Blues Tourism and the Erasure of African American History

Abstract: White fragility inhibits the responsible practice of public history in Mississippi blues tourism. Once touted as a force for racial reconciliation, the Mississippi Blues Commission abandoned its original goals under Republican Governor Haley Barbour, excluded African Americans from the decision-making process, and embraced more exclusive public history practices, which promote the erasure of African American history and obscure any connection to contemporary injustice.
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21499
Languages: English

“We said from the start they pimpin’ the blues. They making money off the blues [and] that’s not fair. They’re not distributing money in the black neighborhood. None whatsoever… It was supposed to enrich the neighborhood and teach the history of the blues…but it didn’t work out that way. It went to the people that didn’t know anything about the blues. They just took it over.”[1]

The Vehemence of White Fragility

Back when I was an MA candidate in public history at Middle Tennessee State University in 2010, I worked with the descendants of 1920s blues artist Tommy Johnson to conduct the necessary research and file a lawsuit against two white landowners who had denied access to a historic African American burial ground, Warm Springs CME Church Cemetery. The dispute over access began in 2001, when Johnson’s descendants received funds from Grammy award winning recording artist Bonnie Raitt to work with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund (MZMF), a Mississippi non-profit dedicated to historic preservation in rural African American communities. The MZMF had worked with the families of eleven different artists to design and install memorials that transformed abandoned cultural resources into international tourist destinations, but the complex social dynamic of racism stalled their twelfth initiative to promote historic preservation and blues tourism.

My work on the project eventually secured Johnson’s descendants permanent access to the historic site.[2] It also earned me the trust of the organization, which appointed me executive director in 2014. I had recognized the promise of Mississippi blues tourism in the work of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, and I wanted to leverage my privilege for reparative justice. Though I understood the shameful distortions of history that marked the larger tourist landscape, I was unprepared for the vehemence of white fragility, which holds racism in place.

Public history is problematic in Mississippi. Transparency and inclusive practice are not common, and political divisions have generated a lack of trust. Public historians will find it particularly difficult to work in blues tourism due to the phenomenon of white fragility—the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially.[3] In my early days with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many brokers of blues tourism became at the mere suggestion that whites needed to reassess their practice of public history. The very idea that private institutions, such as the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, and state-sponsored tourism groups, such as the Mississippi Blues Commission, should embrace a self-conscious, deliberately inclusive approach to professional practice outraged them. They stood up and walked out of symposiums angry and subsequently made that feeling clear by ignoring emails, expelling me from Facebook groups, blocking me on social media, and refusing to acknowledge the existence of the MZMF.[4]

I did not understand the resentment. I did not understand the lack of interest in correcting the problems with blues tourism. Their reactions were especially bewildering considering that so few people of color held authoritative positions in the blues superstructure. The lack of diversity suggested that important perspectives were missing. At the very least, it revealed a poor  understanding of best practices due to a lack of cross-racial collaboration. Yet, even progressive white blues enthusiasts seemed to have very little interest in learning more about the complex social dynamic of racism.

Blues as an African American Cultural Tradition 

These reactions held me back for several years. Intimidated, I remained careful and quiet. Over time, however, I started to see beneath the passive aggression, the anger, the resistance to openly discussing race and listening to people of color. For example, many white blues enthusiasts who grew up in northern suburbs—and had no long-term relationships with people of color—believed they held no racial prejudice or animosity. Other blues enthusiasts equated racism with being a bad person. Some got defensive at the mere suggestion of white privilege, arguing that whites are the more oppressed group today, and some rejected affirmative action, or any deliberate effort to include people of color in the decision-making process.

Most of them, moreover, lacked a fundamental understanding of the blues as a cultural tradition that emerged in African American communities during the 1890s, when the state of Mississippi disfranchised Black men in the state constitution, the Supreme Court codified racial segregation into federal law in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the errant theory of social Darwinism inspired a discourse on the extinction of “primitive” races, and the exacerbation of racial stereotypes justified the increased lynching of Black men and women.

In 2020, I published an article in the Public Historian highlighting the highly problematic practice of public history on the Mississippi Blues Commission (MBC).[5] By carefully guarding and controlling every element of the production process—research, writing, fabrication, placement, and promotion—the MBC erected a blues trail marker in Moorhead that promotes racial division by silencing the lived experiences of African Americans. The Black men and women who built the Yazoo Delta railroad had coined the term “Yellow Dog” in the 1890s, but this information is wholly absent from the blues trail marker. Instead, it prioritizes an arbitrary debate about the origins of the “Yellow Dog Blues,” apparently to keep from confronting white blues tourists with an uncomfortable truth about the state’s dark racial past.

