Quick thoughts on the Removal of Stonewall Jackson on Monument Ave.

Down goes Jackson, down goes Jackson!

So, when I “wore a younger man’s clothes” I was a grad student in Richmond working on a degree and as a seasonal and part-time ranger for the Richmond National Battlefield Park. For some extra money, I took a job one day-per-week giving bus tours to tourists, visiting the major sites and battlefields around Richmond. Monument Avenue was of course the centerpiece of the tour, so I have visited and given interpretation of the monuments there many, many times.

I watched online today as the process of taking down the statues began. Honestly, even though we’ve known this was coming, I am feeling kind of stunned. Too stunned to have anything profound or interesting to say about it.

Today’s target was Stonewall Jackson. I’m guessing the others will soon follow. Where they are going is unclear for now, except that they will be stored somewhere until all the legal and financial matters connected with their removal can be worked out.

I’ve been on record in the past as favoring the contextualization of these and other rebel monuments, but as I indicated in a recent post, I think that ship has sailed. I now believe these things have got to continuing coming down from their places of honor. And I have enjoyed watching it happen.

Still, I think they should not be destroyed or hidden away forever. I’d love to see them eventually re-emerge at historic sites or places where they can be brought down off their pedestals (literally and figuratively) and interpreted.

I doubt it’ll ever happen, but I think there would be real value in interpreting these statues, from the cultural forces of the Lost Cause movement that erected them, to the cultural forces of the Black Lives Matter movement that got them dismantled. That’s a darn good and important story to tell.

In my mind’s eye, I see the Lee statue (not on a pedestal) out on the Malvern Hill battlefield, (site of where his characteristically aggressive battlefield tactics led to the slaughter of thousands of Confederate soldiers in a doomed assault). J.E.B Stuart and Jefferson Davis would fit nicely near their graves in Hollywood cemetery. I see Stonewall, at his death site, which is preserved and interpreted by the National Park Service, or perhaps behind his home in Lexington, Virginia.

Perhaps one day.

But for now, I’m going to be stuck with the image of a large crowd that watched and cheered, and endured a steady rainstorm as Stonewall was lifted off his pedestal. It was definitely surreal that the rain began almost at the moment when Jackson was lifted, and it thundered as he was brought down to applause.

Once he was down, most of the crowd headed home to get dry. But there was a young rain soaked black woman berating folks for leaving before Jackson was hauled away. A local news crew caught her on camera as she shouted, “They said we couldn’t accomplish anything with these protests. Well, just look!  And I’m staying out here until this is finished, because my ancestors were out here picking cotton, even in the rain. They didn’t have the option to go up to the big house to get dry!”

Wow.

And suddenly I am reminded, that in all those bus tours I gave on Monument Avenue, I never once had a black passenger.

#BLM

My Top Ten “Creature Features!”

Just for fun, a couple of years ago I posted a list of my “Top Ten Spook Movies.” Ever since it went up it has been among my most viewed posts and consistently one with the longest legs (it still continues to get many views, especially this time of year). So I thought this Halloween I would follow it up with a list of my favorite “Creature Features.”

First the disclaimers: I admit I cheated here in my rankings, deciding to rank the monsters themselves instead of the movies, that way I could get more films on the list before naming my favorite of each type. The majority of the creatures listed here are the staples of the 1930s and 40s iconic monster movies from Universal Pictures, but the others are no less famous. To me, monsters require the viewer to suspend their disbelief even more so than with ghosts, so creature films always seem to blend more easily with comedy (especially the zombies). Thus one might feel I have tainted the list with too many films that play for laughs. So be it.

Further, and related to that, you won’t find brilliant movies such as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Alien, or Aliens on this list, because those films are operating on a much higher level than are the more campy and fun films I consider to be “creature features.”

Lastly, while I like my ghost movies with few special effects, relying more on the right combo of story, characters, camera angles and lighting, creature features by nature have to be more reliant on special effects. Yet, I am not a big fan of either gore or over-the-top computer generated imagery (CGI), so you’ll find my list is made up of classic films with good old-fashioned special effects and still often reliant on using the viewer’s own mind to create the chills and thrills.

So, without further adieu, here are my “Top Ten Creature Features,” all in carefully considered descending order and from the perspective of an historian and a film history buff.

10. The Mummy. The original 1932 film from Universal starring Boris Karloff was inspired by the 1922 opening of King Tut’s tomb and the alleged curse that killed ten of the crypt’s invaders within ten years.

Karloff

(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself helped to promote the curse’s supposed legitimacy). The scene in which a long dead Egyptian high priest very slowly returns to life, leaving a witness laughing in hysterical fear, is still pretty chilling.

Go ahead and hate my choice, but there are far worse things than watching these two good-looking people raid Egyptian tombs.

But at the sake of sounding sacrilegious to true film buffs, I have to admit that my favorite mummy film is 1999’s The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. Yep, I said it. True, it is more action/adventure than it is “creature feature,” the mummy ironically has way less charisma than Karloff’s understated version, the comedic elements are strained, and the film is very overloaded with bad 1990’s CGI.  As Roger Ebert noted, “There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it.” What I can say in its favor, however, is that the two leads are perfectly and charmingly matched,  the opening scene, which establishes the legendary curse, is near brilliant, and the climactic scene when the high priest’s soul is taken away for eternal damnation, is still bone-chillingly cool.

9. The Invisible Man. There is only one way to go here, and that is with the original 1933 Universal version based fairly closely on the H.G Wells novel and directed by the legendary James Whales.

Claude Rains

Claude Rains is one of the greatest character actors that ever blessed a Hollywood sound stage, and he puts on a performance here (in his first American film) that carries the whole thing, although you literally never see his face until the very last moments! This one is played for some laughs (“here we go gathering the nuts in May!”), but there are some real chills as the mad scientist descends into sheer lunacy, and the special effects are still pretty amazing considering the limitations of the 1930s.

8. The Wolf Man. OK, if you don’t think Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” is one of the hippest songs ever written (and is there a better opening line?) I do not know how to relate to you.

Chaney Jr.

The Lon Chaney the song references is of course the legendary “man of a thousand faces” that brought to life so many scary characters in the films of the 1920s and 30s, such as 1925’s Phantom of the Opera (which would have been #11 had this list been longer) and Quasimodo from 1923’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Lon Chaney Jr. the song also references is of course the son of the great actor who went on to a good career of his own in horror films, most famously 1941’s The Wolf Man (which also starred Claude Rains). It is a solid film, tapping into a folklore that is actually centuries old and with a history not unlike that of witchcraft, and features some of the horror genre’s best fog-infested atmospheric scenes (and yes, “his hair was perfect”). It is weakened however by Chaney’s poor acting (I hate to say that). But I have to admit I like my wolf man in more comedic settings, such as the 1980s classic, Teen Wolf, starring Michael J. Fox (Yep. Listen, if those basketball scenes do not crack you up, I don’t know what to say about your sense of humor), and Stephen King’s Silver Bullet (with Corey Haim and Gary Busey, I mean come, on, what an 80s combo!) As Roger Ebert noted, Silver Bullet “is either the worst movie ever made from a Stephen King story, or the funniest.”) But I especially love John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London (1981), my vote for the best of the wolf man movies. The film is just the right mix of humor (yes, that’s the dude from the old Dr. Pepper commercials) and very real horror. The special effects in the transformation scenes are still pretty amazing. There’s no way any CGI has ever topped it. “Huh! Draw blood.”

