pre-emancipation archaeology: does it play in selma, alabama?

trious voting rights history, residents of European LINDA DERRY

Pre-Emancipation Archaeology: Does It Play in Selma, Alabama?

ABSTRACT

This paper is a first-person narrative of one archaeologist’s struggle to achieve public participation in the archaeology of pre-emancipation Alabama. This account details the difficulties of working in a polarized community, famous both for its plantation past and its 20th-century racial strife. Successful participation by local African Americans was only possible after the archaeologist’s academic interest in slavery took a back seat to the needs of the community. Ten years of failures and some successes are summarized. Con- cluding remarks outline the lessons learned.

Introduction

Travel brochures declare that “History lives in Selma, Alabama!” During the Civil War, Selma was one of the South’s main military manufac- turing centers. Here, the naval ordnance turned out Confederate warships, including the ironclad Tennessee. War relics are on display in local museums and other public buildings. A driving tour of the Old Town Historic District highlights the grand antebellum town homes of Dallas County’s planter elite.

In 1965 thousands gathered in Selma and overcame violence and hardship to launch the Selma to Montgomery march for civil rights. The march ultimately led to the voting rights act of that same year. Tourists can visit the Brown Chapel AME church where Dr. Martin Luther King launched the march. They can retrace his historic steps across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The Voting Rights Museum near the bridge dis- plays photographs and artifacts from this historic event.

Community relations have vastly improved since the media focused on Selma and the “Bloody Sunday” of 7 March 1965. However, in many respects the community, and its history, remain segregated in two camps. While residents of African descent celebrate Selma’s illus-

descent cling to the white pillared antebellum past. Selma’s historical showplace, Sturdivant Hall, has been accurately furnished to reflect its opulent antebellum lifestyle, yet the kitchen and slave quarters house a gift shop. During the 25th anniversary of the Voting Rights March, white officials were shut out of the celebration planning process (Benn 1990:3A). Few white faces are seen at the annual bridge-crossing festival; even fewer faces of color are in the crowd at the battle of Selma reenactment. Apparently, representations of each other’s history threaten both groups. And now, with the rapid growth of Alabama’s black heritage tourism business and the promise of federal highway dollars to develop a historic trail and interpretive centers along the 1965 march route, the festering question of ownership of the past will predictively develop into unpleasantness (Selma Times Jour- nal [STJ] 199S:lA).

This is the environment in which I live and work. I often describe myself as an interpretive archaeologist (Hodder 1991). The Alabama His- torical Commission (AHC) employs me to develop and manage an archaeological park, Cahawba (1DS32; sometimes spelled Cahaba), located just 10 mi. from Selma. The mission of the AHC is “to foster an awareness of the value of historic structures, sites, and objects that reflect the heritage of all Alabamians and to facili- tate the preservation and documentation of these resources for the use, enjoyment, and education of present and future generations” (AHC 1993:l). My specific tasks are many. Beyond archaeological and historical research, I am in charge of land acquisition, construction of park facilities, fund-raising, sustaining public support, and interpretation. As a state employee, public participation is important to every aspect of my work.

My European descent, the topic of pre-emancipation archaeology, and the politics of my set- ting were roadblocks to achieving public participation. Various academic approaches were ap- plied to the participation problem and failed. Only when questions were asked that were

Historical Archaeology, 1997, 3 1(3): 18-26. Permission to reprint required.

PRE-EMANCIPATION ARCHAEOLOGY: DOES IT PLAY IN SELMA, ALABAMA? 19

meaningful to the local community was a work- able solution found.

The Site

Cahawba was created in 1819 to become Alabama’s first official state capital. Cahawba later became the market and social center of the wealthy cotton planters of Dallas County and their enslaved laborers. Today Cahawba is a dead town, and the remains of that antebellum society are well preserved beneath a landscape of relics and ruins. It has been a dead town since Reconstruction times. On the other hand, Cahawba does have one true descendant, Selma. After the Civil War, Selma inherited Cahawba’s county seat and its inhabitants. Many structures in Selma’s historic district once stood in antebellum Cahawba. These homes were dismantled, transported by river barge, and reassembled again in nearby Selma.

