Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Slave Labor In 19

The arts is history students. You know me. Im professor april mastin we are very fortunate today to have a guest lecture president of Stony Brook University maury mcginnis. Id like to tell you a little bit about her the title of her dr. Mcginniss lecture as you can see is the shadow of slavery in public life. This topic is relevant not only to our inquiry into how the arts can be researched as a window onto the past. But also how they affect the present or in the words of James Baldwin how history does not merely refer to the past history is literally present in all we do. The research and for this lecture and the lecture itself was inspired by the students of the university of virginia who thought that the university wasnt adequately representing how the labor of enslaved people helped to create that institution. Dr. Mcginnis is a renowned scholar and cultural cultural historian of the relationship between art and politics in the colonial and antebellum south particularly the politics of slavery. Shes an awardwinning author coauthor and editor of six books including two books on this topic slaves waiting for sale abolitionist art and the american slave trade and educated in tyranny slavery at Thomas Jeffersons university. Which for which she won . The she was awarded the Chelsea Eldridge book prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum . Dr. Mcginnis received her ba at the university of virginia, and she attended Yale University where she earned a phd in art history. She is both an academic and a public scholar. Shes a lecturer and advisor a curator of exhibitions at numerous art museums and Historic Sites. And of course the sixth president of Stony Brook University, may i introduced to you president mcginnis . Well, good morning, and thank you so much professor mastin for letting me have the opportunity to come and speak with your class today. Im really thrilled to be here. I know that this semester you have been focused on what works of art architecture and objects can reveal about the past how it is that art can be an important historical document that often reveals information not found in written documents often these images and places allow us to connect to the past on an emotional level. On a human level in addition this can be frequently a way to engage a much broader audience in talking about historical issues that still have great resonance today. As scholars and historians we find ourselves at a moment when our voices when our interventions are more needed than ever. Looking at my own area of scholarship many of the contemporary topics in the headlines today Sexual Violence racialized Police Brutality mass incarceration Racial Injustice Political Polarization all have deep historical roots. Conversations about a pathway forward often require that we first grapple with the past in order to understand its lingering legacies into the present. My years in the classroom have helped me understand the ways that my research on the 19th century american self has a deep resonance with issues of the present and over the years. I have worked with Historic Sites and museums on projects that were tied to local conversations about Racial Division and injustice memory and symbolization and ultimately how to chart a path towards a more inclusive future. I would also add in my experience that such engagement has been among the most rewarding of my career. While writing books is a largely solitary pursuit the exhibitions and digital projects. Ive been involved with have been enriched by the many ideas and the many different voices at the table. In working closely with Community Worker Community Members in working with those not connected with higher education. I have come to understand what is of greatest importance to them. And how our work can have a real impact on issues that matter to them and all of my scholarship is richer for their input. So today i want to share with you two brought two projects that were intended to engage the pub public broadly by using local places and local issues that were simultaneously connected to national conversations. I have found that for many people the national and the abstract can be made more concrete emotional and tangible by connecting it to real spaces in ones local setting. To be more specific much of the United States has a history that is deeply entangled with the history of enslavement including right here on long island and throughout the north and yet in most towns and cities the physical remnants of that history have been removed a faced obliterated. Yet the shadows persist. These histories are alive in the memories of descendants. They often leave scars on the landscape and echoes that reverberate today. The works of bringing these histories forward the work of making visible that which has been obscured is often a vital step in the process of remembering reconciling and moving forward towards a more inclusive future. So the first project began in a rather standard scholarly way with a book published in 2011 by the university of chicago press. It was inspired by a series of paintings and images made by a british artist named air crow after his visit to america in the 1850s. The three images were all set in richmond, virginia. One of the largest centers of Human Trafficking in the 1850s. What is particularly remarkable about these images is that these are some of the very few images made by an artist who had himself witnessed a slave auction. As a scholar interested in the lived experience. I wanted to know what these images could tell us about the american slave trade that went beyond what the documents could also reveal about that history. You are probably most familiar with the International Slave trade. That is