themost urgent democratic project, andhow they seek to engage their audi-ences.

Some sites, particularly those rep-resenting government agencies, suchas the U.S. National Park Service, orlarger institutions, such as the BritishNational Trust, were concerned thatbeing a site of conscience was too“political.” By “political,” they meantexplicitly advocating a specific posi-tion on a contemporary issue, such aswho should receive public assistanceand for how long, or who should beallowed to immigrate to the UnitedStates. Instead, these membersresolved to serve as open forums fordialogue on all sides of contemporarydebates, taking care to pose questionswith a variety of possible answers. Formany, that meant including multipleperspectives in their narratives, as inthe Tenement Museum’s audio intro-duction to its “sweatshop” exhibit,featuring the voices of workers, con-tractors, designers, and union organiz-ers. For others, it meant inviting par-ticipants from a variety of perspectivesto exchange experiences at the site,such as when the Gulag Museumbrought together former prisoners andformer guards to meet and tell theirstories, or when the JapaneseAmerican National Museum invitedboth an INS agent and a formerinternee to speak on racial profiling.

For other sites, multiple perspec-


tives smacked of moral relativism.Directors of the District Six Museum,Memoria Abierta, and the LiberationWar Museum are just a few of themembers based in human rightsmovements. Their projects are an inte-gral part of larger truth-seeking efforts,related to proving that crimes againsthumanity occurred, bringing perpe-trators to justice, and establishingtruth commissions. These sites’ spe-cific goal within the larger humanrights effort is to develop a public con-sciousness or acceptance of certainfacts as indisputable. Exposing thetotal abrogation of democracy anddeveloping a strong public memory ofthis abrogation is their highest priorityin their effort to build a democraticculture. These sites leave the truths ofhuman rights violations unques-tioned, but offer the future of theircountries as an open debate, invitingvisitors to consider a variety of waysthey can participate in shaping it. TheDistrict Six Museum asks children ofdisplaced families to return to DistrictSix and imagine the future of theneighborhood. It asks, What are myrights and responsibilities as a citizen?How does my city work? How can Imake my city work for me? Aftertelling the story of how torture andabuse occurred under the noses ofArgentine people for over a decade,

Memoria Abierta asks, When I see aninjustice happening, does it involveme? Am I responsible or implicated?

Spreading the WordThe coalition’s greatest ambition

is to put itself out of business. Wedream of the day when citizens all overthe world, faced with a significantsocial issue, will automatically turn tohistoric sites to consider and addressit. Just as Mandela used the SlaveHouse in Senegal to change race rela-tions in South Africa for decades tocome, political leaders can find newincubators of peace on every conti-nent. We dream of the day when his-toric sites will be seen as some of themost important training grounds fordemocratic societies, places whereyoung people learn to be active citi-zens. We hope that historic sites inter-preting a single moment or event willbe continually renewed by citizenschallenging the latest legacy of whathappened there as it takes new form intheir societies. In short, we dream ofthe day when the role for historic sitesthat the coalition envisions is so takenfor granted that it needs no name orspecial group to support it. In themeantime, with great enthusiasm, wechallenge ourselves to redefine whathistoric sites are here to do.


For more information on the Coalition and its member sites, or to download anapplication, go to http://www.sitesofconscience.org.

Endnotes1. Lawrence Weschler, Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1998).2. David Thelen and Roy Rosenzweig, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).3. David Thelen, “Afterthoughts: David Thelen.” Web site: http://chnm.gmu.edu/survey/afterdave-

html.4. American Association of Museums, Mastering Civic Engagement: A Challenge to Museums


(Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2002).5. Press release, “American Associations of Museums Announces the Publication of Mastering Civic

Engagement: A Challenge to Museums,” April 25, 2002.6. Barbara Schaeffer Bacon, Cheryl Yuen, and Pam Korza, Animating Democracy: The Artistic

Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue (Washington, D.C.: Americans for the Arts, 1999).7. Audio recording of Land Court proceedings, District Six Museum.8. Brochure, National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, 2002.9. Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site application for membership in the International

Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience, 2001.