Uncovering the Problem

When I arrived at Cahawba 10 years ago, my initial method reflected my professional belief that historical archaeologists should be historians as well as archaeologists. Since I was dealing with a protected site, I started my work not by excavating but by building a historical context. I typed verbatim into the computer every avail- able historical document, deed, local newspaper column, and diary. Later the computer reassembled this information by town lot so I could prioritize lot purchase, then by family names so I could recreate biographies and community net- works.

Early in this process, one fact became immediately obvious: Cahawba’s population had always been at least 63 percent African American. However, this majority was seldom mentioned in written histories of the town. Furthermore, a previously ignored Reconstruction era for the town emerged. Although most of the white residents of the town fled to Selma after the war, many freed persons set up residence in Cahawba. Cahawba became the “Mecca of the

Radical Republican party,” a haven for black politicians and schools.

An unexpected bonus of our new computer files was their attraction to genealogists. Cahawba descendants from all over the nation began to write and even visit my office for information. Their favorite items were articles from Cahawba’s antebellum newspaper because the editor filled the local column with town gos- sip (Dallas Gazette 1853-1859). These records provided descendants much more than standard birth and death dates. Descendants invariably returned our kindness with an influx of family papers, pictures, artifacts, and even cash dona- tions for the project! Our work was repaid four- fold. These items rounded out Cahawba’s history in a way we never imagined, and they also provided interpretive material for exhibits. Cahawba descendants became frequent visitors, but these visitors were always of European descent. Cahawba’s 63 percent majority still had no voice, and our exhibits, now full of pictures, had no faces of color.

About this time, we began some test excava- tions as a prelude to park development. We had media coverage, including the National Geo- graphic World (1987: 19-23), and many visitors. Again, however, the only African Americans were people “forced” to attend due to work as- signments or advisory board appointments. The lack of visitor interest by the African-American community puzzled me. After all, the park’s fundraising group, “Cahawba Concern,” was con- spicuously biracial, in a community with few integrated organizations. If they had no interest in the history or archaeology of the place, why were they working so hard to “Save Cahawba,” as they proclaimed on their popular bumper sticker? I began to reanalyze the situation and came to the disappointing but illuminating conclusion that our black volunteers, who were al- most exclusively from an adjacent rural black community, were not interested in Cahawba for its history. Rather, their interest in Cahawba centered on the potential economic benefits for the living community and the close-to-home rec- reational benefits for their children. While I was

20 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 31 (3)

grateful for their support, regardless of the rea- son for it, l still hoped for more local recogni- tion of the site as the important African-Ameri- can historical and cultural resource that it was.

The Search for a Solution

I looked to The Society for Historical Archae- ology (SHA) for help in attracting the interest of the black community. I joined the newly formed African-American archaeology forum and attended their first “cross-cultural‘’ workshop held at the 1992 SHA annual meeting in Jamaica. Scholars from Africa, America, and the Carib- bean were invited to discuss the complex rela- tionship between African-American material culture and the traditions of a diverse African con- tinent. With this academic model in mind, I returned home and prepared a temporary exhibit for a statewide Black Heritage Month. I paired historic photos of local African-American cemeteries with a picture of a Congo chief‘s burial. Both photos showed a similar placement of grave goods. The point of the display was to celebrate African traditions. Before I even placed the exhibit, the look on the faces of our African-American employees and volunteers told me this was a big mistake. As they explained, to their fundamentalist Christian community, these traits were considered pagan and certainly not something to celebrate during Black Heritage Month.

Cahawba has three cemeteries. When I first arrived, I found that preservationists had fenced, cleared, and maintained two of them over the years. They had left the third, labeled “Negro Burial Ground” on historic maps, overgrown and inaccessible (Dallas County Office of Probate 1883). With this in mind, I listened intently at another SHA workshop. The speaker stressed that African Americans did not necessarily share the concept of perpetual care for cemeteries. She suggested that my desire to clear the brush from this third graveyard was merely a reflection of my own cultural preference (Carrel Cowen- Ricks 1993, pers. comm.). After considering her

argument, and asking some of my local African- American supporters what they thought about it, I found that this idea did not play very well at home. Apparently there is a long tradition in rural Alabama that involves an annual gathering to scrape the earth clean around the graves. My support group went so far as to tease me about listening to those “big city blacks.” After all, one said, “what did they know about things down here?’ One man, in particular, spoke with exceptional authority since his family had been in the funeral business for three generations, and he had personally interred several bodies at Cahawba’s burial ground.