the trade that forcibly captured about 11 million africans and sold them into slavery in the new world about 500,000 of whom ended up in what eventually became the United States. But the american slave trade is what happened after the us ended its participation in the International Slave trade in 1808. After that a robust trade emerged that sold people from the states of the upper south especially, maryland and virginia to the states of the lower south think louisiana, mississippi, alabama. In response to the rising demand for labor as the lands of the American Southwest opened up to cotton cultivation. In this trade nearly twothirds of a Million People were sold away from their families relocated hundreds of miles away. Never to see their family members again. It is the story of how the americans south was settled. Places an objects have a way of connecting us viscerally and emotionally with the past. And so i thought that these images would prove an important window into that history. And i thought that with enough research. I might be able to figure out exactly where the painter visited. What he had seen . And i was hoping i could use those spaces to educate virginians about the horrors that had occurred there. I especially hope that i might be able to trace something of the lives of the people he represented. To understand the images. I wanted to understand what the painter had seen. And that research was like trying to piece together a complicated puzzle with many pieces missing. Directory listings newspaper listings property by property Deed Research the occasional list of people sold by traders helped me ultimately to map the part of the city where this trade took place. Helped me figure out where the jailers and the auctioneers had their places of business in 1853 when the painter was there and then i wanted to connect that to the contemporary landscape. And with that reconstructed landscape in my head and using the painters description of his visit to the city i could then figure out where crow walked. And therefore what he would have seen and through that Cultural Mapping compare richmonds experience with other cities. Looking for the lingering shadows of slavery and todays richmond proved much more elusive. As the landscape had been forever altered by the addition first of the railroad and second of the interstate. As was so often the case when interstates were added in the 1950s little heed was given to the land that either belonged to or held the history of African Americans that is certainly true enrichment as i95 tore through the area called shacobottom, which is where the traitors had their businesses. As i was starting my research the city had also begun its exploration of a place known to have served as a slave jail. Owned by a man named Robert Lumpkin who is a human trafficker for more than two decades in richmond and where that yellow is on the map. The bank above it is i95. And this is what they believed was the footprint of Robert Lumpkins jail. So they began to dig hoping to find something of this. Area that we actually had period evidence for so archaeologist matt laird and his team dug down through 15 feet of infill running into the remnants of the creek that used to flow there and you can see the constant flooding they had to contend with what they found were the footings of the original buildings this unbelievable courtyard that was around the buildings and where the enslaved that were held in this jail for days or weeks or months before they were sold awaited their fate. It allowed us ultimately to three dimensionally reconstruct what the lumpkin must have been like the only memorial in the city of richmond in 2011. Was this monument . Called the reconciliation statue. Which was intended to connect the city of richmond with liverpool and benin. But that revealed the confusion the city had about what slave trade had taken place there. Because when richmonders heard slave trade, they thought the International Slave trade and yet richmond was not even really a town in 1808 when that slave trade ended. The story of Human Trafficking enrichment is about the citys role in the american slave trade and a statue connecting richmond to new orleans and natchez mississippi would be more precise. Early on in the research from my book. I also got involved in conversations about the role. Of the slave trade in the citys history and the power of place in bearing witness to that story. Other than this statue and the archaeological excavation that was soon reburied the city of richmond had a very different memorial landscape. In fact richmond the capital of the confederacy had a public landscape dominated by the very substantial presence of the lost cause a presence that included multiple civil war monuments and it was kept alive by the lived presence of those who claimed heritage. It quickly became evident to me that i had an opportunity and i would say even an obligation to find a way for this story to become accessible and known to richmonders. I was under no. Illusion that they would read my book so i found a partner and began working on an exhibition. As my book had centered on exploring both the material experience of those forced into the trade and the way in which the visual was harnessed to further the abolitionist cause i believed that an exhibition could help the city of richmond acknowledge confront and understand the citys role in Human Trafficking in the 19th century. My partner was the library of virginia the state archives and a place willing to take on an exhibition that was expected to be quite controversial given the reluctance of those in power to talk honestly about the cities slave trading past. So as part of our planning the library organized focus groups, and we invited educational Leaders Church leaders members