The brokers of blues tourism originally touted the blues trail’s significant potential to promote racial reconciliation, a concept grounded in reaching a consensus about the past. It had the potential to reap huge economic benefits and redress the legacy of racial segregation (resource hoarding) by promoting economic development in impoverished African American communities. It also promised to preserve historic resources in African American communities. The blues trail, moreover, held the power to improve the state’s image as an intransigent racist backwater that had progressed very little since the 1960s. As Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves revealed in March 2022, however, when he signed a bill into law to squelch honest discussion about the harmful effects of racism, the state has not changed too much.[6] It certainly has very little invested in the historic preservation of African American communities, and the work of the MBC demonstrates very little interest in racial reconciliation.

The Problematic Role of the Mississippi Blues Commission

I started this text with a quote from Sylvester Hoover, an African American blues promoter who gives tours and operates a blues museum in Greenwood, Mississippi’s Baptist Town neighborhood. He offered his remarks after Mississippi state auditor Shad White recommended the MBC be abolished. Though White found “no evidence of embezzlement, fraud, or any other criminal violations,” he charged that the MBC “improperly designated a number of sole source providers, meaning it didn’t have to put out work for bids.”[7] The MBC signed sole source agreements with a white-owned ad agency, Hammons & Associates, which received about one million dollars as the project’s coordinator, and two white music scholars, Jim O’Neal and Scott Barretta, who received in sum almost $200,000. By claiming that white vendors were sole source providers for the content and fabrication of the historic markers, the MBC denied Black-owned businesses the opportunity to benefit financially from promoting the music that originated in the African American community.

The unethical financial practice of the MBC developed out of the privileged culture of the Mississippi GOP, which historian Chris Danielson described as “lily white and hard right.”[8] In 2004, Republican Governor Haley Barbour signed a bill into law that created the MBC. The lead author of the bill was Democratic Senator David Jordan, who, in collaboration with a predominantly African American delegation, had first pitched the idea of a blues commission while Democrat Ronnie Musgrove was still governor. After Barbour won the 2003 election, however, the predominantly African American delegation lost control of the commission, and the MBC took a decidedly different turn once it began its work in 2006.

Hoover and White were not the only ones displeased with the MBC. Mary Francis Hurt, of the Mississippi John Hurt Blues Foundation, worked with the MBC to erect a marker for her grandfather, Mississippi John Hurt. Though she advised that the MBC install the marker near St. James MB Church Cemetery, which holds great significance to the African American community of Avalon, the blues trail decided to install the marker next to the dilapidated and defunct Valley Store, a once-racially segregated business that refused to cater to African Americans. The failure of the MBC to place markers in line with the wishes of descendant communities is common, and it promotes the erasure of historic sites in African American communities.

I could go on listing the problems with various aspects of production at the MBC, but I do not believe that the commission cares about responsible public history practice. According to MBC chairman J. Kempf Poole, the commission has been mostly in “maintenance mode” since the release of the critical performance audit.[9] Despite the state auditor’s recommendation that other vendors and organizations take over the duties of the MBC, Hammons & Associates has worked with O’Neal and Barretta to install six additional markers, making the total 212.

Implications of Mississippi Blues tourism for Public History

The MBC’s “well-established practice of blues commemoration” has been lauded as “a massively successful experiment in tourism and economic development.”[10] It has inspired the creation of several heritage trails, including the Country Music Trail, the Gospel Music Trail, and the Mississippi Freedom Trail (MFT). Much like the curriculum on civil rights history that legislators in the 2000s made mandatory in Mississippi high schools, the historic markers on the MFT assert self-congratulatory and enlightened bona fides that place inspirational stories of overcoming racial inequality squarely in the nation’s past, obscuring any connection to contemporary injustice.

The iconization of the movement on the MFT politely suggests that Americans, specifically people of color today, lack the same grit and virtue of these civil rights heroes and heroines. It’s also careful, of course, not to rankle the nation’s fragile white populace or upset the racial status quo.