I took to heart Abdul-Karim Mustapha’s (1995: 1-2, 4) comments in the African-American Archaeology Newsletter, suggesting that Mount Vernon or Monticello be regarded as a piece of African-American material culture because, after all, “we helped dig the first foundation” (Mustapha 1995:54). So, I started to consider ways to present the material culture of Cahawba as African American, since it had been built largely by African Americans. On the other hand, I also took to heart an editorial in the local newspaper that had been written by a black county commissioner. He insisted that public money not be spent on structures built and maintained with slave labor (Varner 1993:4). Friends, scholars, and advisory board members of African descent told me that slavery was too painful a topic to consider. For many of them, their history began only in 1965 with the voting rights movement. The history before, simply put, belonged to someone else.

After years of trying, I was demoralized, de- pressed, and decided it was time to give up. l was interested in pre-emancipation archaeology, SHA was interested in pre-emancipation archaeology; but the African-American community in which I lived and worked apparently was not. Of course, I could keep an “inclusive” interpretive theme for my established white visitors (McDavid, this volume). After all, adding some faces of color to their traditional view of history could only be a positive move (Farnsworth


annual festival. Third, I took a long, hard look at Selma’s current events. At the time, the news media was focusing on a school boycott. Black activists charged that “tracking” in the school system was effectively creating segregation within the schools. Ironically, school violence associated with the boycott caused white flight to private schools, essentially returning the community, at least temporarily, to a completely segregated school system (Smothers 19905D).

The St. Paul’s Project

Out of this community context, we created the St. Paul’s project. St. Paul’s school is one of three historic structures still standing on the archaeological site of Old Cahawba. The other two are antebellum. St. Paul’s was built in this century, constructed out of salvaged material from older buildings (Figure 1). It stands close by the ruins of an antebellum Methodist church.

tioning as an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church (STJ 1954:l-2). An old sign calls St. Paul’s the “Boys Academy.” In truth, the Cahawba Boy’s Academy did stand here in the 1850s. However, the current structure was a segregated schoolhouse for children of more recent black tenant farmers. The school board closed the doors at St. Paul’s in 1952.

I knew very little about this school and no

FIGURE 1. St. Paul’s School, abandoned in 1952. St. When the church burned in 1954, it was func- Paul’s is one of three historic structures still standing on the archaeological site of Old Cahawba.

1993:115-116). However, I would have to find something else to draw in the black community.

The Solution: Asking the Questions that Count

I needed to find something about the history of Cahawba that would interest this segment of the community. I had to find someone willing to talk to me, and I had to start listening. First, I looked at my staff d i d it include voices that might open doors in the community? I used a staff opening to hire a descendant of a black Cahawbian as the welcome center manager, and also began a long-term program to hire local youth as summer office staff and park workers. Second, I looked at members of “Cahawba Con- cern,” the volunteer group mentioned previously. Of the African-American members, most also attended the Beloit community center, located just 3 mi. from Cahawba. Our most avid volunteers from the Beloit center were retired school teachers- They were always advocating more activities for children, especially at our

FIGURE 2. Students interviewing Mrs. Mattie Arthur, now deceased, about St. Paul’s School.


one seemed willing to talk much about it. I learned, for example, that a woman in the Beloit community had taught there as her first job; however, she was always “too busy” to make time for an interview. As odd as it seems, the only record the county school board or the state department of education had of this school or its students was a report calling for its closure. All the historical records could tell us was that it was a public school, that it closed in 1952, and that it was just one of 80 similar segregated black schools located in the county (Alabama State Department of Education 1951).

