A Celebration of African-American Interpretation

African-American interpreters in the Revolutionary City sometimes find that there’s a fine line between the past and the present.

Like the time that a guest nervously told the African-American interpreters at the Powell House that her husband was bringing the car around so that they could escape and be free. The portrayal was so real that the guest believed the interpreters were enslaved.

“Initially, African-American character interpreters had to ‘break character’ to explain what was going on. Guests did not understand why a person was talking to them like they were in the 18^th century. It was confusing,” said Rose McAphee, historian and former interpreter at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Rewind to the 1940s, when the stories of the enslaved were barely told at all. A family of African-Americans was asked to move into the Wythe house to live there in costume. Without active interpretation, James and Geraldine Payne and their two children were just gentle reminders that slaves and free blacks did indeed live in Williamsburg.

Active interpretation began in 1979 after Rex Ellis entertained a risky idea. What if programming was written to portray the life of the enslaved in colonial America? It was perfect timing because the well-received TV series “Roots” had premiered two years earlier. People were hungry for more.

Telling a difficult story

These were stories that people were curious about, but they sometimes weren’t prepared for the emotions those stories evoked.

“In school we were taught that slaves had no hope and their lives had no joy or comfort. We didn’t want to talk about slavery and we were told we should forget about it and move on,” said Stephen Seals, Colonial Williamsburg’s Manager of Program Development, African American and Religious Interpretation.

Many challenges to portraying enslaved people

Fast forward to 2015. Now it usually isn’t necessary to break character to explain what is going on. People understand that the street theater is telling stories of early African-American society in colonial America.

How do you bridge the gap between the 18^th century and the 21^st century?

At times a character may speak with a guest privately, breaking character to explain in 21^st-century language some of the finer points about what they’re doing.

Guests sometimes want to know, for example, what it feels like to be a modern African-American portraying an enslaved person.

Waiting for the “Aha” moment

“We tell interpreters that the moment of ‘Aha’ for the guest might not happen in front of them. It might click in as they are driving home or the following week when they read something in the newspaper and suddenly realize that it connects with what they heard here last week,” McAphee said. “We are not just giving people facts, we want to give people accounts of what real human lives were like in a slave society.”

Is it difficult to find interpreters for these jobs?

Part of Seals’ job is to travel across the nation auditioning actor-interpreters.

“It is challenging to find actor-interpreters, but not impossible. The job openings are published in national museum publications, among other places. We look at a broad base of auditioning actors to find people who are willing to represent a disenfranchised group, both black and white. They also have to be very emotionally mature,” Seals said.

What’s in the future for African-American interpretive programming?

Seals would like to see more integrated programming with stories that include white Americans. “I truly do not believe that you can have ‘separate but equal’ programming. Now the job is to help the public understand that the stories were woven together and that blacks didn’t live in a vacuum. The law made them separate, but life made them intertwined,” he said.

“It is important that people have the same information. They don’t have to think like I do, but they can be given some nugget of information that might begin to move their minds toward thinking about it. They should feel the urge to talk to their children, wives or husbands about the information and figure out what they think it means. To me and to many of the interpreters around here, that is what is most important,” Seals said.

Learning to embrace the past and being proud of it

“It took me a long time to discover that my ancestry was not something to be ashamed of and that I should embrace it and be proud of it. The fact that I am able to accomplish what I do, grows out of the strength of my ancestors before me. They showed that they had strength to survive and I’m proud of that. I’m proud of where blacks are and where they will continue to go,” he added.