7. The Thing. Here’s one of only two aliens to make my list, both of which are products of the early Cold War and how things coming from out of the sky to destroy us were oft used film metaphors for our fear of Soviet bombs and/or commie spies within our midst. That trope led to many comically bad 1950s sci-fi movies, and some that are actually pretty good. Howard Hawks’s The Thing From Another World (1951) is one of the best, involving a crashed saucer, an alien recovered from the ship, and the threat it poses to Air Force crewman in an isolated artic base. (Yes, that is Gunsmoke’s James Arness as The Thing, but you can’t tell it).

Confronting The Thing

James Carpenter remade the film in 1982, and it isn’t bad and actually closer to the original story because the creature can assume the characteristics of other living things around it. But it depends too much on special effects and “gotcha!” jump scares. The original is much more akin to a good ghost movie, because it is dependent on characters, lighting, and mood created by effective cinematography. (The scene where they figure out the shape of the crashed ship is awesome, especially if you get the chance to see it on a big screen). And don’t forget the film’s final warning: “Tell this to everybody, wherever they are. Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!”

6. The Living Dead. Ah, zombies. I must admit, I get a kick out zombie films, and that started one night in the mid 1980s when I stayed up extra late one Halloween night and caught a TV airing of the 1968 George Romero cult classic, Night of the Living Dead. Based loosely on the 1954 novel, I am Legend, the film forever changed the depiction of zombies in film. Audiences had long been exposed to reanimated corpses, 1932’s White Zombie featuring Bela Lugosi for instance, a truly creepy and disturbing film set in Haiti. Or especially the Val Lewton classic, I Walked with a Zombie (1943). (See them both. Trust me. Lewton’s films in particular are masterpieces in the use of shadows and sound to create chilling atmospherics). In such films zombies were definitely creepy, but they were essentially catatonic, tied to voodoo practices, controlled by a master, and in the case of the Lewton film, basically harmless. In Romero’s hands, however, they became flesh-eating ghouls that can’t be overcome because of their sheer numbers and relentlessness. Yes, you can take them out by destroying the head, but there are always more. And more. And more. I still think they work best in comedies (with the exception of the first few seasons of AMC’s The Walking Dead—man, what has happened to that once great show?), such as Zombieland (2009), the recent The Dead Don’t Die (2019), and by far the best of the comedies, Shaun of the Dead (2004). But in the end, my favorite is still Night of The Living Dead, which was confirmed when I got to see it on the big screen last Halloween. You can’t beat its slow burn beginnings (“they’re coming to get you, Barbara”) and the shocking ending that broke the rules of how horror movies are supposed to end. And come on, it features the best-delivered line of any creature feature movie:

And now on to the Top Five!

5. The Blob. Here’s the other alien to make the list, and this one is way more campy and fun, and yet even creepier. A very young Steve McQueen makes his film debut (as Steven McQueen) alongside the actress that played Helen Crump in The Andy Griffith Show, Aneta Corsaut, in 1958’s The Blob. The two are a couple of middle class teens in suburban 1950s America, suffering from all the same angst as the teens in 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause (judgmental cops, WWII-generation parents and adults that can’t relate to or trust the troubled youth), except in this film the event that finally unites the divided generations is not the tragic shooting of one teen, it’s a gelatinous blob from outer space that devours townspeople one-by-one, growing ever larger with each victim it consumes. Awesome. There’s some truly iconic scenes in this film (do yourself a favor and skip the 1988 remake), especially involving the movie theater, and it was filmed in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (yes, that Valley Forge) in deeply rich and beautiful colors (looks great on Blu-Ray). It’s a ton of campy fun, with the Burt Bacharach title song, “Beware of the Blob,” setting the perfect stage. And remember, we are only safe “as long as the Arctic stays cold.”

4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Starting in 1908, there have been many movie and TV adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 critique of Victorian era hypocrisy and his examination of humankind’s duality. In many ways, the work is classic Freudian theory, but has made for some darn good horror. The most recognized version is the 1941 film starring Spencer Tracy, but trust me, the best is the 1931 version starring Fredric March. It’s a pre-code film, when Hollywood was able to get away with things that self-censorship wouldn’t allow in 1941. At its heart, this story is about sexual lust, and the 1931 version can tap into that way more openly than can the 1941 film. But that’s not the only thing that makes it better; the techniques and lighting used to achieve the transformation scenes are downright creepy and amazing, all the more so because of how subtle and yet still stunning they are. You’ll be hard-pressed to figure out how they did it, and it is way more convincing than any CGI could be. Further, while Tracy was an amazing actor, Frederic March’s performance in the role is far superior. The film captures you right away, with opening shots that are filmed to put the audience into Dr. Jekyll’s point-of view. It’ll mesmerize you within just the first few minutes of the film. It’s no wonder than when the 1941 version came out the studio tried to round up and destroy prints of the 1931 version. Thank goodness that attempt failed.

And now the Top Three!

3. King Kong. All hail the mighty Kong. I have a soft spot for the King because he was one of the first things that drew me to classic movies when I was a young kid. I was probably only 8 or maybe 10 years old when I first saw him airing on TV, and I was so transfixed that I went to my school library to find a book on how he was brought to life. Luckily, I found one (and the film section that I revisited many times) and learned about filmmaker Merian C. Cooper’s lifetime obsession with gorillas and the dangers and wonders of filming in the jungle. Released in 1933, King Kong follows a fictional director and his crew (based on Cooper and his cohorts themselves) famous for making the type of jungle documentaries that audiences at the time were used to actually seeing in theaters. What they find on the long lost Skull Island is well known, so it needs no explanation from me here. For me, the scene in which the native villagers (depicted in ways reflecting the repugnant racist stereotypes of the era) offer up a sacrifice to Kong, is the film’s most chilling moment (it’s use of sound is mesmerizing), more so than even Kong’s fights with other animals and his New York rampage. There have of course been remakes, in 1976, 2005, and 2017, for instance, with Peter Jackson’s 2005 version being the best of those subsequent films. Yet, as good as that movie admittedly was, I didn’t like how Ann Darrow stopped fearing Kong and connected with him, and I feel the CGI takes away the dreamlike quality that the original achieved because of its primitive yet highly effective special effects. The stop-motion animation, gorgeous matte paintings, and rear projection techniques give the film a surreal quality that I think is still fascinating to look upon, especially during his fight with the tyrannosaurus and when he surveys his kingdom from atop his mountain top. As Roger Ebert wrote about the dinosaur fight scene, “there is a moment when he forces its jaws apart, and the bones crack, and blood drips from the gaping throat, and something immediate happens that is hard to duplicate on any computer.” Damn right. When I want to see the King, I go to the original.