Liz Sevcenko, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, 90 Orchard Street, NewYork, New York 10002; [email protected]

1

Since 1996, the museum hasundertaken the task of preserving andreconstructing the camp as a historicsite. The museum has sent severaldelegations to the U.S. to learn fromthe National Park Service. Thesegroups observed interpretive and edu-cational programs, looked at self-financing examples, and visited signif-icant American sites that deal with dif-ficult issues and recent history. Dur-ing a trip in April 2001, the GulagMuseum’s staff asked Rust to send ateam of preservation and museum pro-fessionals from NPS to visit Perm-36and provide technical assistance in

four specific areas that required on-site consultation:1. Surveying all historic structures

and developing prioritized guide-lines for the stabilization, preser-vation, treatment, repair, andreconstruction of the built ele-ments of the camp.

2. Reviewing of the museum’s organ-ization and staffing with recom-mendations leading towards meet-ing international standards forprofessional museum operations.

3. Creating a museum storage spacefor the preservation of artifactsand archival materials at the site


Louis P. HutchinsGay E. Vietzke

Dialogue Between Continents:Civic Engagement

and the Gulag Museum at Perm-36, Russia

In December 1999, at the initiative of National Park Service (NPS) North-east Regional Director Marie Rust, the agency became a founding memberof the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. Atthe coalition’s first formal meeting, Rust met Victor Shmyrov, director of the

Gulag Museum at Perm-36 in Russia, another founding institution of the coali-tion. Shmyrov’s museum preserves and interprets a Gulag camp built underJoseph Stalin in 1946 in the village of Kutschino, Russia, near the city of Perm.Known as Perm-36, the facility served initially as a regular timber productionlabor camp. Later, the camp became a particularly isolated and severe facility forhigh government officials. In 1972, Perm-36 became the primary facility in thecountry for persons charged with political crimes. Many of the Soviet Union’smost prominent dissidents, including Vladimir Bukovsky, Sergei Kovalev, andAnatoly Marchenko, served their sentences there. It was only during the Sovietgovernment’s period of “openness” of Glasnost, under President Mikael Gor-bachev, that the camp was finally closed in January 1988. Although it is estimat-ed that there were over 12,000 forced labor camps in the former Soviet Union,Perm-36 is the last surviving example from the system.

and providing recommendationsfor future preventative conserva-tion treatment.

4. Writing general guidelines for pro-moting the historic site interna-tionally to visitors throughtourism, publications and salesitems, and web-based technology.

A team of five NPS professionals,including experts in preservation andmuseum management, was selected toprovide this assistance by traveling tothe site and working with key museumstaff (Figure 1).

Summary of ItineraryThe team members arrived in

Moscow on September 4, 2001. InMoscow, the team was met by Yuri V.Reshetnikov, the primary exhibitdesigner for the Gulag Museum atPerm-36. The team toured the muse-um at the Andrei Sakharov Archives,where Reshetnikov had designed the

exhibits, and a gallery where he wasinstalling a new temporary exhibit.The exhibit featured family photo-graphs from the Stalinist period, all ofwhich had faces of individual familymembers removed or blotted out, anapparently common practice amongfamilies whose relatives had beenidentified as political enemies of thestate and sent to camps or executed.This eerie and powerful exhibit indi-cated the history and subject matterthe team was to experience in Russia.Once the team arrived in the Ural

region, in the city of Perm, the teamsaw the outside of the prison used toincarcerate and then distribute prison-ers to the forced labor camps through-out the region. The prison still holdscriminals today. The team also visitedthe memorial to victims of Sovietrepression recently built on the out-skirts of town before proceeding to


Figure 1. The NPS team and staff of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36. Photo by OlegTrushinikov.

Perm-36, which lies in a remote area ofthe Urals about four hours’ drive fromPerm.

Site HistoryThe Gulag Museum at Perm-36

preserves, documents, and interpretsthe last surviving forced labor camp ofthe Soviet era (1917-1992).1 Its statedmission is to establish a historic sitethat serves as a memorial museum ofthe history of political repression andtotalitarianism in the former SovietUnion. The museum also seeks to pro-mote democratic values and civil con-sciousness.

