{"id":151,"date":"2010-08-02T20:52:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T00:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/2010\/08\/02\/a-tea-party-in-colonial-williamsburg\/"},"modified":"2010-08-02T20:52:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-03T00:52:00","slug":"a-tea-party-in-colonial-williamsburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/2010\/08\/02\/a-tea-party-in-colonial-williamsburg\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tea Party in Colonial Williamsburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent Washington Post story<\/a>, staff reporter Amy Gardner reminds us that history museums play a vital role in ongoing debates about nation and citizenship. Virginia\u2019s Colonial Williamsburg has witnessed a recent wave of Tea Party activists who\u2019ve come to cheer on Patrick Henry and follow George Washington to battle. These Tea Partiers find in Williamsburg\u2019s story a historical parallel to their own struggle against high taxes and big government. Gardner reports that the Tea Party worries that the nation has drifted from its founders\u2019 ideals. Those who\u2019ve \u201cforgotten about America,\u201d proclaims a retired plumber from New York, \u201cshould come here [Colonial Williamsburg] and listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Novel as it may seem, this episode recalls an earlier moment in the history of American museums. Museums like Colonial Williamsburg, the kind that mingle history lessons with restored buildings and costumed guides, became wildly popular in this country at the turn of the last century. They appealed especially to middle and upper class white Americans who were concerned that decades of labor unrest, combined with an onslaught of foreign immigrants, and the lingering complexities of Reconstruction threatened to obscure what really mattered in America. Colonial Williamsburg was born amid and of these worries during the late 1920s. Americans marveled at the new museum in a dramatic color photo essay printed in a 1937 issue of The National Geographic Magazine. One picture featured two black children flanked by British Redcoats and \u201cup to their ears in watermelon.\u201d \u201cThere is one custom,\u201d the caption continued, \u201cthat time has not changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Much has changed, fortunately, in the intervening decades. Colonial Williamsburg has worked hard to ensure that the jingoism at play during its early years is kept at bay\u2014and even scrutinized from time to time\u2014by serious hard-won critical history. As Gardner reports, Tea Partiers are sometimes rebuffed by a George Washington who is neither as religious nor as quick to revolt as they expect. Keeping the record straight, however, is a constant challenge in a nation where public memory and politics are synonymous. Consider, for instance, the anti-immigration VDARE Foundation<\/a> that takes its name from Virginia Dare, the celebrated first English (read: white) child born in America. VDARE, like the North Carolinians who opposed suffrage for Black women during the 1920s \u201cin the name of Virginia Dare,\u201d offers just one more example of change-fearing Americans looking to history for constancy and affirmation\u2014precisely what the Tea Partiers expect to find at Colonial Williamsburg.<\/p>\n

The persistence of that expectation is bad news for historians because it shows us that we have largely failed to educate the public that change is, in fact, the essence of history. Although Colonial Williamsburg\u2019s president hopes that visitors leave \u201chaving learned something about the nuance and messiness of history,\u201d the influx of Tea Partiers suggests that Americans who distrust change still seek solace there. Museums have become much better in recent years at challenging our expectations of the past. I wonder, though, when the rest of our nation\u2019s historians will join the effort in earnest. With important exceptions, I\u2019m shocked by how few credentialed historians share their expertise with local museums. I\u2019m surprised even more by how many fewer initiate those conversations. Why is it that more of us don\u2019t introduce ourselves to the good people who run our local museums? Why are there so few professional historians on the boards of small museums? Is it that we expect to be asked? To be paid?<\/p>\n

Colonial Williamsburg already has its share of historians. The audience that needs us most is waiting at those of our small community museums that can barely pay the bills, let alone respond to the most complicated political questions of our time. Because they can\u2019t afford to come find us, it\u2019s up to us to take the first step. George Washington didn\u2019t win as many battles as we\u2019d like to think. He\u2019ll lose this one too without some help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent Washington Post story, staff reporter Amy Gardner reminds us that history museums play a vital role in ongoing debates about nation and citizenship. Virginia\u2019s Colonial Williamsburg has witnessed a recent wave of Tea Party activists who\u2019ve come to cheer on Patrick Henry and follow George Washington to battle. These Tea Partiers find … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Tea Party in Colonial Williamsburg”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2638,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colonial-williamsburg","category-museum","category-tea-party","category-virginia-dare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2638"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}