2. Frankenstein’s Monster (and his bride). Ok, you all know that Frankenstein isn’t the monster, he’s the doctor. The original story was conceived by Mary Shelley on a dark, cold night when she and her travel companions sat around a gothic fireplace and challenged each other to come up with the best horror story. Her gruesome tale of a doctor that tries to reanimate corpses via electricity/galvanism, only to create a destructive monster, was published in 1818 (she was 21 at the time) and is a classic that reads as a Romantic-era critique of the Industrial Revolution. There have been a large number of adaptations and derivatives of the story, but in my mind you need only deal with four of them. The starting point is of course the 1931 Universal pictures production, Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff as the monster.

Karloff

It’s brilliant in creating atmospheric mood, particularly in the grave robbing scene and the gorgeous reanimation sequences. And yet it was bested four years later by James Whales’s masterpiece, Bride of Frankenstein. One of my favorite character actors of all time is Elsa Lanchester (she was always perfect in quirky or downright strange roles), and she does double duty in the film, playing both Mary Shelley in an interesting prologue, and the bride in the film’s finale.

The enchanting Lanchester, as the Bride

But she’s only in the film a mere matter of minutes, as the real stars of the show are Karloff and Colin Clive (as the doctor), the special effects, and most especially, the set/art designers. Forget all the high brow film critiques that have dissected the film from just about every angle looking for hidden imagery and subtext, and just enjoy it for what it is; a great creature feature. (Dr. Praetorious is way creepier than the monster). After that, you’ll need to catch 1939’s Son of Frankenstein. It’s a major step down in quality, but not bad. Yet the real reason to see it is so that you can fully appreciate my choice for the best Frankenstein movie: Mel Brooks’ 1974, Young Frankenstein. The brilliant comedy aside, the film is equal parts spoof and loving homage to the three other films noted here, and really, all of the 1930s Universal monster flicks. A little while ago, my friends and I were discussing what comedy movies we consider to be cinematic masterpieces, and this was my top choice. Not only is it funny, but Brooks hits every right film-making note on what made the Universal monster movies so good, from lighting, to set design (many of the machines are the actual ones from the original films), to the use of sound and shadows to create the perfect atmosphere. It’s funny because it gets everything so darn right (and wow, what a great cast). Do yourself a favor and watch all four of these films as a marathon (none of them is very long), and then don’t forget to “PUT. ZE CANDLE. BACK.”

And at number one:

1. Dracula (and his various vampire brethren). Could there ever be any doubt who would be #1? His origins go way further back than any other creature, with precursors in one form or another in most ancient cultures. The most immediate vampire folklore dates to the early 18th century, however. Dracula himself did not emerge until Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, setting most of our current traditions about vampires, their strengths, and their weaknesses. He hit the stage that same year, and then found his way to movie screens by 1921.

Schreck as “Orlock”

The first real starting place, of course, is 1922’s unauthorized film adaptation, F.W. Murnau’s German expressionist silent film Nosferatu, featuring Max Schreck as Count Orlock. It is a super strange film that will give you the willies, all the more so because of its surreal settings, darkened edges, and jerky shutter speeds. As Ebert notes, “Its eerie power only increases with age. Watching it, we don’t think about screenplays or special effects. We think: This movie believes in vampires.” Then of course there is the film that Tod Browning directed for Universal, 1931’s Dracula, featuring Bela Lugosi in his career-defining role and the film that kicked off Universal’s decade of horror film dominance.

Lugosi as Count Dracula

As perfect as Lugosi is in the film (a role he played on stage even though at the time he could barely speak English), to me the unsung heroes are actors Edward Van Sloan and Dwight Frye (who were also in the Frankenstein films) as Van Helsing and Renfield. (Lugosi and Sloan’s standoff scene, as Dracula comes ever-so-close to getting Van Helsing under his spell, is my favorite moment). Lugosi played Dracula many other times, of course, but don’t fail to catch him in Mark of the Vampire (1935) where he plays another vampire. Anyone that gives away the film’s twist should be shot (or bitten), but this one stands out mostly for some super creepy use of sound, with a strange, unexplained low buzz/humming sound that will go right down your spine every time you hear it.

The 1931 blockbuster Dracula was just the beginning of the Count’s never-ending life in films, and there are many that I like, most especially The Horror of Dracula (1958) from the UK’s Hammer Films and featuring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing (LOVE that ending). I even really enjoy the much-maligned Francis Ford Coppola film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), with its scene of the undead Lucy returning to her tomb (after a night of gorging on babies) sticking with me in my subsequent nightmares. (I’ll probably see her again tonight after thinking about it).

Lucy’s return in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

I also enjoy more campy vampire films such as Roman Polanski’s 1967 The Fearless Vampire Killers (all the creepier because it features Sharon Tate only two years before her brutal murder), as well as 1980s classics Fright Night and especially The Lost Boys (wow, Corey Haim made this essay twice). Young Kiefer Sutherland was a sinister vampire in Lost Boys, and I love how effectively they used music from The Doors and Jim Morrison’s image.

But listen up, I am about to give you the best advice from this entire essay (consider it your reward for sticking with me this long). One night, set yourself down to watch Nosferatu and then follow it up immediately with Shadow of the Vampire (2001). Never heard of it? It stars John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, and Cary Elwes in a film with an incredible premise. It tells the story of the making of Nosferatu, with the brilliant premise that Max Schreck was so good playing a vampire because he actually was a vampire.

Dafoe, playing Schreck, playing Orlock

The two films fit together so well that you’ll easily convince yourself that you’re watching a documentary about Nosferatu’s filming, with the impact of making both films stay with you for a long time afterwards. Just trust me on this one.

And so there you have it! My Top Ten “Creature Features!” All of these films are readily available and streaming on many services, from Netflix, to Prime, to Vudu, all with very reasonable rental rates or even sometimes free (Vudu has Nosferatu for a 2.99, and Shadow of the Vampire for free. You can thank me later). You’ve probably already seen most of these, but see them again and make a great Halloween night of it!

And remember,  “There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”

Glory is back on the big screen (2 days only)! Glory Hallelujah!

So today (July 21st, 2019) Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies are screening the movie Glory on the big screen once again in celebration of its 30th anniversary.  It will also play again on Wednesday, July 24th. Check at the Fathom Events website to see where it is playing in your town so that you don’t miss the chance to see this fantastic movie once again up on the big screen, especially if you didn’t catch it way back in 1989. EVERY movie is better on the big screen.