Taken as a whole, the labor camp atPerm-36 powerfully illustrates theentire period of the forced labor campsystem in the Soviet era. Although theCzarist regime preceding the Revolu-tion did convict political opponentsfor crimes against the state and incar-cerated them in prisons throughoutthe remotest parts of the country, theforced labor system implemented bythe Bolsheviks was a new phenome-non in Russian history.2 The Sovietsused the system both as a means ofimprisoning those who threatened thestate and of providing necessary laborto support the rapid programs ofindustrialization and economic expan-sion instituted in the years followingthe Revolution. This system of forcedlabor and political repression reacheda peak under the rule of Stalin, whenthe numbers of labor camp prisonerssoared to almost three million peoplein the early 1950s.3 During the entireperiod of Soviet forced labor camps,from 1917 until 1988, it has been esti-mated that about 20 million peoplewere imprisoned.4 But to fully appre-

ciate the overall impact of such arepressive system, it should also benoted that over a million peopleworked as camp personnel betweenthe 1920s and 1950s. In other words,the entire society was deeply affectedby this social institution, both asoppressor and oppressed.

The labor camp museum inKutchino is divided into two proper-ties. The main facility served as aforced labor camp and detention cen-ter from 1946 to 1988. The secondproperty, less than a mile down theroad from the main facility, served as acamp industrial building (ca.1952–ca.1956), soldiers’ barracks (ca.1956–ca.1972), and a “maximum security” unit(1979-1988).5 This maximum securi-ty facility housed those consideredespecially dangerous by the state: dis-sidents and human rights activists whocontinued their public agitation afterrelease from their first prison terms.

The history of Perm-36 can be bro-ken down into three major periods ofsignificance: the Stalinist labor camp(1946-1956), the labor camp for highSoviet officials (1956-1971), and thelabor camp for dissidents and humanrights activists (1972-1988). Eachperiod illustrates a significant aspectof the history of totalitarianism andpolitical repression in the SovietUnion. The first period documentsthe typical forced labor camp foundthroughout the country when thenumber of prisoners soared afterWorld War II, and the countryembarked on a massive reconstructionproject. The use of forced labor was anintegral part of the post-war economy.As one historian has put it, “in theconditions of the universal postwar


devastation and impoverishment, theGulag participated in the constructionof the Soviet military–industrial com-plex and helped it grow and gainsocial prestige.”6 All areas of the econ-omy relied to one extent or another onforced labor; the forestry work carriedout at this labor camp was quite typi-cal of the period. The second perioddocuments the incarceration of highSoviet officials, including members ofthe KGB, the judicial branch of gov-ernment, and the military. These offi-cials, treated as privileged prisoners,nevertheless had to be separated fromthe rest of the prisoner populationbecause of fears for their security. Thefinal period documents the incarcera-tion of dissidents and human rightsactivists who posed the most seriousthreat to the internal stability andsecurity of the Soviet Union. Many ofthese prisoners had national and inter-national reputations for their work inhuman rights, national liberationmovements, and other dissident activ-ities throughout the Soviet republics.During the last period, the existenceand location of the camp was a highlyguarded secret. The construction ofthe maximum security unit in 1979illustrates further the increasing pres-sures the Soviet authorities felt toobliterate internal dissent by severelypunishing those activists who repeat-edly defied the state. Finally, it was thiscamp that was the last of the forcedlabor camp system to be closed downin 1988 under President Mikhail Gor-bachev’s policies of Glasnost. Today. itstands as the best-preserved reminderof Soviet oppression. When oncethere were over 12,000 camps in thecountry, Perm-36 is believed to be the

only intact camp left.Period 1, 1946-1956: Stalinist

labor camp. During the first period,the labor camp served as a typical log-ging camp established under the Stal-inist regime. Built to exploit the heavi-ly forested areas of the Ural region,this camp and many others relied onthe manual labor of thousands ofimprisoned citizens to provide timberdownstream to the many cities andtowns devastated during World WarII. The timber camps were built fromlogs as temporary facilities: as soon asthe prisoners cleared the forests(about five to ten years), the authori-ties moved the prisoners into a newsection of the forest where they wouldbuild a new camp.