_____________________

Further Reading

  • DiAngelo, Robin J. White fragility: why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.
  • Theoharis, Jeanne. A more beautiful and terrible history: the uses and misuses of civil rights history. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.
  • Yow, Ruth Carbonette. Students of the dream: resegregation in a Southern city. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Web Resources

_____________________

[1] Tim Kalich, “Vendor Selection Disappoints Jordan,” Greenwood (MS) Commonwealth, Sept 17, 2019.
[2] T. DeWayne Moore, “‘I Asked for Water and She Gave Me Gasoline’: Unnecessary Roadblocks, Religious Syncretism, and the Headstone Blues in Copiah County, MS,” Association for Gravestone Studies Quarterly 42:2 (Summer 2018): 7-13.
[3] Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2018), 1-4.
[4] Bridging the Blues claims to serve as a bridge between the various tourist brokers in Mississippi, but in fact it promotes a select number of venues and events on its website and social media pages, appropriates the projects and memorials of other organizations and uses them in their promotional materials. It also excludes certain organizations from its promotional campaigns. The Delta Center for Culture and Learning’s website Mississippi Delta Top 40 is a similar program; this page uses a memorial erected in 1991 by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, an organization not listed on its website, to promote Bridging the Blues. See http://msdeltatop40.com/bridging-the-blues (last accessed 15 May 2023).
[5] T. DeWayne Moore, “Ripped Spike, Tie and Rail from its Moorings’: Racial Reconciliation, Public History, and the ‘Yellow Dog’ of the Mississippi Blues Trail,” The Public Historian 42:2 (May 2020): 56-77.
[6] Emily Wagster Pettus, “Gov. Tate Reeves signs law limiting race in lessons in classrooms, Jackson (MS) Clarion Ledger, March 22, 2022.
[7] Luke Ramseth, “Audit: Blues Commission Failed to Document Spending,” Hattiesburg (MS) American, Sep 15, 2019, p.A8.
[8] Chris Danielson, “‘Lily White and Hard Right’: The Mississippi Republican Party and Black Voting, 1965-1980.” The Journal of Southern History 75:1 (February 2009).
[9] Tim Kalich, “Chairman Agrees with State Auditor,” Greenwood (MS) Commonwealth, Sep 14, 2019, p.A1.
[10] Dave Tell, “Remembering Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi,” Places Journal, April 2019, https://placesjournal.org/article/remembering-emmett-till/ (last accessed 15 May 2023).

_____________________

Image Credits

Faded MBT marker: Before making his pitch to the MBC, Hammons & Associates President Allan Hammons designed and cast a prototype marker in 2006, which included the concept of using a printed vinyl insert on the back to allow for illustrations as well as more text. The printed vinyl inserts have proven to be a poor concept in the long-term, as many of the initial markers have since faded and peeled away in the scorching hot sun of the Mississippi Delta. © T. DeWayne Moore, 2020.

Recommended Citation

DeWayne Moore, Tyler: Blues Tourism and the Erasure of African American History. In: Public History Weekly 11 (2023) 4, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21499.

Editorial Responsibility

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The assessments in this article reflect only the perspective of the author. PHW considers itself as a pluralistic debate journal, contributions to discussions are very welcome. Please note our commentary guidelines (https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/contribute/).


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DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21499

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  1. German version below. To all readers we recommend the automatic DeepL-Translator for 22 languages. Just copy and paste.

    OPEN PEER REVIEW

    Whitening of History (and Ways of Doing Critical Public History)

    In the summer of 2021, a public discussion took place at Chur Theatre with Mike Metatawabin, a member of a Cree First Nation in Canada, who joined the debate via video link. When a student asked him what the worst thing was that the settlers had done to the indigenous people Mike replied: “The residential schools and the land grabs were terrible. But probably the worst thing was that they tried to erase our history and with it our identity.”

    In his important contribution to this month’s issue of Public History Weekly, Tyler DeWayne Moore illustrates this bitter experience of oppressed societies, minorities or marginalised groups with concrete examples. He also shows how the underlying racist patterns of action persist in a postcolonial reality. Examples of screened-out or suppressed history abound. The fact that, alongside African Americans, American Indians have also contributed significantly to the emergence of rock music, which is usually perceived as “white,” was only recently brought to the attention of a wider audience by the film Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World.[1]

