The Senate of South Carolina passed a new bill, S. 508, that will ban several manners of historical interpretation at monuments in the state. I won’t go through everything in the bill, which critics have called a violation of the I Amendment, but I want to point out one area of banned speech at the memorials. However, here is a review of the bill, in relevant parts. The bill has basically been presented as a way to protect Confederate monuments in South Carolina.
The Bill was passed 31 to 7 earlier this month.
Section 1 starts out with a claim that few who study history will agree with:
SECTION 1. The General Assembly finds that those who lived through a historical event possess a firsthand understanding that later observers can study but never fully replicate. Accounts written by people who experienced the event-or who lived closer to the time period-carry the texture of context, language, and lived reality that inevitably fades with time. The nearer a person stands in time to the event, the more likely their description reflects the conditions, perceptions, and meanings as they were actually understood when they occurred.
First, many Confederate memorial were put up in the 20th Century, not right after the Civil War. So these monuments were not put up to mourn people who had recently died, they were put up for other purposes. Also, roughly a third of Southern people opposed the Confederacy, but these memorials only record the words and images of those who later came to support the Confederate point of view.
The bill stops memorials from being taken down or altered, but it also goes further:
No street, bridge, structure, park, preserve, reserve, installation, nameplate, or other public area of the State or any of its political subdivisions dedicated in memory of or named for any historic figure, or historic group of people, historic event, or commemorated event may be renamed or rededicated. No person may prevent the public body responsible for the monument or memorial from taking proper measures and exercising proper means for the protection, preservation, and care of these monuments, memorials, or nameplates.
The next section prohibits placing historical signage next to the monument:
The prohibition on disturbing or altering a monument or memorial contained in this section includes affixing to or placing on or near a monument or memorial, or the public property upon which the monument or memorial is located, plaques, markers, anything that facilitates the transmission of messages through digital or electronic means, or other messages or message delivery devices or platforms that are related to the monument or memorial but are not original to the monument or memorial.
This section is what I want to focus on. The bills bans “anything that facilitates the transmission of messages through digital or electronic means, or other messages or message delivery devices or platforms that are related to the monument or memorial but are not original to the monument or memorial.”
What this means is that placing a QR code next to a monument is prohibited and can only be placed through a joint resolutions of the two houses of the South Carolina legislature. If you go to many historical sites throughout the country, you will see unobtrusively placed QR codes of 1″to 6″ next to monuments.
I was at Putnam State Historical Park in Connecticut a few weekends ago. This was used as a winter encampment for part of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. When I took a photo of the QR code, I could access a verbal description of what I was seeing as well as why historians thought that each ruin was what it was. For example, I went to a house marked as an “Officers’ Barracks.” When I accessed the audio using the QR code, the narrator said that some historians think that the building was actually a powder house. Now on a printed sign, this kind of contradictory evidence would not have appeared, but on a few minutes of oral discussion, it supplied a needed counterweight to the dominant conclusion.
Before 2011, QR codes were not used on historical markers, but since that time they are increasingly in evidence. The QR code is small and it can be attached to existing signage without disturbing the historical site. While some QR codes are on separate post, I have seen many just affixed to the bottom right hand of an existing sign which might contain a history of the site or might just say “Please Keep Off.” What is great about these is that as more information becomes available the audio can be updated at little cost to the park or local government. It does not require taking an old sign down and recasting it with updated information at all. A new recording can be made at a small fraction of that cost.
Another factor in favor of the QR codes is that they are unobtrusive, they don’t take away from the view of the monument, and visitors who don’t want to know what is on them just won’t photograph the QR code. Also, since the audio can go on for a while longer than a printed sign, less prominent voices can be added to the audio. I have been at a site where the Irish maids gave their view of the prominent owner of the house, or the wife got to speak. In others, enslaved people had their views heard (at last).
The National Park Service’s Greg Shine wrote an explanation of the use of QR codes in Fort Vancouver near Portland:
As described above, the major costs associated with QR coding seem to lie in content development, not technical development.
Staff can focus on crafting quality content rather than coding. Also, QR codes can be printed from a desktop to paper or stickers for pennies on the dollar.
At a Christmas at Fort Vancouver special event, for example, I created ten QR Codes, printed them out on the staff printer, cut them out, and then taped them at various places at the fort.
The majority of my time was spent pulling interesting factoids together that linked to the event and then creating a specific park webpage for each. That’s it.
Once a QR code is established (let’s say it links to a specific park webpage), you only need update the webpage it links to, not the QR code itself.
Here’s an example: The ten QR codes that I put up linked to pages with interpretive elements that were specific to the park’s Christmas event. Rather than take those codes down, I can simply change the content of those pages to feature something else, like an object found there archaeologically or a link to a specific quote or video of a ranger talk.
This also makes QR codes great for information, too. A code on a visitor center door could link to different information daily to reflect park specific conditions, featured programs, etc., by updating the URL to which it links.
These codes do not – and are not intended to – replace person-to-person interpretation. However, they are a wonderful resource for providing supplemental interpretation or a primary option to the folks who
- might like to tour a site and learn at their own pace, or
- can’t make a scheduled program.
They are also a wonderful tool for provoking visitors into learning more about a site; we call this incremental hooking for interpretation.
If a goal in interpretation is to provoke and help visitors connect to their own understanding of a site, then QR codes are a small but mighty tool on our workbench.
At Fort Vancouver, we can tell folks that a certain building is reconstructed from the archaeological and historical record, but why not show them, too?
A QR code can link to historic photos, historic documents, flash videos, text; even a 3D image of an artifact found right there onsite.
By using QR codes and other developments in technology, we’re tapping into a growing audience that has long looked at government employees and programs as behind the curve.
This is particularly evident here in the Portland/Vancouver Metro Area. Our park is unique in that it sits in the middle of the Silicon Forest, one of the nation’s most tech-savvy metro areas, especially when it comes to smart phone applications. We feel that we really don’t have a choice but get it.
One of David Larsen’s mantras is also ours: be relevant or be a relic. We feel that technology is one pathway toward relevancy.
While the South Carolina Senate Bill is going after QR codes, they may be other even more useful technologies that will also be banned over the coming years.
If you live in South Carolina, let your legislators know what you think about this.
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