“We Need a New History”: Descendants’ Voices as Vital Sources in Interpreting Slavery

By Eleanor Shippen

How can we best incorporate both tangible, historical documentation and descendants’ intangible memories into our interpretation of sites with histories of enslavement? This was one of many questions I jotted down in blurry black ink inside a van jostling along the warm highways of Virginia and the Carolinas. The first two days of our whirlwind tour of the South brought our group first to James Madison’s Virginia plantation, Montpelier, then on to Bellamy Mansion, a Wilmington, North Carolina, plantation built between 1859 and 1861, and Hobcaw Barony, a former South Carolina plantation complex turned twentieth-century estate. While these sites address distinct histories, they are united by their status as past sites of enslavement. Our conversations with staff revealed that each site varies in its approach to vetting information from descendant groups when developing public interpretation on the lives of enslaved people and the legacy of slavery in the United States.

At Bellamy Mansion, a Preservation North Carolina non-profit, archival evidence guides interpretation. Jen Fenninger, the site’s Education and Engagement Director, shared with us that the museum integrates information from community members about the estate and its residents, free or enslaved, into its interpretation only after consulting historical records for confirmation (Figure 1). This commitment to historical veracity, however, can be limiting. During our time at Montpelier, a private non-profit, we were led on the Enslaved Community tour by Christine, who similarly utilized documentary evidence, such as letters, court documents, and archaeological materials, to discuss the lives of the estate’s enslaved residents. Christine encouraged us to consider the implicit bias in existing documentation on marginalized communities and recognize these records’ ability to underrepresent, misrepresent, or omit their lives, thereby impacting the interpretation of their stories. Montpelier’s exhibit “The Mere Distinction of Colour,” a collaborative project with the site’s descendant community, addresses these gaps in both its content and the context of its creation. The exhibit demonstrates the site’s commitment to ensuring “institutional narratives [are] inclusive of all contributions to the historical record, and…treat various types of primary sources with equity” despite a recent history of contention between the Montpelier Foundation and the Montpelier Descendants Committee (Figure 2).¹

Can the memories and lived experiences of descendants then serve as supplementary sources to limited historical documentation? Our time at Hobcaw Barony presented the answer as a resounding affirmative. Richard Camlin, the site’s Director of Education, began our tour at Friendfield Village, one of the extant housing complexes where enslaved individuals laboring at the estate’s eleven plantations established community (Figure 3).² As we walked along the dusty paths between the small houses last inhabited in the mid-twentieth century, Camlin told us about memories former residents and descendants shared with him during family reunions. He considered these personal recollections integral to the interpretation of the site. Witnessing this attitude, paired with Camlin’s transparency about ongoing work with these groups to connect their memories with details in the historical record, was an invaluable experience for me as an emerging public historian. Together, these sites demonstrate that interpreting enslavement is only strengthened when tangible documentary evidence is contextualized with the personal contributions of community stakeholders.

1. James Madison’s Montpelier and the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, Engaging Descendant Communities in the Interpretation of Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites: A Rubric of Best Practices Established by the National Summit on Teaching Slavery. (National Summit on Teaching Slavery, February 2018), https://www.montpelier.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Interpreting20Slavery2011-12-19.pdf. ↩︎
2. Lee G. Brockington, Plantation Between the Waters: A Brief History of Hobcaw Barony (The History Press, 2006). ↩︎