This camp also served as a basecamp for four satellite camps locateddeep in the forests. It served as theheadquarters for the operation, pro-viding the distribution point for all theprisoners and for food and other sup-plies. The base camp housed aboutone thousand prisoners, and each ofthe four satellite camps housedbetween six and eight hundred pris-oners. The base camp consisted offour barracks with about 200 to 250prisoners each. It also contained ahospital unit, storage facility, washhouse, outhouse, and punishment cell.Less than a mile down the road fromthe camp, at a site near the TchusovoyRiver, a storage area for the logged tim-ber was created. The prisoners at thevarious camps within the complexhauled the logs to this site during theyear, and floated them down river dur-ing the spring floods.

Between 1946 and 1951, this laborcamp complex was a typical low-secu-


rity camp which housed prisonerssentenced to short terms (up to fiveyears). If the prisoner was finishing upa longer sentence, he might be trans-ferred to such a camp to complete histerm. These low-security prisonerswere not considered dangerous.

By 1951, the prisoners had fullyexploited the forests surrounding thecamp and its satellite camps. Thesatellite camps moved farther from thebase camp to better exploit remainingforests, and the base camp was sup-plied with vehicles for transportingtimber. This development was consid-ered technologically advanced in acamp economy system that reliedoverwhelmingly on manual labor.7

Also, at this time (as part of thenational reform laws passed in 1948),the Soviet authorities implemented aplan throughout the Soviet labor campsystem to administratively separate liv-ing zones for prisoners and working–industrial facilities where the worktook place. These reforms tried toaddress the severe problems of overex-ploitation of the prisoners andimprove worker output.8

At Perm-36, the newly constructedindustrial zone contained buildings toservice the vehicles, provide workshopspace for the base camp prisoners,provide central heating to the camp,and house an office for accounting andindustrial management. In addition,on the area previously used for storingtimber near the river, a new facility wasconstructed to house workshopswhere the prisoners loaded manufac-turing planks into packing boxes.

Because there was less demand forlabor at this type of operation thanpreviously required for forestry work-

ers, the total camp populationdropped by a half, and two barrackswere no longer used. Between 1952and 1956, one barracks was convertedinto a canteen and another into a campheadquarters.

Period 2, 1956-1971: Laborcamp for Soviet officials. Between1956 and 1958, the camp was con-verted to house Soviet officials,including KGB, judicial branchauthorities, and military officialsaccused of abuses of power. Theseprisoners had to be isolated from therest of the prisoner populationbecause their lives would have beenthreatened by other prisoners. Ofcourse, there was great irony in this—that those who had been the oppres-sors of the innocent became theoppressed themselves. These officialswere soon replaced by those Sovietofficials accused of criminal activity,such as committing theft or acceptingbribes.

The Soviet officials who wereimprisoned could not (or would not)perform much labor, and the timberprocessing operation was closeddown. The building built for this usenear the river was converted into livingquarters for the soldiers who guardedthe camp. The rest of the campremained essentially unchanged.Those prisoners who could worklabored in the workshops in the indus-trial zone.

Period 3, 1972-1988: Laborcamp for dissidents and humanrights activists. Beginning in the1960s, each labor camp throughoutthe Soviet Union was identified byregion (letter code) and number. Until1972, this camp was called “UT-


389/6,” meaning it was located in thePerm region and it was timber campnumber 6. Beginning in 1972, whenSoviet officials converted the campinto a secret camp for dissidents andhuman rights activists, the camp loca-tion was camouflaged by the two-lettercode “BC.” One major concern of theSoviet officials was the ability of dissi-dents to leak information to the gener-al population and to the foreign press.The camp’s code name was one ofmany efforts to stop all such leaks.There were a total of thirty-four “nor-mal” labor camps in the Perm region,plus those two set aside for especiallydangerous criminals of the state, BC-389/35 and BC-389/36. This numberprovides the origin of the camp’s nametoday, “Perm-36.”

The creation of special camps fordissidents and human rights activists,such as Perm-35 and Perm-36,marked a new chapter in Sovietattempts to quiet opposition to thestate. The student uprisings in muchof Europe in the late 1960s and thechallenges from Soviet Bloc countries,particularly Czechoslovakia, fosteredan awakening among Soviet intellectu-als, many of whom circulated theiropposition through the Samizdat(underground press) to fellow Sovietcitizens and abroad. Their collectiveresistance created a serious problemfor the Soviets, both in terms of main-taining internal stability and promot-ing a positive image abroad.

