By Marriya Schwarz
Originally published in Dog Street Journal's February 2020 issue.
February is historically referred to as “Black History Month.” The annual celebration of achievements by African Americans has origins back to the 1920s. In 1926, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History sponsored a “Negro History Week”, choosing a specific week in February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. By the late 1960s, due to the civil rights movement, the week ended up elongating to a month on many college campuses. In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially declared February as “Black History Month.”
Living in a colonial town that is so entangled with slavery, how we talk about colonial Black history is bound to arise. Recently, for a Colonial & Revolutionary Williamsburg course, we were given the assignment to visit the Prentis Store, which is known as the oldest commercial building in town. In the back of the building, I found a little wooden shelf, filled with print replicas like an Assignment of Executor and The Proclamation of Lord Dunmore. Right on the top was a document labeled “SALE OF A SLAVE $1.75.”
Was this a way for Colonial Williamsburg to continue profiting off of slavery? Reading closer, I saw there were certain blanks in the document, leaving room for the name of the enslaved person, a specific county, etc. In the wrong hands, this would be the worst kind of Mad Lib.
After reporting this product to Colonial Williamsburg, I scheduled an interview with Stephen Seals (an interpretive program development manager at Colonial Williamsburg and interpreter of James Lafayette) and Joseph Straw (senior public relations manager of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.) In a meeting room right by the Greenhow Store with a framed portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the wall, we discussed this particular “Sale of a Slave” document.
According to Seals, this document was part of a teaching set used by the Teacher Institute. This 30-year-old program works to bring in teachers from all over the nation and provide them with methods on how to present difficult subjects, as well as replicas of original documents so that the teachers can see that these life experiences, like slavery, are “not… statistic[s].” Since Williamsburg served as the capital back in 1699, the town remains a hub of original documents, which is something that Stephen Seals states we should be thankful for, since “so many places don't have their history from that far back.” With this particular document, it is designed to show that the slavery in Colonial Williamsburg was first and foremost chattel slavery.
“[The document] wasn’t customized,” says Stephen Seals. So many printing presses in town were getting demands to print Deeds of Sale that they started printing the documents with blanks so that the printers could “easily mass produce” this type of document. According to Seals, the document was vital for teachers because “in order to kind of have an understanding of how life [worked], how commerce [worked and], how the slave trade—the buying and selling of human flesh—worked, you have to see the documents.” With his own African American background, Seals stated that “when I started seeing the documents that had enslaved my people, I broke down; I wept—I cried and cried and cried.”
At some point, it appears that the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation had extra copies of this “Sale of a Slave” document, and they were put on sale. Upon reading my complaint, Colonial Williamsburg pulled all documents that were involved in that teacher set. But in Seals’ words, “We have tried many different methods and done a number of different things in order to tell the story [of slavery]. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we don't… [But] we have a duty to share the stories of my people. We have a duty to share the stories of the natives, women, [and] the persecuted.”
Joseph Straw agreed, saying that his “stomach does a 180 every time in hearing that the deed of sale is only merchandise for sale.” He is thankful that this community can have conversations about how to tell this story.
In a colorful office, covered with books, in the very back corner of Blair Hall, I met with Dr. Jody Allen. She is a native of Hampton, Virginia and the current director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, which is addressing William & Mary’s connection with slavery. In Allen’s opinion, the “Sale of a Slave” document completely dehumanizes enslaved people by having blanks in the document where the names of enslaved people would go. In Dr. Allen’s words, “[For] too long, I think, [slaves have] lost their humanity. You know, … that's one of the reasons why [The Lemon Project is] trying to find as many names as we can… because that indicates that these people had names. They were real people who worked here.”
The Lemon Project started in 2007 when a student, a senator of the Class of 2008, “started hearing about slavery on college campuses,…became curious about William & Mary, and did some investigation. [She] wrote a resolution calling for the school to study that history, make it public, and to establish a memorial.” Eventually, after looking in the archives for documentation about enslaved workers, “the Board [of Visitors] passed a resolution [in 2009], acknowledging that the school had… enslaved people and once adhered to the tenets of Jim Crow—slavery’s legacy. [The school] acknowledged that they needed to work on their presence in the African American community.”
One of the biggest discoveries that the project made during the beginning of research was a bursar’s record that contained the name of Lemon and 20 other names. Ultimately, they decided to name the project after Lemon since, according to Allen, “we knew the most about Lemon—and, I mean, it's pitiful what we do know, but we know more about him than any other individual enslaved person. He certainly represents everyone—the known and the unknown.”
Originally, The Lemon Project started as an eight-year research project, but Dr. Allen and her team decided to make the organization more involved with the community. They realized, “we can't go into the archives for eight years and [not tell the community about our work]—even if we come out with a Pulitzer Prize winning book. By that point, the community will have lost faith that we're doing anything.”
Therefore, they started multiple programs to connect with the community and students of color who had never felt like part of the campus. To do this, they organized programs like the Donning of the Kente, where any student—regardless of race—can have an intimate graduation ceremony where they get someone close to them to don them. Another engagement tool that they started were Porch Talks where they bring in community members, students, and faculty to have conversations or panels. The idea of involving the community is that they are trying to work against a strong cultural memory. “[Some] people in the community remember that, during the Jim Crow period, they couldn't come on campus unless they were working here… and, for some people, that wall around the historic campus is seen as a barrier.”