    What Moore describes is part of the so-called traditional “whitening” of history.[2] Charles de Gaulle enforced such a blanchissement  already during the Second World War. He forbid an African regiment, which had contributed significantly to the liberation of Paris, from marching through the Arc de Triomphe. While the black soldiers waited in dilapidated camps to be transported back to Africa, their white comrades took the credit and shaped the media’s view of the world. Until 1944, however, the Free French forces consisted mostly of Africans. Together with millions of colonial soldiers recruited voluntarily or forcibly from the “Third World” and from numerous indigenous peoples of North America, they helped to liberate the world from German National Socialism, Italian fascism and Japanese delusions of imperial power.[3] Nevertheless, such facts and the corresponding images prove virtually impossible to find in European history books. Just as the photographs in the German and English Wikipedia entries on the Second World War almost exclusively feature white men[4]  — despite more soldiers from the “Third World” serving on the front lines than ones from Europe. China alone suffered more casualties than Germany, Italy and Japan combined. Also, more civilians died while liberating Manila, the Philippine capital, from Japanese occupation than during the Berlin or Dresden bombings.

    Moore’s contribution illustrates how essential critical public history would be in this context and what efforts scholars and educators sometimes need to make in order to properly integrate blanked-out stories into memory culture. If public history takes into account the sensitivities of a dominant society incapable of criticising its own past, if it panders to master narratives and, as happened with  the Mississippi Blues Commission, even falsifies history by erasing African-American history, then it remains one-dimensional and squanders any scientifically justified claim to validity. It thus degenerates into historical folklore, which one-sidedly celebrates the founding of a US city by European pioneers, yet fails to take into account the slavery and displacement of indigenous people associated with its construction.

    In a postcolonial context, also and especially when tourism engages with and communicates sensitive issues, public history needs to be conceived from multiple perspectives. It must also unite the memory cultures of different ethnicities and social groups in the same space on a scientific basis. And it should not shun asking the representatives of the privileged classes uncomfortable questions. Most importantly, public history must be history for the people, about the people and by the people, as Charles C. Cole observed in 1994.[5] This is especially true of blues tourism and the related public communication of history. Instead of erasing African-American history, it should make this history visible and thereby promote development and advance understanding throughout society. This in turn contributes to better understanding a unique musical culture, gives those who shaped it a human face and strengthens society as a whole in learning to engage critically with the diverse and contradictory aspects of its past.

    _____

    [1] Catherine Bainbridge, Alfonso Maiorana, director. Rumble. The Indians Who Rocked the World.       Rezolution Pictures, 2017. 1 hr. 43 min.
    [2] By “whitening of history,” I mean the screening out, falsification, trivialisation or folklorisation of colonial aspects of the past in favour of the master narrative of a “white dominant society.” In so doing, I refer to an example by Myron Echenberg, Professor of African History at McGill University in Canada, who in 1991 noted: “For the French authorities, the African ex-POWs [my note: prisoner of war] represented part of a growing logistical problem. The ex-POWs numbered perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 men. Soon they were joined by another 20,000 black African soldiers who had been very abruptly withdrawn from de Lattre’s First French Army in September and October 1944, as part as the so-called ‘whitening’ (the French term was blanchissement) of the French Free forces.” Echenberg was referring to original documents and statements by de Gaulle. Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth: Heinemann Educational Books, Inc., 1991), 98.
    [3] Birgit Morgenrath, Karl Rössel, ed., “Unsere Opfer zählen nicht”. Die Dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin/Hamburg: Assoziation A, 2005); Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro, Die Dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Unterrichtsmaterialien zu einem vergessenen Kapitel der Geschichte (Köln: Recherche International e.V., 2008), 31; Markus Harmann, Joachim Heinz, “Wie American Natives halfen, Hitler zu besiegen,” WDR 5, Neugier genügt, Das Feature, June 03, 2022.
    [4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweiter_Weltkrieg and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II, (last accessed 22 April 2023).
    [5] Cole writes: “Public history appears […] as a mixture of history for the public, about the public, and by the public.” The expression “for the public” also applies to the visibility of people and their histories in the public sphere. Charles C. Cole, Jr., “Public History: What Difference Has It Made?” The Public Historian 16, no. 4 (1994): 9–35. See also Peter Gautschi and Jan Hodel, “Public History and Tourism – a Success Story?,” Public History Weekly 11, no. 4 (2023).