Perm-36 was identified as the bestplace for these dissidents because ithad been very well secured while usedas a camp for high Soviet officials. Thehigh Soviet officials were transferredto a new facility at Nizhniy Taghil in

1971, and in the year that followed,the camp was again reconfigured tohouse the dissident population. Theheadquarters was reconstructed inmasonry, a new outhouse was built,the paths were paved, and a new bar-racks for guards was built outside thecamp fence. In the industrial zone, theworkshop and maintenance shed(Building 11) were reconfigured tohouse new machinery for the produc-tion of parts for domestic laundryirons. When production began some-time in 1972, the prisoners producedparts for a manufacturing plant locat-ed about 50 kilometers from the camp.Some of the prisoners worked in gen-eral camp maintenance, such as in theforge shop and in the boiler house. OnJuly 13, 1972, the first 300 prisonerswere transferred from Mordoviya.

Although the make-up of the pris-oner population at Perm-36 changedfrom year to year, about 50% had beenconvicted of anti-Soviet propaganda,about 25% had been convicted of trea-son, and about 25% had been convict-ed of Nazi collaboration during WorldWar II.

In the early 1970s, the problem ofrepeat offenders among dissidents andhuman rights activists was relativelyminor. As the decade wore on, howev-er, it became an increasing problem forthe Soviet authorities. In their searchfor a new place to provide almost com-plete isolation for the recidivists, theauthorities identified the former guardbarracks near the Perm-36 camp as anideal location. The building wasreconstructed and the immediate sur-rounding area was reinforced with aseries of barbed wire and high woodenfences topped with watchtowers in


1979. An administration building andcheckpoint was constructed, as was abarracks for the guards. On March 1,1980, the first 23 or 24 prisonersarrived. Here the prisoners experi-enced almost total isolation for ten-year terms. They lived under theharshest of conditions in crampedtwenty-four-hour-locked cells withone or three other prisoners, workedin small workshops in the same build-

ing, and exercised in small pens,closed boxes lined with metal and cov-ered with barbed wire, not much larg-er than their cells. During the courseof their term they saw only the otherprisoners in their cell and the guardswho ushered them from place to placewithin the building (Figure 2).

Perm-36 ceased operation as alabor camp, the last to close in theSoviet Union, in January 1988.


Figure 2. The guard tower at the maximum security unit. Photo by William Brookover,National Park Service.

Civic Engagementat the Gulag Museum

Over the past several years, theGulag Museum has developed a num-ber of impressive educational pro-grams for visitors to the site and forschools throughout the Perm region.

First and foremost, the GulagMuseum is a historic site. It uses a realplace to teach about the history oftotalitarianism and political repressionin the former Soviet Union. Drawingon the three major periods of signifi-cance, a rich program of sharing thecomplex history of the place and dis-cussion is presented to the site’s30,000 annual visitors.9 The museumstaff sees the site as a vehicle to teachvisitors about the darker side of theSoviet past: to understand how a pop-ulation is affected living under a totali-tarian system of government.Although they are concerned withsuch questions as “What happenedhere in this place?” they are even moreinterested in asking “How does a total-itarian state affect the individual citi-zen?” In addressing these questions toRussians today, they ask how the sys-tem of repression that existed not evena generation ago still affects Russiancitizens and all of Russia today.

The site itself possesses greatpower. Even unfurnished and in itspresent state of incomplete recon-struction, it conveys a remarkablesense of the power of the state and thevulnerability of the individual. Thelabor camp’s remote location, its Spar-tan structures, the rows of wooden andbarbed wire barriers (fully recon-structed in the maximum securityunit) all convey a powerful story even

without the narrative intervention oftour guides, exhibits, or furnishedinteriors. The museum is lucky tohave a remarkable understanding ofthe site’s history and significancealready.

The museum’s director, VictorShmyrov, has clearly articulated onekey point in developing the desiredvisitor experience: knowledge andeducation must be primary to theexperience, emotion must remain sec-ondary. As stated above, visiting theGulag Museum is a truly powerfulexperience. Visitors, particularly Rus-sians, often respond emotionally tothis experience because it brings uphighly charged feelings about thenation’s recent past. There is certainlya place for emotion and reflection inthe desired visitor experience, but itcannot be at the sake of educating thepublic about the system of politicalrepression that permeated Russiaunder the Gulag system. Visitors tothe site are encouraged to discuss,debate, and engage the subject matterintellectually as a necessary foil to theemotional reactions the place elicits.