I wanted to learn more about the school, but also realized that I needed to address the community’s interest in finding more activities for young people. So, my next step was to interest a Selma middle school teacher in helping us with a project designed to do both. We took her students and paired them up with former teachers, parents, students, and a white school superintendent from the period (Figure 2). Their job was to salvage the school’s oral history before it was too late. We armed them with 35 mm. cameras and measuring tools so they could record the physical evidence on site. Several experts donated their talents to the project. An architect from Tuskegee Institute showed them how to make Historic American Building Sur- vey-quality measured drawings. An English pro- fessor from the University of Alabama spoke to them about the importance of language and oral traditions to African Americans. A folklorist from the Alabama Department of Traditional Culture shared effective methods for oral interviews.

These middle school students did a great job. Their work culminated in a photographic exhibit, a trip to Washington, DC, to learn about the National Register, and the creation of a three- dimensional representation of the school. They taped and transcribed their interviews for poster- ity. I learned that informants who were reluctant to talk to me were quite willing to share their memories with these children. From these informants, students learned about the insidious aspects of segregation and racism in the segre-

gated schools of the past, including the substan- dard physical structure of most schools, the short school year for young farm laborers, and the extremely low graduation rate. But they also learned other things about St. Paul’s and other schools of the past: that people had a greater sense of community, that parents took more re- sponsibility for their childrens’ schooling, that classrooms had fewer discipline problems, and that religion and the black church played a large role in the segregated public school system (Forging Opportunities for Children United in Selma 1995).

The Pay-off

Working with these children opened many doors for me. People began to perceive that I played a role in the preservation of their community, and that I was interested in more than just the preservation of old things. I became a functioning member of the community, and was therefore worthy of trust. I also started to re- ceive more unsolicited information. One day, in the mail from Detroit, I received a church publication outlining a preacher’s remembrances of his childhood in our school (Whitt n.d.). Later I experienced a visit from a fascinating man who had interviewed hundreds of African-Ameri- can students in the Cahawba area during 1952 to assess their anxiety over anticipated desegrega- tion.

On the other hand, I had to learn to barter for access to some kinds of information. After the abandonment of St. Paul’s School in the 1950s, a burial society used the structure as a meeting hall. At monthly meetings, each burial society member enjoyed singing, prayer, and fellowship, and then contributed 15 cents toward a burial fund. When a member died, the fund paid for burial expenses. A descendant let me borrow the society’s records (Christian Benevolent Soci- ety [1959]) only after I promised to type a church homecoming bulletin on my office computer. As a state employee, I probably violated state policy in doing this. From a community standpoint, however, I was recognizing, respect-


FIGURE 3 Drawing of Ezekiel Arthur, reportedly drawn about the time of emancipation This portrait was given to the project by Ezekiels daughter-in-law, Mrs Mattie Arthur

ing, and valuing the community’s sense of ownership in the material. In other words, I did not take without recompense.

By working with these middle school children, I learned a lot about St. Paul’s. I can now of- fer an interpretation that has some value and relevance to the African-American communities in the area. Even better, I now have some standing in the community. Individuals now believe I can be trusted with family history more dear to my initial research interests, pre-emancipation history. After we finished the school project, black descendants began to share these older stories with me. Once I heard a few of these stories, I understood why families had been reluctant to share them with an unfamiliar white woman. Oral traditions about family history often contain more than genealogical information. Most also relate a moral or lesson to the younger generation. Frequently that lesson is

that white people cannot be trusted or should be avoided since, in the past, they have been a source of misery.

Participation from the local African-American community has continued to increase after the St. Paul’s project. I now have some faces of color for our exhibits. For example, one family brought me a drawing of Ezekiel Arthur, a resi- dent of Cahawba, reportedly done about the time of emancipation (Figure 3). His descendants have lived in the area ever since, and one of his descendants, Mattie Arthur, participated in the St. Paul’s project (cf. Figure 2). Later when the caretaker of a small neighborhood ‘Archive of Black History’ passed away, his family gave me a stack of books and papers he had set aside for me. Contained in this gift was a 1908 drawing of the Cahawba home place of the Hatcher family (Figure 4). During slavery, the Hatchers were carpenters, wheelwrights, and blacksmiths who hired out their own time. During Recon- struction, they became important political and religious leaders (Duncan 1908: 12-21).

