Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare (Cultural Heritage Studies)

Amazon.com Price: $74.95 (as of 06/05/2019 06:26 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

“A tour de force. Moyer goes beyond critique to give us a richly contextualized study, demonstrating that inclusive interpretation of plantation and other historic house museum sites may also be done and that the failure to take action is a political act rooted in systemic racism.”—David T. Palmer, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
 
“An uncommonly detailed, frank, and balanced discussion of racialized practice at a historic site museum.”—Kirsti Uunila, historic preservation planner, Calvert County, Maryland
 
Enslaved African Americans helped develop into the US economy, culture, and history. Yet these individuals’ identities, activities, and on occasion their very existence are regularly all but expunged from historically preserved plantations and house museums. Reluctant to show and interpret the homes and lives of the enslaved, many sites have never shared the stories of the African Americans who once lived and worked on their land. One such site is Mount Clare near Baltimore, Maryland, where Teresa Moyer pulls no punches in her critique of racism in historic preservation.
           
In her balanced discussion, Moyer examines the inextricably entangled lives of the enslaved, free blacks, and white landowners. Her work draws on evidence from archaeology, history, geology, and other fields to explore the ways that white privilege continues to obscure the contributions of blacks at Mount Clare. She demonstrates that a landscape’s post-emancipation history can make a powerful remark about black heritage. In the long run she argues that the inclusion of enslaved persons in the history of these sites would honor these “ancestors of worthy life,” make the social good of public history to be had to African Americans, and address systemic racism in The united states.

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Americas » United States » Civil War » Abolition » Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare (Cultural Heritage Studies)

Recent Products