Hard work is already paying off.The Perm regional government haspublicly acknowledged its belief thatthe presence of the museum and itseducational programs the area haspositively influenced the democraticprocess in the region. More and moreteachers want to bring their classes tothe site, and the demand for travelingexhibits on the Gulag system hassteadily increased. The museum isnow working with the regional govern-ment to amend the school curriculumto include the repressive history ofSoviet Russia and the introduction of


liberal democratic values in the nation.The museum is now collaborating

with a number of NPS sites to createan exhibit for American sites to host.The exhibit will incorporate civicengagement principles in its organiza-tion—stating questions and encourag-ing the audience to enter the conversa-tion. Formal dialogue opportunitiesand educational programs will accom-pany the exhibit to ensure that all visi-tors have an opportunity to engage thematerial.

ConclusionIt is difficult to articulate in words

the power conveyed by visiting themuseum at Perm-36. Imagine if agroup of dedicated Americans hadestablished a historic site museum at aslave auction site or plantation at theend of the Reconstruction period inthe 1870s. Imagine the power thatexperience would have had for visitorswho had recently been enslaved orowned slaves. Imagine the kinds ofdialogue it could have created. Imag-ine the potential impact of such an his-toric site in the country as it moved to

enact restrictive codes for AfricanAmericans and Jim Crow laws. Thisanalogy points to the kind of powerthe Gulag Museum at Perm-36 con-veys to Russian and international visi-tors today.

For the group of NPS profession-als, the visit had tremendous impact,even though few of us knew muchabout the Gulag system and the mil-lions of people it affected before goingon the trip. To hear first-hand fromthose who lived in and survived thesystem provides an unprecedentedopportunity for learning and greaterinternational understanding. The visitwas made all that more poignant,when the events of September 11,2001, put an exclamation point on ourexperience. The team had struggled tounderstand how an entire populationcould be controlled by fear. Afterlearning of the tragedies in New York,Washington, and Pennsylvania per-haps we had a better understanding ofjust how that can happen. Thanks tothe efforts of the Gulag Museum atPerm-36, Russia will not forget and itwill not happen again.


Endnotes1. Sources: Victor Shmyrov, the museum’s director and a professionally trained historian of 20th-cen-

tury Russian history, provided most of the detailed information about the camp’s history during inter-views with him and his staff on September 8 and 9, 2001. For contextual information, several pub-lished sources were consulted, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso-vich (New York: Bantam Books, 1963); Michael Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag: The Soviet PrisonCamp System , 1917-1934 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1993); Galina MikhailovnaIvanova, Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E.Sharpe, 2000); and Natan Sharansky, Fear No Evil (New York: Random House, 1988).

2. Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag, p. 10; Ivanova, Labor Camp Socialism, p. 12.3. Ivanova, Labor Camp Socialism, p. xv.4. Ibid., p. xv.5. Various terms have been used by the Gulag Museum staff to describe this unit of the camp, including

“extraordinarily severe camp,” “extremely severe camp,” “especially severe camp,” and “maximumsecurity camp.” All of these terms except the last sound awkward in the English language. This paperuses the term “maximum security,” even though the facility as it existed at Perm-36 provided muchharsher conditions than at any maximum security prisons in the United States.

6. Ibid., p. 111.


7. Ibid., pp. 116-117.8. Ibid., p. 109.9. This visitation figure was quoted by Shmyrov several times while visiting the U.S. in November 2002.

Although about 8,000 people actually visit the camp, 30,000 people are reached annually throughprograms, traveling exhibits, and museum activities. Visitation projections at the museum suggest thatthis number may quadruple in the next five years.

Louis P. Hutchins, National Park Service, Northeast Museum Services Center,Charlestown Navy Yard, Building I, 4th Floor, Boston, Massachusetts 02129-4543; [email protected]

Gay E. Vietzke, National Park Service, 200 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Penn-sylvania 19106; [email protected]

1

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FtRU THE GEORGE WRIGHT M Volume 19 2002< Number 4 · Dialogue Between Continents: Civic Engagement...

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