Other positive things began to happen. With the signatures of black descendants, we peti- tioned the county commission to force a white land owner to open an access road to the “Ne- gro Burial Ground.” A Lutheran church inner city youth mission plans to travel from St. Louis

FIGURE 4. This drawing of the Hatcher family home was found in a 1908 church publication by George Braxton. The publication was written by a Hatcher descendant, and Mr. Braxton gave the publication to the project (Duncan 1908: 15).


to help us carefully clean grave markers and open an interpretive trail into the cemetery. Best of all, at a recent Selma tourism council meeting, I was amazed to hear the Brown Chapel AME group promoting Cahawba as a black heritage site. They called it “our Cahawba.” Per- haps pre-emancipation archaeology will play in Selma after all.

Postscript

Heady with success and thinking of myself as a paragon of open-mindedness, I welcomed a summons by a Selma community organization. At their meeting, I summarized the developing archaeological park at Cahawba. After the pre- sentation, I received no questions about my talk, which discussed archaeology, economic development, educational programs, community involvement, and the recording of oral traditions. In- stead the African-American members of this group immediately bombarded me with questions about plans to acquire property near the park currently owned by African Americans. They wanted me to know that if any such plans ex- isted, they were dead set against it. Finally, one man stood and asked me about one particular house in Cahawba: “Had it not burned down shortly after a black family refused to sell their lot to the state?’ His tone was clearly accusa- tory. I was so stunned that I was unable to explain that, in fact, the house had burned several years prior to the state’s involvement in Cahawba. I could not compose my thoughts fast enough to tell him the full story about what had actually happened, that, when I had origi- nally asked the family about buying the lot on which the house had stood, the family told me they did not want to sell it because the burned remains of their father had not been reclaimed from the ashes. Respecting their wishes, my agency simply reworked the park plans and asked our lawyer to purchase an adjacent lot instead; we did not pursue the purchase of the lot at all. However, during the meeting, all I could say was how personally hurt I was by this

accusation. I also assured them that nothing could be further from the truth.

After reflecting on this encounter, I realized that I was stunned not only by the horrible in- sinuation about arson, but by the realization that I had fallen victim to the “you people syn- drome.” I had met the needs of the local rural church-going community that surrounded my site, but these urban activists had little in common with Cahawba’s neighbors. Their downtown perspective was not driven by the needs of Af- rican Americans living in or near Cahawba. Friends from the Beloit community assured me that these Selma people did not even know the Cahawba families they thought they were de- fending. Instead they were verbalizing a national agenda, which was, at the time, developing around a question of ownership of interpretive rights and compensation at Martin Luther King’s home in Atlanta (Je t 1995:12-14; Greenwald 1995:37). This experience, although painful, forced me to realize that I had fallen victim to the myth of the monolithic African- American culture -but then, so had the African- American members of the Selma audience by assuming that the rural black community did not support our efforts.

Conclusion

In summary, the lessons I have learned about public participation in pre-emancipation archaeology over the last 10 years in Selma are as fol- lows:

1. An archaeologist’s main concern, in terms of public archaeology, should not be only to dis- seminate his or her findings to the public after excavation. Instead, the target audience needs to be involved in the project from the very begin- ning. If the community does not help define the questions, the answers probably will not interest them.

2. Do not look only to professional associations, such as SHA, for an approach. Serve your


community. them.

Ask the questions that count to

3. Take a holistic approach; be part of the community. The cold, detached, scientific approach will get you nowhere. Unfortunately, acceptance is not achieved overnight. It takes a long-term commitment and a willingness to work through difficult issues with the community.

4. If you can use an oral history program in your project that promotes intergenerational pair- ings, do so. This means of “passing on” history is a respected tradition in many African-Ameri- can communities and families.

5. Recognize diversity in the African-American community in which you work or live.

These conclusions are little more than just plain, old common sense. Archaeologists and other preservationists have heard much of it before (Logan 1992; [Polley] 1994). However, it is often easy to lose sight of one’s principles in the face of complex situations. Perhaps the spe- cifics of the Selma/Cahawba experience can be a reminder to other interpretive archaeologists finding themselves in similar situations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Carol McDavid for her insightful comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript. I would also like to thank Cahawba Concern, the Archaeological Conservancy, the Alabama Historical Commission, the Selma-Dallas County Historic Preservation Society, local chapters of the Boy Scouts of America, and the park staff for working hard to preserve, protect, and interpret the archaeological resources of Old Cahawba.