    __________

    Weißfärbung der Geschichte (und die Möglichkeiten kritischer Public History)

    Im Sommer 2021 fand am Theater Chur ein Publikumsgespräch mit dem per Video zugeschalteten Mike Metatawabin, einem Cree aus Kanada, statt. Als ihn ein Schüler fragte, was das Schlimmste sei, das die Siedlergemeinschaft den Indigenen angetan habe, antwortete er: “Die Residential Schools und die Landwegnahme waren furchtbar. Aber das wohl Schlimmste war, dass man versuchte, unsere Geschichte und damit unsere Identität auszulöschen.”[1]

    Tyler DeWayne Moore greift in seinem wichtigen Beitrag mit konkreten Beispielen diese bittere Erfahrung von Mitgliedern unterdrückter Gesellschaften, Minderheiten oder Randgruppen auf und zeigt, wie die dafür zugrunde liegenden rassistischen Handlungsmuster in einer postkolonialen Realität fortwirken. Beispiele ausgeblendeter oder verdrängter Geschichte finden sich massenhaft. Dass etwa neben African Americans auch American Indians wesentlich zur Entstehung der meist als “weiss” wahrgenommenen Rockmusik beigetragen haben, wurde erst unlängst durch den Film Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World einem breiteren Publikum bewusst.[2]

    Was Moore beschreibt, ist in der Tradition der sogenannten “Weissfärbung” bzw. des “Blanchissements” von Geschichte zu verorten. [3] Bereits Charles de Gaulle setzte es im Zweiten Weltkrieg um. Er liess ein afrikanisches Regiment, das wesentlich zur Befreiung von Paris beigetragen hatte, nicht durch den Triumphbogen marschieren. Während die schwarzen Soldaten in erbärmlichen Lagern auf den Rücktransport nach Afrika warteten, konnten ihre weissen Kameraden die Lorbeeren einheimsen und das mediale Weltbild prägen. Dabei bestanden die Truppen des Freien Frankreichs bis 1944 mehrheitlich aus Afrikanern. Gemeinsam mit Millionen freiwilliger oder zwangsrekrutierter Kolonialsoldaten aus Gebieten der “Dritten Welt” und zahlreichen Indigenen aus Nordamerika halfen sie mit, die Welt von deutschem Nationalsozialismus, italienischem Faschismus und japanischem Grossmachtwahn zu befreien.[4] Doch solche Fakten und entsprechende Bilder sind in europäischen Geschichtsbüchern praktisch nicht zu finden. Auch die Fotos im deutsch- und englischsprachigen Wikipedia-Eintrag zum Zweiten Weltkrieg zeigen fast ausschliesslich weisse Männer.[5] Dies obschon insgesamt mehr Soldaten aus der “Dritten Welt” an den Kriegsfronten standen als aus Europa. Allein China hatte mehr Opfer zu beklagen als Deutschland, Italien und Japan zusammen und bei der Befreiung der philippinischen Hauptstadt Manila von den japanischen Besatzern starben mehr Zivilisten als vergleichsweise in Berlin oder Dresden.

    Moores Beitrag verdeutlicht, wie essenziell in diesem Zusammenhang eine kritische Public History eigentlich wäre und welche Anstrengungen Wissenschaftler:innen und Vermittler:innen gelegentlich unternehmen müssen, um ausgeblendete Geschichten sachgerecht in die allgemeine Erinnerungskultur zu integrieren. Wenn Public History auf Empfindlichkeiten einer gegenüber der eigenen Vergangenheit nicht kritikfähigen Dominanzgesellschaft Rücksicht nimmt, sich Meistererzählungen anbiedert und wie beim Beispiel der Mississippi Blues Commission sogar Geschichtsklitterung betreibt, indem sie afroamerikanische Geschichte auslöscht, dann bleibt sie eindimensional und verspielt jeden wissenschaftlich begründeten Geltungsanspruch. In diesem Fall verkommt sie zu historischer Folklore, die etwa einseitig die Gründung einer US-amerikanischen Stadt durch europäische Pioniere zelebriert, aber die mit dem Aufbau verbundene Sklaverei sowie die Vertreibung der Indigenen nicht berücksichtigt.