I have a special connection to this film, as in many ways it changed my life and set my career trajectory. Back in 2015, Christian McWhirter (historian at the Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum) asked me to write an essay about the movie for his website, Civil War Pop. I eagerly agreed, arguing that the movie was the best Civil War movie yet to be made.

I think it still is. Here’s the review I wrote in 2015 (with some slight edits):

Seeing Glory was a watershed event in my life and my career is largely a result of it. I bet I’m not the only one.

Growing up in Alabama, Confederate iconography surrounded me. Yet despite my love of history I was not especially drawn to the Civil War. I saw much of Roots (1977) when it originally aired, but I was just a kid.  As a young teen, the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982) and North and South (1985) both sparked a bit of curiosity in the Civil War, but did not lead to a sustained interest. I watched Gone with the Wind (1939) on VHS when I was in high school and loved it, but mostly because I fell in love with Vivian Leigh (I still am).

I understood the South’s desire to maintain slavery caused the Civil War. (Yes, it is possible to have learned that even in an Alabama public school in the ’70s and ’80s.) Still, that meant little to me. Despite my exposure to Roots, I reflected little on the injustice and evils of slavery. What little interest I had in the Civil War involved the South’s valiant struggle against great odds, my Confederate ancestors, and the heroic example of Robert E. Lee.

But Glory changed all that.

In 1985 (around the time I fell in love with Vivian and Patrick Swayze was breaking hearts in North and South), acclaimed producer Freddie Fields and screenwriter Kevin Jarre were on business in Boston. The story goes that they stumbled upon the magnificent Augustus Saint-Gaudens bronze relief monument that was dedicated in 1897 on the Boston Commons to honor Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first regiment of black troops raised from a northern state. Its stunning depiction of the regiment marching off to war captivated the two men, and both expressed surprise that blacks had fought in the Civil War.

We can forgive their reaction. This was a time when popular culture had long-since forgotten black Union soldiers. Perhaps the most indelible images many had of African Americans in the Civil War at all were the slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind. Despite the war’s liberation possibilities, Mammy, Pork, and Prissy loyally serve Scarlett, and Big Sam is shown going off with other slaves to dig Confederate fortifications, promising to stop the Yankees.

Gone with the Wind’s “loyal slaves”

These scenes engrained the Lost Cause depiction of “faithful” wartime slaves into America’s collective memory. Thus, Jarre and Fields were hardly alone in their ignorance as they viewed the monument.

Besides the stunning sculpture, Saint-Gaudens’s masterpiece includes a long inscription providing a broad overview of Shaw and the regiment’s sacrifices, obstacles, and legacy. If you’ve seen it, you know that it is practically an outline of what became Glory. Jarre and Fields immediately saw the potential for a great film from a largely unknown story.

Others were involved in getting the film made. One was Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet, who’d written a book on the monument and grown up knowing members of Shaw’s family.  Kirstein’s work was heavily indebted to Peter Burchard’s regimental history, One Gallant Rush (1965). Soon, Jarre, Fields, Kirstein, and Burchard collaborated. Jarre wrote the original screenplay, and Tri-Star Pictures (a new studio that pooled the resources of Columbia, CBS, and HBO) committed to the project.

The original script focused largely on depicting a transformation in Shaw. Early scenes painted him as indifferent to abolitionism despite being the son of prominent and wealthy abolitionists. (This is only slightly inaccurate.

The real Robert G. Shaw

As a young and handsome man, Shaw had many other interests besides abolitionism, and thus he came across as indifferent in comparison to his parents.) Providing more background on Shaw, the script featured a ridiculous encounter with John Brown in which the zealot castigated him for his lack of abolitionist fervor. Thankfully, Peter Burchard convinced Jarre to dump such scenes, focusing a bit less on Shaw.

The result fit the formula of most war films (meet the soldiers, see them bond through training, watch them fight), complete with a stereotypically diverse group of comrades played by such gifted actors as Morgan Freeman and Andre Braugher. Besides Shaw, the men are composite characters, which is frustrating since the regiment contained individuals who’s lives Jarre could’ve easily researched: Frederick Douglass’s two sons and Medal of Honor winner William H. Carney, for example.

It’s also typical in that although largely an African-American story, it places a white hero (Matthew Broderick’s Shaw) at the center, which sadly was standard practice for Hollywood’s historical epics until recent movies like Selma and 12 Years a Slave. Yet if not for Burchard’s script intervention, it could have been worse. Further, without the Shaw focus, in the 1980s it would have been near impossible to find a major studio to produce the film. It is also undeniable that Shaw’s leadership was important to the regiment’s success.

The film’s biggest inaccuracy is that it depicts the regiment as comprised mostly of fugitive slaves, while in truth 80% of the men were northern free blacks. Yet this too is pardonable, because the film tells a larger story than just that of the 54th. It is about all African American men that served in the United States army during the Civil War, a large percentage of which had fled from slavery.

Another distortion is the whipping scene. While it’s true that Shaw insisted on strict discipline and meted out harsh punishments, the character Trip’s AWOL expedition to find shoes would not have involved flogging—a punishment that was outlawed by that time.

However, the scene is one of the film’s best punches, teaching an important historical lesson. Trip (Denzel Washington) has his back exposed, revealing horrific scars indicating a lifetime of resistance to master control, and yet also reminding audiences of slavery’s brutality. He then haughtily flips off his shirt, eyes Shaw and spits defiantly, and manfully readies himself for the blows. As the lashes are laid on, director Edward Zwick’s camera slowly zooms on Trip’s face and we watch in agony as he remains defiant even as each stroke takes an increasingly painful toil.  When this hardened and resistant man finally breaks, it’s in the form of a quivering face and a tear sliding down his cheek.  The whole scene conveys more about slave resistance than we’ve seen even in more recent films. (It’s also one of the most brilliant scenes by an actor using only his face, and I believe it alone won Washington his first Oscar).

There are several other forgivable inaccuracies, but as a whole the film is solid history.  It becomes clear that at a time when few whites believed that blacks could be effective soldiers, Shaw was intent on proving them wrong by taking the 54th’s training seriously. Glory accurately reveals that if captured, the soldiers risked enslavement, and the officers risked a death sentence, yet they heroically remained committed. As seen in the movie, Shaw was impressed by how quickly and readily the men learned, and his respect for them grew accordingly. The film reveals the racism the men encountered from white northern soldiers and a Congress that denied them full pay. Yet, many white soldiers’ opinions about black soldiers evolved during the war, a dynamic captured well in one particularly moving scene near the end of the film.

It’s here in the third act that Glory is the most impressive, as the men are finally allowed in combat. The night before their largest battle, we watch the men in a religious gathering, and it’s a moving and particularly accurate depiction of slave “shout” songs and worship. It is also true that Shaw sensed his impending death, and yet was focused on what his regiment’s actions could accomplish for the reputation of black soldiers and their race. The final battle scene is stunning and largely true to eyewitness accounts of the attack on Fort Wagner, including Shaw’s last moments.