of the city council and civic activists and over multiple meetings asked for their input on our plans. Richmond was in the middle of the sesquicentennial remembrance of the civil war. And in some cities like, charleston, south carolina. The anniversary of the civil war was initially greeted as it had been 50 years earlier at the time of the centennial. With visions of hoop skirts moonlight and magnolias and the ghost of Scarlett Ohara and the power of gone with the wind was not far from these celebrations. We wanted the images. Painted by aircrow to play an Important Role in the exhibit and to structure our community conversations, we showed them crows painting. And other artifacts and documents that we expected to include in the exhibition. What we quickly learned was that the images and the intended meanings from the 19th century did not convey to modern audiences. We also learned quickly how little trust the Africanamerican Community had that a state agency. Would be willing to tell such an important story with honesty. It was a story they had known for decades on an emotional level the ripping apart of families. But it had so long been obliterated from the landscape and from history books and denied by those in power that they were suspicious how we would handle it. They were our partners and they guided us in finding ways to tell this raw and powerful story and they remained our important partners as the project progressed. This was a project that we worked on for three years. It was in parttime to be part of the citys reckoning with the hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary american civil war. Time to coincide with the end of the war. And before our exhibition opened the city became laser focused on the neighborhood of richmond slave trade because the then mayor proposed a Significant Development for the land in chaco bottom. The proposal included plans for a museum over the lumpkin site but one that would be paid for in part by money from commercial development. That would include a baseball stadium for the minor League Richmond team hotels and other commercial and residential structures. Newspaper articles and Community Open forums tried to educate richmonders on this history as history that had been wiped from the landscape. And i was one of many who contributed by. Trying to help make sure richmonders understood the history. That was at stake here. Very quickly opposition arose opposed to putting a baseball park. So close to the site of human suffering. And when the exhibition opened this was still a lively debated topic. The exhibition itself was viewed by tens of thousands more that had ever been to an exhibit at the library before. Many many more than bought my book and afterwards a traveling version was made available to the libraries throughout the state. The library of virginia had voluminous records related to the slave trade documents and artifacts that amply demonstrate the scale of the trade to those who might still have tried to deny. Its scale in richmond the city that was by the 1840s and 50s the largest slave trading city in the upper south and which was slave trading was the largest economic industry in the city in the period. And we wanted to connect. The visitors of the exhibit through more than just paper. And crows images and his visit to the city where the best way to do that. So just as images in the 19th century had been powerful in the fight against slavery. So too were images and artifacts in telling that history today. We wanted to help modern audiences connect with those images. And so i worked with a group of scholars at the university of richmond and the digital scholars lab. To try to reconstruct richmond in 1853. Because by now this area of richmond modern richmond is offices and skyscrapers and the interstate a very modern landscape so we knew what we used about real buildings and this is a photograph of one of the longest used auction houses where people were sold. And then to use that as a basis to recreate richmond in 1853 the richmond that air crow visited. So we created multiple interactive exhibits many with voice recordings reading from period documents others with interactives explaining details from images and in one short video that i want to show you. It was our sort of culmination if you were going to watch three minutes at the exhibit this hopefully helped pull it all together and its drawn from what the artist wrote about his what he had seen in richmond he when he was there. So let me play this. On a cold, march day in 1853 air crow arrived at the Railroad Depot on broad street he made his way past the Virginia State capitol to his lodgings at the American Hotel on main street. The third of march 1853 is a date. Well imprinted on my memory. I was sitting at an early breakfast by myself reading the able to conducted local newspaper. It was not however the leaders or politics which attracted my eye so much as the advertisement columns containing the announcements of slave sales some of which were to take place that morning in wall street close at hand at 11 oclock. Arming myself with a pencil and a slip or two of paper and putting these carefully into my pocket. I sallied forth into the high street and walked some hundreds of yards down its steep declivity. I turned up one of the narrow stallions of the many of butting upon the high street. The sales take place here with indoors upon the ground floor of the houses four in number. Outside the doors are hung small garish flags of blood red. Upon which are pinned small manuscript descriptions of the to be successively disposed of once on wall street crow went into the room of the first auction taking place. Probably in the room of pulliam and davis. The auction was already underway when he arrived. On the platform the deale