    Public History im postkolonialen Kontext, auch und sogar besonders in touristischer Vermittlung sensibler Themen, muss multiperspektivisch konzipiert sein und Erinnerungskulturen verschiedener Ethnien und sozialer Gruppen im selben Raum auf wissenschaftlicher Grundlage vereinen. Sie darf sich nicht scheuen, Vertretern und Vertreterinnen privilegierter Schichten unbequeme Fragen zu stellen. Oberste Priorität hat stets die Eigenschaft von Public History als Geschichte für die Menschen, über die Menschen und von den Menschen, wie es Charles C. Cole 1994 sinngemäss beschrieben hat.[6] Dies gilt besonders auch für den Blues Tourismus und die damit verbundene öffentliche Geschichtsvermittlung. Anstatt die afroamerikanische Geschichte zu tilgen, sollte sie diese sichtbar machen und dadurch einen gesamtgesellschaftlichen Entwicklungs- und Verständigungsprozess voranbringen. Dies wiederum trägt zu einem besseren Verständnis einer einzigartigen Musikkultur bei, gibt den Menschen, die sie geprägt haben, ein Gesicht und stärkt die Gesellschaft als Ganzes, da sie lernt, sich kritisch mit den verschiedenen und widersprüchlichen Aspekten ihrer Vergangenheit auseinanderzusetzen.
    _____

    [1] Mike Metatawabin am Publikumsgespräch im Anschluss an die Vorführung von “Songs of the Land”, Theater Chur, 22.09.2021 sowie per E-Mail an M. Menrath vom 19.04.2023. Die Geschichtswissenschaft wendet sich erst seit dem Postcolonial Turn in den 1960er-Jahren der indigenen Geschichte zu. Wurde die entsprechende Forschung in Nordamerika zunächst zögerlich betrieben, ist sie dort inzwischen an vielen Universitäten etabliert. Dazu beigetragen haben auch indigene Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten sowie Forschende, die ihrer von der Dominanzgesellschaft ausgeblendeten Geschichte Sichtbarkeit verliehen. Diesbezüglich spielte stets auch kritische Public History eine entscheidende Rolle. Das an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Luzern durchgeführte und vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds geförderte Projekt “Postkoloniale Sichtbarkeit: Die Emanzipation der kanadischen First Peoples im Vergleich mit schweizerischen Kanada-Bildern” befasst sich ebenfalls mit dieser Thematik. Es untersucht u. a. erinnerungskulturelle Konflikte zwischen der indigenen und nicht-indigenen Gesellschaft in Kanada, die sich in der Öffentlichkeit zeigen.
    [2] Catherine Bainbridge, Alfonso Maiorana, director. Rumble. The Indians Who Rocked the World. Rezolution Pictures, 2017. 1 hr., 43 min.
    [3] Unter “Weissfärbung von Geschichte” verstehe ich die Ausblendung, Verfälschung, Verharmlosung oder Folklorisierung kolonialer Aspekte der Vergangenheit zugunsten der Meistererzählung einer “weissen Dominanzgesellschaft”. Ich beziehe mich dabei auf ein Beispiel von Myron Echenberg, Professor für afrikanische Geschichte an der McGill Universität in Kanada. Er hielt 1991 fest: “For the French authorities, the African ex-POWs [prisoner of war, Anm.: M. Menrath] represented part of a growing logistical problem. The ex-POWs numbered perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 men. Soon they were joined by another 20,000 black African soldiers who had been very abruptly withdrawn from de Lattre’s First French Army in September and October 1944, as part as the so-called ‘whitening’ (the French term was blanchissement) of the French Free forces.” Echenberg bezog sich dabei auf Originaldokumente und Aussagen de Gaulles. Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960 (Portsmouth: Heinemann Educational Books, Inc., 1991), 98.
    [4] Birgit Morgenrath, Karl Rössel, ed., “Unsere Opfer zählen nicht”. Die Dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin/Hamburg: Assoziation A, 2005); Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro, Die Dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Unterrichtsmaterialien zu einem vergessenen Kapitel der Geschichte (Köln: Recherche International e.V., 2008), 31; Markus Harmann, Joachim Heinz, “Wie American Natives halfen, Hitler zu besiegen,” WDR 5, Neugier genügt, Das Feature, June 03, 2022.
    [5] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweiter_Weltkrieg und https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II, (last accessed 22 April 2023).
    [6] Cole schreibt “Public history appears […] as a mixture of history for the public, about the public, and by the public”. Der Ausdruck “for the public” gilt auch für die Sichtbarkeit von Menschen und ihren Geschichten im öffentlichen Raum. Charles C. Cole, Jr., “Public History: What Difference Has It Made?” The Public Historian 16, no. 4 (1994): 9-35. Vgl. dazu auch Peter Gautschi, Jan Hodel, “Public History and Tourism – a Success Story?,” Public History Weekly 11, no. 4 (2023).

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