I was unaware of all these accuracies when I saw it as a college student in 1989, I was just engrossed in a great movie that hooked me immediately with its realistic depiction of Antietam. Yet as I sat in the theater, something slowly changed in me. I recall fighting my own tears during the whipping scene and thinking “there was something bigger going on in that war than the heroics of Lee’s army.” My heart soared when Morgan Freeman announced proudly, “we runaway slaves, but we come back fighting men!”

I still can’t watch the movie without getting emotional during the religious shout when Trip says, “We men, ain’t we? We men.” For me, this is the climax of Glory, and what the whole damn thing is about: men fighting against slavery, racism, and a culture (both North and South) that insisted they were less than human, fit only for manual labor, and not deserving of citizenship. No, they demonstrated by their actions, they were men, willing to “go down, standing up” against their oppressors. It’s powerful stuff.

The gut-wrenchingly realistic and beautifully filmed final battle is more the movie’s coda than its climax. Yet it caused the moment when I knew that my perception of the Civil War had been forever altered. When the rebel flag came up over Fort Wagner indicating that the northern attack had failed, I palpably felt my heart sink in pain. From that moment, my attitude about the Confederacy changed. The good guys had not won that day.

After seeing the film, the Civil War became my passion. I devoured the works of Shelby Foote, James McPherson, and Bruce Catton, but was always drawn back to the African-American perspective of the war as a fight for freedom and citizenship rights. Soon after, I became a ranger at Richmond National Battlefield Park, working on the battlefields of the Peninsula Campaign. This experience, combined with my interest in black participation in the war, led to a graduate school seminar paper, a master’s thesis, a PhD dissertation, and ultimately my book, The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation (which I am proud to say won the Wiley Silver Award–now if I could just get a filmmaker interested in it).

But I’m not alone. Due in part to the fact that Glory sparked popular interest in African-American soldiers, scholars have dug deep in the archives and explored many angles of the black Civil War experience, black reenactors have multiplied and educated the public, monuments have been dedicated, and there is now an African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in DC. Few today would be surprised to discover that African Americans were in the Civil War. We’ve become generally aware that freedom was not bestowed on blacks, they fought and died for it.

There are other historians with similar stories as mine, and it’s testament to the power of popular and pubic history. A monument inspired the filmmakers, and their resulting movie caused a shift in historiography (few can make such a claim). Hollywood often gets history wrong, and this film has significant flaws. But Glory inspired a generation of historians, got us asking different questions, and thus is still the best Civil War movie ever made.

Additional Dispatches:

* The film depicts Shaw’s acceptance of command of the 54th as a quick decision with only slight hesitance. In fact, he originally turned down the offer, but changed his mind after weeks of reflection.

* Completely missing is that just before going off to war with the 54th, Shaw quickly married his fiancée despite his mother’s objections. He did so largely because he felt that given the risk of what would happen to him if captured, he would not survive the war.

* Frederick Douglass is depicted in a very brief moment near the start of the film in a scene that does little justice to the role he played in the recruitment of the 54th and the sacrifice he made in sending his two sons off to war in the regiment.

* The movie’s characterization of Colonel James Montgomery is a bit unfair, but the scene of his burning of Darien, Georgia, is accurate, including his sadistic promise to eliminate secessionists “like the Jews of old.” The line is as recorded in Shaw’s personal letters.

* Medal of Honor winner William H. Carney won the award for his gallantry in bringing the American flag back from the doomed attack on Wagner.  As noted, he’s not a character in the film, but during the thick of the battle scene, there is a quick shot of a soldier standing defiantly on the fort’s wall waving the flag. I like to think it’s Carney.

* The film shows a group of reporters gathered on a knoll to get the “best seat in the house” to view the attack on Wagner. This is accurate, and it’s clear the filmmakers used much of the reporters’ eyewitness details in staging the battle scene, making it all the more meaningful when Shaw tells one of them, “if I should fall, remember what you see here.”

* A fair criticism of the film is that it appears that the entire 54th was destroyed at Wagner. In truth, they continued their service until the end of the war, winning more fame at the Battle of Olustee.

* Does it mention slavery? Obviously so. As indicated above, the whipping scene says much about the institution’s brutality and slave resistance, and the religious shout meeting is highly accurate and reveals much about slave survival tactics.

I Taught a Class on Lincoln, Here’s What He Taught Me

For years, University of Alabama Associate Professor Lawrence F. Kohl (author of the brilliant and historiographically important The Politics of Individualism)  taught a popular class on the life of Abraham Lincoln as an intense, three week, upper level undergrad course every May. When he retired, one of his former students, Rachel K. Deale, took it over for one summer before becoming an Assistant Professor at Barton College. When she left, I was determined to keep the unique class going.

Turns out it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my 20+ years of college teaching. It rejuvenated me.

I’ve always loved my job and wake up every morning excited to get to do it (yes, I know I’m lucky). But this course was special. Like Dr. Deale, I chose to teach it as a full month course in June, meeting for one hour and 45 minutes every day of the week. That made for a busy month, but an extremely fun one hanging out with Abe and the students (mostly history majors).

The prep work for any course you’ve not taught before can be intense, but especially when it meets every day of the week. I wrote lectures and built image-heavy Powerpoints the night before delivering them, all while keeping up with the reading schedule assigned to my students and quizzing them on it.

I’m confident I taught the students many things about our 16th president and his era that they didn’t know and that will stay with them. Sticking mostly to Kohl’s tried-and-true course outline helped me craft lectures that I feel worked well and kept students engaged in classroom discussions, shedding light on Antebellum and Civil War America, as well as the ways Lincoln’s life prepared him for the role of our leader during America’s most divisive time.

I did alter and add to Kohl’s basic structure, including the role that public history sites, monuments, and movies have played in shaping how Americans have remembered and mythologized Lincoln. We also read about and discussed the differing ways Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon and his White House secretaries (Nicolay and Hay) shaped the memory and historiography of Lincoln.

We also had “Lincoln in the News” assignments (a variation on an assignment I have in my survey courses), requiring students to find and analyze current news stories demonstrating how Abe’s legacy and myth are often used by modern politicians and pundits for both liberal and conservative agendas. We considered how and why the Lincoln myth causes politicians of all stripes to tie their ideologies to his. This allowed for a bit of memory history, but also a discussion of the dangers of “cherry picking” primary source evidence by both historians and others looking for a usable past.  (Ironically, Lincoln himself did this when tying his views against the expansion of slavery to the views of the Founders).

In short, although using a narrative approach to the course (each day I essentially told stories about his life), my students and I accomplished more than just learning basic facts about Lincoln. Besides history, we dealt with public history, memory, historiography, and how historians use and misuse primary sources —all within a narrative framework.  Abe himself would have appreciated the use of personal stories as a means of painlessly pulling my audience into considering more complex themes and concepts.

