On September 30, 2020, the Gettysburg Times published an article on the Historians’ Day of Action at Gettysburg. I was fortunate enough to have been at the event, and I appear in the interview. Here are a few excepts from the article:
At the first Civil War History Day of Action, residents and historians asked a simple question. What could possibly be wrong with more history? A little more than three dozen Adams County residents and historians from surrounding areas gathered near landmarks at the Gettysburg National Cemetery Saturday.
Led by Scott Hancock, Gettysburg College Africana Studies professor, they stood armed with signs meant to highlight what they called historically-problematic representations of the Confederacy. “At Gettysburg, arguably a turning point in the war, you see more commemorations of the Confederacy than you do showing that this war led to emancipation and ended slavery,” Hancock said. “It didn’t solve our problems by a long shot, as we know, but our goal is to do something a bit more constructive about telling a fuller story.”
The event’s proximity to Sept. 22, the day President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, was intentional, Hancock said. The organization plan indicated the aim was to “emancipate the battlefield from biased history that sanitizes and glorifies the Confederacy’s fight to keep four million African Americans enslaved.”
If the model seems similar to a protest led by Hancock on July 4, that is intentional. This summer, on the same day armed visitors arrived to the battlefield in an attempt to derail a since debunked Antifa flag-burning threat, Hancock and four other men challenged Confederate apologist viewpoints, displaying signs with pointed pro-slavery references from popular southern newspapers and magazines from the era. On Saturday, citizens stood in front of the Eternal Light Peace Memorial and Gen. Robert E. Lee’s headquarters in Gettysburg with a similar goal in mind. This time, though, an organized effort encouraged dozens of groups across the country to do the same on battlefields and public spaces where emancipation and Reconstruction might be considered to be concealed or neglected.
Groups at each site took photographs and posted to social media under the hashtag #WeWantMoreHistory. Journal of the Civil War Era Co-Editors Gregory Downs and Kate Masur, history professors at U.C. Davis and Northwestern University respectively, as well as the magazine’s digital editor,
Hilary Green, an Alabama University history professor, played a role in organizing the event. Downs, who attended Gettysburg’s event Saturday, said Hancock’s confrontation by visitors defending the confederacy’s stance as a fight for states’ rights motivated his involvement.
Historians have always had to defend against propaganda campaigns to deliberately erase African American histories, among others, Downs said. “Historians are deeply imperfect on this issue and have been wrestling with it for decades,” he said. “You can see public interest starting to shift over the last 10 years. Scott really challenged all of us to think beyond the institutional way we do this.”
Jill Titus, the associate director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, said to understand the past it is necessary to consider stories that challenge traditional narratives. “This is a way to advocate for a more nuanced understanding of history,” she said. “When we rely on overly simplistic narratives of the past, we have no way to understand why the present is so complicated.”
Monuments help visitors visualize the battlefield as it was. But setting early versions of history in stone insinuate permanence, making it difficult to overturn these narratives when later proven insufficient. There are layers to history, Titus said, and challenging dominant narratives is nothing new. Mythologizing the past is largely unhelpful, she said, though she understands why more simple narratives may be appropriate as building blocks for education. “There’s so much in the past that we can respect, honor and can inspire us in the present,” she said. “But we should never seek to mythologize what’s come before, but rather understand it in all its complexity. If we don’t, we warp our understanding of how we became who we are.”
Patrick Young, co-director of the Immigration Clinic at Hofstra University School of Law who traveled from Long Island, N.Y., held a sign with a quote from Georgian and former Confederate Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon.
In 1868, Gordon spoke in Charleston to a largely white audience with recently freed black citizens among the crowd. “I was opposed to your freedom. We were opposed to your freedom. We did not do this because we were your enemies, but because we had bought you and paid our money for you,” Gordon said during his speech, receiving laughter and applause. “That was supposed to be the reconciliation he offered,” Young said.
Gordon is now widely accredited as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Young said. He also became a Redeemer, a political coalition that sought political power to re-enforce white supremacy. “People are taught about the KKK as if they were some crazy people on the outskirts of society, but if you look at first Ku Klux Klan almost all of them were Confederates and Confederate officers carrying on the war by other means,” Young said. “If you say you want American history, you have to look at American history. If you want fantasy, a sundae with a cherry on top, I don’t have that much sympathy if you call that history.”
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Former Gettysburg College President Janet Riggs participated in the event as well. She said she felt called as a former educator and a 39-year representative of the Gettysburg community to take a stand. “I’m not a historian, but i know there are big gaps here and I think everyone would agree it’s good to have more history,” she said. “If being here today helps with that, I’m really happy to support this effort.”
[Note: Photos come from my personal collection]
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