Hello All:

  I have been pondering whether to enter into this controversy about the
Battle of Yorktown and its commemoration or not.  Finally, I conclude that I
have a few things or use to share with the list.

  The national ambivalence about sharing the real constitution of armies
from our most sacred battlefields is a constant for Americans.  David Blight
begins his Beyond the Battlefield with a long description of the 1913
commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg, from which blacks were barred.
While it is true that there were no USCT regiments present, there were black
Pennsylvania militia units in the area and African-American wage support
workers with the Army of the Potomac.
  The reality that soldiers in our Civil War as in our War for Independence
saw was altered later for essentially political reasons.  The simple reason
being that in the Antebellum era and again in the Gilded Age-Progressive
Era, The USA was reconceived as a white entity.
  This point was powerfully illustrated for me by an art historian who spoke
at the Rubin Lecture in American Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art back in I think 2002.  The lecture was on the painting of William Sydney
Mount, a New York artist and Democratic political activist.  Mount was from
Long Island and lived in an area that had always been populated by many
black families;  first as slaves, then as free men and women.  Most of
Mount's painting portrayed these black men and women, the models probably
his neighbors, often painted into the foreground of the canvasses.  But one
painting, which has a young man sipping cider through a straw from a barrel
is the one major Mount canvass that contains no black people (or Indians) at
all.  This scholar explained that Mount painted this piece to be his
allegory for America.  I found this remarkably interesting.  Blacks, of
necessity appeared in Mount's optic, but not in his politics.  Thus, in his
career as a painter he constantly portrayed black people but on the one
canvass that was an allegory of his Democratic politics he erased them.
  What Ms. Wills is remarking on is this erasure.  It can be a very
emotional issue for some of us because the erasure is both a lie and an
affront.  I am not familiar with the details of commemoration at Yorktown
but I hope that we can reach agreement on the larger point:  when serious
scholarship shows the presence of blacks and others subsequently erased from
important moments in American history, all of us on this list see this as an
historical error.
  We may not have the leverage to change organizational behavior at
Jamestown, or Williamsburg, or Gettyburg, but I am certain that we have the
common rationality to observe emerging historical documentation and stand in
broad agreement on their general significance.  Then we can take weeks
arguing about the more nuanced conclusions we draw from that evidence.

Harold S. Forsythe
Visiting Fellow (2005-2006)
Program in Agrarian Studies
Yale University
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anne Pemberton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: Surrender at Yorktown to be Commemorated October 18-22, 2006


>I agree that Anita is not being oversensative. She may not phrase her
> concerns in the proper tone, but her comments are well worth taking
> seriously.
>
> We have a problem with children taking an interest in history. When we
> celebrate history, we should make it a point to include all participants
> so
> that children can see the wide participation in historical events.  We owe
> it to our school children as well as interested adults to include the
> honors
> and recognition for past deed as widely as we can and still be accurate.
>
> If the information to make this more accurate is available, it should be
> happily included, not stiff-armed.
>
> Anne
>
>
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.erols.com/stevepem
> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
>
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