Thus one of the things the class taught me was the usefulness of a biography course. The students stayed engaged as we followed his narrative. Tracing the personal developments in his life, I asked students to consider how those things shaped his career, political beliefs, and perceptions of the events of his time.

We all love the juicy and personal details of famous lives, but perhaps this is even more true for a generation that’s grown up watching reality TV. It seems my students’ fascination with Lincoln’s personal life helped keep them engaged as we drifted into those discussions of memory, public history, and historiography, and as they read and analyzed his own writings.

Of course these are the same reasons that biographical books are so effective as a lens for examining a particular historical era, but my experience teaching the Lincoln course convinces me that history departments should consider offering an array of biography courses. It might just be one way we can start attracting more students to upper level history classes, and thus to win back the number of  history majors the field has lost lately.

If you’re a professor or teacher, I encourage you to think about historical figures you’d love to teach a course on and then do it! I believe students might more eagerly sign up for a course on Joan of Arc than they would the 100 Years War, or one on Ronald Reagan more readily than a class on Post-WWII America. How about Elizabeth I instead of Tudor England? Frederick Douglass instead of Antebellum Slavery?

But Lincoln showed me much more than just the advantages of teaching history through biography.

When planning, I intended to focus on Lincoln’s evolving views on slavery. For this reason I chose Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery as my main text. On our first day I made clear that students should pay attention to Lincoln’s evolution in regards to slavery and race. By the end of the course, however, following this theme brought me to a realization I had not anticipated.

As we know, judged by the standards of our time Lincoln was racist. But historians often stress that from the perspective of his time he held fairly progressive ideas about African Americans and slavery, and those sentiments evolved over the course of his life, especially during the war. A man once holding views about racial inferiority that were fairly consistent with that of other whites of his time eventually became the first president to openly call for suffrage rights for at least some categories of African Americans (and it cost him his life) and perhaps would have eventually pushed for more than just that.

As Frederick Douglass pointed out in his speech at the dedication of the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument, Lincoln’s evolution was slow in the eyes of abolitionists and radical Republicans, but perhaps it was exactly the pace needed so that public opinion would grow to support emancipation and the 13th amendment. The war’s contingencies, and Lincoln’s responses to them, set and controlled that pace.

Using Foner and selected writings and speeches by Lincoln, I guided students thru Lincoln’s change and pace, showing how and why they happened. When discussing “cherry picking,” we noted how easily it is for people today with varying agendas to find Lincoln’s own words at different times in his life that they can use to “prove” differing points.

Of course this is true with other historical figures, because people’s thoughts and opinions often change over time. That’s the nature of maturing and viewing the world through a larger lens of knowledge and experiences. This is just one reason that context is so important when using primary sources.

The first Lincoln writing we read was his 1832 announcement that he was running for state office. In it, Abe clearly delineates his Whig party political sentiments, but concludes by promising that if he were to one day “discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.”

A statement of open-mindedness like that is laudatory, and while over Lincoln’s life he clung to most of his core principles, he certainly proved willing to change his mind and evolve, not just in regards to his ideas about slavery and race, but also military strategy. I told my students I feel this was Lincoln’s true greatness; in an age when political partisanship ripped our nation apart, his willingness to change his views based on events, contingencies, and experiences is what saved the Union.

And yet, what struck me by the end of the course was that we often don’t allow our politicians to grow and evolve like that. How frequently do we criticize them for holding a position or beliefs years ago that seem at odds with their current ones or that are now contemptible? In an attempt at a “gotcha” moment, we criticize them for hypocrisy, or allege they only changed their mind out of political expediency. (Lincoln himself faced such criticisms).

Sadly, it seems to me, this plays at least some role in the partisanship preventing the compromise between parties that democracy requires. Why would a politician be swayed by debate or new realities if changing their mind or compromising their positions leads to ridicule and charges of hypocrisy by pundits and political rivals?

As a result, they don’t change their minds or obfuscate in an attempt to hide it when they do. They refuse to admit when they were wrong or refuse to compromise, and we get gridlock. Wouldn’t it be wiser to support politicians willing to renounce their opinions if they discover them to be erroneous, or allow them to evolve with the changing times? If we praise them for doing so, wouldn’t it actually encourage more open mindedness?

Yet in our current political environment it seems we only want politicians that unwaveringly stand firm to convictions, or that come out of the womb with fully formed values and beliefs that match with our current values and standards.

Imagine if Lincoln had never changed his mind about slavery and race. He would have never used emancipation and black troops as a means of winning the war and would have continued to promote the colonization of African Americans outside the country. Had he not shifted on these positions, debatably he would have lost the war. Certainly he would have never promoted any form of black citizenship and would have been happy to see slavery die out over the course of a century or longer.

Thus had he been uncompromising and ideologically consistent to the last, I wonder how we would remember Abraham Lincoln today. He certainly would not be the “Great Emancipator,” and likely would have overseen the destruction of the Union rather than been its savior.

On the last part of our final exam I had students write a “self-reflective” essay in which they considered whether there was anything in Lincoln’s life they found “usable” in their own. The result was interesting, as students remarked on things as varied as Lincoln’s rags-to-riches background, his grief and depression, his leadership qualities, and the value of using simple and relatable language when addressing complex ideas and concepts. Happily, none agreed with labeling Lincoln the “Great Emancipator,” but most clearly demonstrated they understood the essential and crucial role he played in the complicated process and pace of emancipation.

And thus I consider the class to have been a great success, and I hope I’ll I continue to be able to teach it.  I learned some valuable things right along with my students, growing and improving as an educator and in my open-mindedness.

Thanks for the lesson, Mr. President.

 

 

Visiting Richmond’s New American Civil War Museum

 

Brand new American Civil War Museum, right next door to the National Park Service’s Richmond Battlefield Park Visitor’s Center (building on the left), at Richmond’s historic Tredegar Ironworks.

Back in May, I got to visit the new American Civil War Museum at the Tredegar Iron works. Like many of you, ever since it was announced the Museum of the Confederacy was joining forces and bringing their collection to the project, I’ve eagerly awaited the grand opening. So much so that I got there as soon as my teaching schedule allowed, which thankfully was only two weeks after they first opened the doors.

But really, I’ve been waiting even longer than that.  Fresh out of college I moved to Richmond in 1993 to get a masters degree at VCU and explore all of Virginia’s historic treasures. While the Commonwealth itself did not disappoint (and still doesn’t), I admit Richmond was a let down.

Monument Avenue’s Lost Cause statuary was impressive, of course, as was the White House and Museum of the Confederacy, and Hollywood Cemetery. But beyond that, the pickings were slim for a Civil War buff expecting a lot more, and wanting something that wasn’t steeped in the Lost Cause.

The Lee Statue on the famous (now infamous?) Monument Avenue.