REFERENCES

ALABAMA STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 1951 A Survey Report of the Dallas County Schools, School

Year 1950-1951. Research and Survey Series 109. Alabama State Board of Education, Montgomery.

ALABAMA HISTORICAL COMMISSION

Manuscript on file, Alabama Historical Commission, Montgomery.

BENN, ALVIN 1990 Selma Still Struggling to Gain Racial Unity.

Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal, 11 February: 1A-3A.

CHRISTIAN BENEVOLENT SOCIETY [CAHABA, AL] [ 19591 Christian Benevolent Society Record Book. Duplicate

on file, Old Cahawba Archaeological Park, Alabama Historical Commission, Orrville.

DALLAS COUNTY OFFICE OF PROBATE [AL] 1883 Map of Cahaba, Alabama, Showing the Property of

Samuel Kirkpatrick. Map Book 1:184. Selma, AL.

DALLAS GAZETTE 1853- Local News. Dallas Gazette. Cahaba, AL. 1859

DUNCAN, SARA J. 1908 Progressive Missions in the South and Alabama with

Illustrations and Sketches of Missionary Workers and Ministers and Bishop‘s Wives. Franklin Printing and Publishing, Atlanta, GA.

FARNSWORTH, PAUL 1993 “What Is the Use of Plantation Archaeology?” No Use

at All, If No One Else Is Listening! Historical Archaeology 27( 1): 114-1 16.

FORGING OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHILDREN UNITED IN SELMA [FOCUS] (COMPILER)

1995 Transcripts of St. Paul’s School Oral History Interviews. Manuscript on file, Old Cahawba Archaeological Park, Alabama Historical Commission, Orrville.

GREENWALD, JOHN 1995 Controversy: Not Fit for a King. Time 145 (January

16):37.

HODDER, IAN 1991 Interpretive Archaeology and Its Role. American

Antiquity 56 (1):7-18.

JET 1995 King Family Order Park Agency to Stop Tours in

Dispute over Property. JET 87 (January 16):12-14.

LOGAN, GEORGE C. 1992 African-American Archeology, Public Education, and

Community Outreach. CRM 15(7):9-11.

MUSTAPHA, ABDUL-KARIM 1995 (dis)Owning the Emperor’s Robe. African-American

1993 Alabama Historical Commission Strategic Plan. Archaeology Newsletter 14 (Summer): 1--4. Tom

26 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 3 1 (3)

Wheaton, newsletter editor. New South Associates, Stone Mountain, GA.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC WORLD [Washington, DC] 1987 Digging for the Past. National Geographic World 144

(August): 19-23.

[POLLEY, CLAUDIA] 1994 Communities for the Future: Preservation of African

American Heritage in the United States, Summation Report From First Symposium. Manuscript on file, National Association for African American Heritage Preservation, Indianapolis, IN.

SELMA TIMES JOURNAL [Selma, AL] (STJ) 1954 Old Methodist Church at Cahaba Swept by Flames.

Selma Times Journal, 26 May: 1-2. 1995 $1 .5 Million Set Aside for March Route. Selma Times

Journal, 21 December: 1A.

SMOTHERS, RONALD 1990 In Pupil ‘Tracks’ Many See a Means Of Resegregation.

New York Times, 18 February: 5D.

VARNER, PERRY 1993 Your Opinion: Restoration of St. James Unneeded.

Selma Times Journal, 16 November: 4. WHITT, REV. ROBERT, JR.

n.d. The Big Old Teaching Snake. ECHOES Sunday School Literature. Wheaton, IL. Undated publication on file, Old Cahawba Archaeological Park, Alabama Historical Commission, Orriville.

LINDA DERRY OLD CAHAWBA ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK ALABAMA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 95 18 CAHABA ROAD ORRVILLE. AL 36737-OS66

pre-emancipation archaeology: does it play in selma, alabama?

Documents