From a small group of people who started “without job descriptions,” the Lemon Project has grown to include The Lemon Society, which involves students who are able to volunteer. There are now symposiums and fellowships that students can participate in. Even more so, The Lemon Project has developed into a movement, starting the collaboration of Virginia Colleges and Universities Studying Slavery. However, they have now dropped the “Virginia” aspect, since the USS has expanded to over 60 colleges with three or four in the United Kingdom. Colleges studying this dark part of history have started a movement because “ignoring this history has not made it go away, and it will continue to bubble up until we deal with it.”
Both Dr. Jody Allen and Stephen Seals highlight how important it is to share the documentation that does exist with the community. Seals points out that people would be surprised how much information there is about enslaved people. For example, James Lafayette (the man who Seals portrays in Colonial Williamsburg) was born in 1740 and died in 1830. “[They] have [Lafayette’s] signature. You know, [they have him] saying his age.” The idea that there has not been enough documentation to tell these stories has just been an excuse to not explore them. Dr. Allen agrees, stating that “these documents aren't magically appearing now. There were just people over the years [who] either intentionally [ignored] them or they [thought they looked] bad so they thought eh, that's not important.”
But it is impossible to talk about the history of the town and of the college without talking about the people who made life here possible. To tell this story, Dr. Allen believes that the most important thing is honesty. “There's no need to exaggerate, you know, because… there's enough evidence of the horrors of slavery.” But the telling of slavery is even more important in explaining this story to African American children, to “help them understand that these were really strong, resilient people because if they weren’t, they would have died out… So, there's no shame in coming from these people because they were smart and tough.” For Stephen Seals, humanization is key—to think “about these individuals as people, as individual people who all had lives, many before they got here.”
One way that Colonial Williamsburg is trying to humanize enslaved people is through an exhibit at the Raleigh Tavern, titled “Revealing the Priceless: 40 Years of African American Interpretation.” The exhibition appears here because the Raleigh Tavern was a major location for the buying and selling of enslaved people. The exhibit is used as a way to honor the enslaved people who were wrongly brought to Jamestown in 1619 and to celebrate Colonial Williamsburg’s 40th year of African American interpretation. One part of the exhibit features a wall of first names of all the slaves they could find from 1763 to 1783. This exhibit means a lot to Stephen Seals, who discusses how he goes “in with the other interpreters from time to time and we will just say their names—because you know, it's the African proverb. You say their name, they're not forgotten, they’re remembered, they're revered.” On the opposite wall is a wall of faces of 126 people who have been interpreting and sharing the black experience since the 1930s and 40s.
According to Seals, interpretation is so important because experiences are so effective. People never forget the way that things made them feel. As Seals eloquently says, this story is “too important [to not be talked about.] It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than Joe [Straw]. It’s bigger than you. It’s bigger than these buildings which were mostly built by people whose hands look like mine.” Museums that focus on experiences make great venues to talk about these hard subjects. Seals prefers the term “brave spaces” over safe spaces. He says, “museums need to be brave spaces where people can kindly want to know more” and be able to ask questions about things they do not understand.
However, two problems tend to arise when talking about the story of slavery. One of the problems is that Colonial Williamsburg is a ticketed experience—people pay to come and learn about history. Therefore, as Seals comments, you have to figure out “how [to] educate them in a way that they feel like they've gotten the worth out of what they've put in.”
Even more so, historians are fighting against possible misconceptions that arise out of older education about slavery. Even for Dr. Allen, she feels that she never learned very much about black history as a child. Instead, she was brought up with this “Gone with the Wind” understanding of slavery of “happy slaves and these big beautiful hoop dresses, and you know, just everybody was content with their lives.” Dr. Allen has even come across the old textbooks where she learned about American History, and she found that the textbook said that enslaved people were lucky because they were able to come to America and find civilized society and Christianity.
To this, Dr. Allen asks “So you’re telling me that God is everywhere, but he could not find the continent of Africa?” The idea that Africans were savages and cannibals before being enslaved, according to Dr. Allen, negates the fact that these people “were living their lives, and building families and communities and culture…when the Europeans came [to Africa.]” Seals agrees, stating that he finds that a lot of guests will stop listening once they find something that they disagree with. However, he feels that “it is more important to educate than to be right” so the key is meeting guests where they are in their understanding of this subject.
To encourage this education, The Lemon Project is hosting their 10th Annual Lemon Project Spring Symposium from March 19 – March 21, 2020. Registration is open now. Additionally, at the time of writing this article, Colonial Williamsburg is hosting various events to celebrate Black History Month, using interpreters that they already have, like Edith Cumbo, Gowan Pamphlet, James Armistead Lafayette, and Aggy of Turkey Island. There is also a “Joy in the Morning” program, which is a musical exploration of what it means to be black and enslaved in the 18th century. According to Seals, “if you don’t cry at least once during it, you’re probably not human.” The exhibition celebrating 40 years of interpretation will remain at the Raleigh Tavern until February 29. After this, it will be relocated to the Colonial Williamsburg Regional Visitor Center.
The way that we look at Black History Month should not be disconnected from other American History, and it certainly should not be minimized through a mock “Sale of a Slave” product. Whenever Stephen Seals finishes up a performance as James Lafayette, he states that “James's story is not an African American story. It is an American story. And then I look at each person in the audience and I say, James's story belongs to each one of you sitting in this room just as much as it belongs to me. If you're an American, it is a part of your American identity. And it is my honor every day to give him a voice. It is my honor to share a bit of the American story with you.”