Even the Richmond National Battlefield Park was a disappointment, with its very outdated exhibits at the site of Chimborazo Hospital (and a film focused on the plight of a middle class white Richmond family during the war), and only small bits of preserved battlefield lands scattered around the eastern suburbs with minimal interpretation—-and that interpretation mainly focused on the Confederate perspective.

It was not the Richmond of which I’d daydreamed.

Fortunately, that began to change just as I arrived. I volunteered and then got a summer seasonal job with the park service, and over the next 8 years got to witness exciting and near constant changes at the park, as a really great staff of historians got more funding, installed more interpretive signs and trails in the park, acquired more land (they now have dang near all of Malvern Hill and Glendale, and an ever increasing amount of Gaines’ Mill and Cold Harbor), restored historic landscapes, and created a beautiful, cutting-edge visitor’s center in one of the remaining buildings of the historic Tredegar Ironworks.

Just as I left the city to return to Alabama to work on a PhD with Dr. George Rable, Richmond itself got in the updating game, cleaning up and restoring the historic canal walk on the river, repurposing crumbling old warehouses into modern apartments, and cleaning up the surrounding areas around the James River. Then the American Civil War Center opened up next door to the NPS visitor’s center at Tredegar.

The city had become much more of what I envisioned before going there, including now even a monument commemorating Lincoln’s triumphant visit to the city with his son just as the Capital of the Confederacy fell to Union forces.

Tad & his dad in Richmond

Monument Avenue still lingers, but more inclusive stories are being told, with less Lost Cause distortions. There’s even interpretation of Richmond’s slave pens and markets.

And yet, something has still seemed missing. While the NPS center at Tredegar is great, it appropriately focuses on Richmond and the battlefields, and while their neighbor, the American Civil War Center, was telling a comprehensive story of the war in general, it was heavy on interpretation and light on relics.

Thus when it was announced that the museum was spending around 25 million to build a new, high tech, 28,500 square facility (much of it underground) in and around the Tredegar site, and that they would be incorporating relics from the Museum of the Confederacy, excitement was high that Richmond would now become THE premiere place for Civil War public history interpretation (as it should be).

So, does the museum live up to the high expectations and hype?

Well, yes, and no. Let’s just say this, it has enormous potential.

Just inside the front doors.

First off, after walking through its beautiful entrance and lobby that encloses Tredegar ruins that were long exposed to the elements, and then past visually stunning enlargements of colorized war-time photographs (featuring a diverse cast of wartime faces), I was ready for an amazing visit.

Because of poor signage, however, it was difficult to figure out which door to walk into for the main exhibit gallery. I started to go in the “out” door, as did many others that I observed. That should be an easy fix though.

Gallery entrance.

Once inside, I was surprised by how small the permanent exhibit space actually is. Having recently visited the two new Revolutionary War museums in Philadelphia and in Yorktown, I was perhaps expecting too much, as those facilities are huge and nicely spread out. This one takes you from 1861-1865 at comparatively warp speed.

Further, there was curiously little interpretation of the causes of the war, which was contrary to everything I expected considering all the hype about taking the war away from Lost Cause interpretation.

But here is the main problem: the museum is making great effort to tell a more inclusive and diverse narrative of the war, and the written interpretation does so. But the artifacts they have now are just not yet helping them tell that story.

Solid interpretation. But unfortunately, few of the relics help tell this story

Yes, you won’t find many Civil War museums with an audio and visual presentation telling the story of an enslaved girl that was brutally whipped for allegedly poisoning her owner, or that displays slave shackles, or that interprets the post-war years by featuring a Reconstruction era KKK hood and garment.

Not exactly a common site in a Civil war museum, though it should be.

The African American story, as well as the Union story, are both featured throughout the exhibits. There is also homefront and gendered history, but with few exceptions (like the ones just mentioned) the artifacts packed behind the glass cases are overwhelmingly the treasures from the old Museum of the Confederacy.

But Oh! What a collection it is! I won’t spoil it for you by naming too much, but you’ll be stunned at the personal wartime possessions on display that were owned by the pantheon of Confederate luminaries, from Jefferson Davis, to Lee, to Stonewall, to Jeb Stuart. (You know, all those dudes out there on Monument Avenue.)

Of course all this was on display at the old Museum of the Confederacy, but it makes it no less amazing to see them again, especially in this more inclusive context and in the new digs.  You’ll find yourself staring in awe at such things, seemingly tucked away in the corners.

This display, for example, is a Stonewall Jackson fan’s dream come true.

Here’s a big tip: DO NOT rush through this museum. Read EVERY description of EVERY relic. What they have will blow your mind. Just one small example: the sword Lewis Armistead used to urge rebel soldiers forward into Union lines just as he was mortally wounded during “Pickett’s Charge” at Gettysburg. But you’ll miss it and other jaw-dropping possessions if you aren’t paying attention.

And yet, as amazing as these things are, they are just not helping the museum to tell the story it strives to tell.

The battles themselves get shunted away to high tech electronic video boards that visitors can interact with, which is fine, I’d rather see visitors get out to the battlefields themselves if that is what they are looking for. But theoretically that means the museum should be focused on social and cultural history, and most of the interpretation is, but yet the most attention-grabbing relics are largely battle-related accouterment from southern soldiers and officers.

My guess is that the museum’s folks are aware of this problem, and that the acquisition of other relics must become their number one goal now that the space has been constructed and the doors open. (I hope they are aware of this auction, for example).  Having such stunning possessions from Lee, Jackson, and et. al, makes it all the more glaring that there is essentially nothing from Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln or etc. on display. What few Union relics are on display are related to POWs that were penned in Richmond’s warehouse prisons.

How nice would it be, for instance, to juxtapose the relics of Robert E. Lee, with those of Union General George Henry Thomas, contrasting the two Virginians and drawing attention to a southern white man that unlike Lee, refused to break his vow to the U.S. military to fight the constitution’s enemies, “both foreign and domestic.”

And there are precious fewer artifacts telling the African American perspective on the war. Don’t expect to see many rifles or other possessions carried by the USCTs that were among the city’s first liberators, for example. If you saw Harriet Tubman’s shawl at the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, or Nat Turner’s bible there, you won’t find similar items here, despite the fact that the museum’s objectives and narrative would make those types of relics a perfect fit.

I really don’t want this to sound like a negative review, however. There is so much room for growth in this facility. Over time, I have no doubt that future acquisitions and perhaps loaned items will help the American Civil War Museum tell the story it is telling.

And I especially do not want to discourage anyone from visiting the museum in its current incarnation. On the contrary, go now and ASAP. I promise you will be awed by the facility’s location, design, and the amazing relics on display. And you’ll be impressed by its interpretation.

Let’s please give the American Civil War Museum all the support, encouragement, and positive “word-of-mouth” we can, as they are trying to tell important stories that will move Richmond, and us, even more away from the Lost Cause.

Yes, that’s a rebel flag, but it is one that Tad Lincoln took home with him as a trophy after he and his father visited Richmond. How cool is that? Now THAT is the perfect context for displaying that thing.

 

On NPS Visitation & that Wall Street Journal article

So, two weeks ago I was interviewed by a reporter for the Wall Street Journal doing a story on National Park Service visitation at Civil War battlefield sites. As you may know, I was a long-time seasonal ranger for the NPS, and my “former” status means I can talk freely with the press—something that current rangers can’t readily do.

Anyway, the premise of the article, as presented to me, was that in light of declining numbers, what should/could the NPS do to generate more interest in the parks?

During the phone interview, I gave the reporter a little bit of background, explaining that park visitation has spikes and subsequent declines, usually associated with cultural and pop-cultural events—the centennial celebrations in the early 60s, the popularity of Ken Burn’s Civil War series in the 80s, and the release of movies like 1989’s Glory and 1993’s Gettysburg, for examples.

Unfortunately, those spikes came at a time when the park service was still a bit stuck in the rut of “who shot who, and where” interpretation. Further, I theorized that because most of the Civil War parks are in the South, a lot of that surge was from southern whites.

Sadly, for varied and complex reasons, African Americans have been rare visitors to the park battlefield sites, I told the reporter,  not the least of which is because of the legacy of Jim Crow, as public parks in the South have not exactly been seen as welcoming to blacks. That problem persists—-if your parents didn’t take you to the parks, you’re not very likely to take your own kids.

African Americans have also been largely excluded from the narratives told at these sites as well. When they did show up, they faced monuments making the defenders of slavery look like superheroes.

So, I theorized, the “base” (though far from all) of the visitation surges has been white southerners looking to the parks for narratives about where their ancestors fought and where they did sacrificial and glorious deeds.

However, since about the mid 90s, I told the reporter, the NPS has made efforts to broaden the narratives at the parks, telling more inclusive stories and focusing on more than just old school military history. Social, cultural, and political history has slowly but surely begun to be reflected in NPS interpretation, telling richer and more diverse stories that shed light on the war’s causes, contingencies, and enduring legacies. We’re just now reaching a flowering of this at NPS sites, but there’s still a long way to go, especially at those sites down here in the deep south.

The downside, however, is that these changes have been off-putting to many in that “base” of white southerners, who don’t want to come to the parks and be exposed to what they see as the national government’s (the winners) version of the story.

It is uncomfortable and upsetting to them to be told and/or reminded that great, great, grandpa fought for a government founded for the direct purpose of preserving slavery, or that the post-war activities of their ancestors tended to celebrate and rewrite the Confederacy’s struggle and purpose, as a means of recreating and perpetuating slavery and racial barriers in other forms.

“No!” They insist, “States Rights! Heritage, not hate!”

That, I told the reporter, probably helps to explain (to at least some degree) why the numbers are currently down at NPS sites after the surge in the 80s and early 90s. These people are more comfortable visiting privately or locally owned Antebellum homes and sites that tell the story they want to hear—or just staying away from history sites altogether. The current debate over Confederate symbols has only exacerbated this dynamic.

I’ve seen proof of this in two ways recently. While visiting a locally funded battlefield site in North Carolina, I encountered a visitor’s center staffed by a man spewing the Lost Cause, chapter and verse, and criticizing those parks funded by state and federal money “because they want to make everything about slavery.” Secondly, just yesterday I saw a Facebook post in response to the Wall Street Journal article in which the writer declared he’d stopped going to parks “because the liberal academics have re-written the story.” Others shared similar sentiments, but with more vitriol.

So then, what is the solution? Should the parks abandon their new emphasis on telling more honest and inclusive history in order to get this base back to the parks? Heaven forbid!

Instead, I speculated to the reporter, the focus needs to be on broadening the base of people that come to the Civil War battlefield parks. Youth programs need more support and emphasis. The use of technology to enhance the visitor experience must continue to expand (new and high tech museums and apps, etc). Park interpreters must hone their skills and energetically look at different techniques for presenting more engaging tours.  Social media must continue to be utilized (and perhaps traditional advertising) to demonstrate the expanding focus of the parks’ interpretations.

And, I told the reporter, we need NEW monuments and memorials on the battlefields and elsewhere, that celebrate and honor the efforts of the extremely diverse cast of characters that shaped the war and its consequences.

Further, I speculated that we might be on the verge of another surge in visitation caused by pop-culture, as Spielberg and Dicaprio have a movie in the works about U.S. Grant, and other projects are coming (long overdue) that focus on Harriet Tubman and Robert Smalls. That so many history-related movies have done so well lately, is an indication to me that people are still fascinated and hungry to know more about the past. 

I concluded the interview with a very optimistic tone about the future of the parks, pointing out that I was at that moment sitting at an Antebellum site here in Tuscaloosa (not NPS) where there was an older white gentleman roaming around, but also several kids and two African American women, all of which were reading the interpretive signs.

Almost none of that made it into the article. I asked the reporter who else he’d interviewed, and he indicated he’d spoken with Peter Carmichael, Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Knowing Pete well (we worked together long ago as seasonal rangers), I said “Oh! I bet he gave you some good stuff.” To which the reporter responded, “well, yeah sort of. He is also optimistic like you about the new technology.”

Pete’s interview didn’t even make it into the article.

I’m not sure why the reporter was focused on such a pessimistic assessment, but as a result the piece has gotten a lot of attention and spawned others with cynical tones, like this one, or this one from the right-wing The Federalist, both of which tie the problem to a decline in the teaching of history in public schools (an assertion that is debatable itself.)

There has also been some pushback from NPS folks. John Hennessy, National Park Service historian, for example, has done a great job on his Facebook page of challenging the very premise that the park’s numbers are down. (And personally, I think if the number of reenactments and reenactors are on the decline, that’s a good thing. But my thoughts on that are a whole other discussion). The awesome folks at Civil War Trails also assure us that “the known and recent stats are encouraging.”

I think we would be better served by articles from such high profile platforms like the Wall Street Journal focusing on the great strides the Park Service has taken and continues to take in broadening the stories they tell. A recent trip I took out to City Point, Virginia (Grant’s Headquarters during the last phase of the war), for example,  focused on the plantation there, its forms of slave resistance, and the very complex master/slave relationship there. Further, a recent trip out to South Carolina’s Fort Moutrie NPS site led to an encounter with this amazing interpretive sign:

Man, I love this interpretation, especially that it concludes on an positive note (the sign is not NPS, but it is on NPS land). The NPS visitor’s center there also included displays on the Middle Passage.

So instead of throwing dirt on the grave of NPS Civil War Battlefield sites and pondering their demise, let’s focus on the transitional phase they are in now and support and champion the fantastic historians and curators they employ that are getting the story right, (especially because they often receive blowback from visitors that resent it).

Let’s also highly resolve to dedicate ourselves to helping the NPS spread the word about their mission in a way that broadens the demographics of their visitation, getting those numbers surging again. Shall we?