By Claire Gould
“Everyone here is white and over 50! Where are our young people? Where are our young black students? This isn’t dead, ancient history—it really wasn’t that long ago!”
There we were, sitting in a classroom at Virginia Commonwealth University, a diverse institution in a diverse city, and this speaker at the Virginia Forum was right. I’m certainly under 50, but there were few others in that younger demographic; non-white participants could be counted on one hand.
One brave soul raised her hand and offered a response. She’s a history professor in the African American studies department at George Mason University. Her classes have become smaller and smaller and less and less diverse, and some have been cancelled. “Students, both black and white, think we’ve solved all the problems,” she said. “They don’t realize that this wasn’t all that long ago.”
The theme of this year’s conference, where historians, students and museum professionals came together to share and discuss their work, was “Commemoration and Memorial.”
Participants considered with dismay the injustices of Jim Crow; with wonder the forward-thinking policies of the 18th century; and with shock, both at how far we’ve come and how little has really changed at all.
Ed Peeples and Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, white participants in desegregation and sit-ins in the sixties, opened the conference by sharing some of their experiences in Richmond and Northern Virginia during this time.
Seeing their vibrancy and how clear their memories of these times – that they are living memorials to standing up for what is right in the face of adversity – showed just how recently this really did take place.
You may remember the 1965 Virginia gubernatorial election in which the Nazi Party, running on a platform of race-based hate, got 8% of the vote, and the new Conservative Party, which advocated sterilizing unwed mothers, received 14%.
Your parents or grandparents may have tried to pay the poll tax in order to vote in that election, but found no one was willing to collect it or that they had to pay up to three years at a time, an exorbitant fee.
Four generations ago Virginians were fighting on foreign soil for freedom against tyranny while oppressing almost half their population at home. Eight generations ago Virginians were buying and selling human beings.
As the conference continued, the number of young participants of all backgrounds increased slightly, but never hit critical mass. And I wonder if Virginia’s history really doesn’t seem relevant to young people anymore.
On their face, the issues of the past seem dead and over, unlikely to affect us as we go to school, work and the coffee shop each day. But when you dig deeper, hear from the people who know this history intimately, the history of Virginia becomes the history of the nation and the world.
“Commemoration and Memorial” is a compelling theme because it draws attention to how we choose to remember and remind others about our history. Presenters discussed roadside plaques, national celebrations, statues, and books, but conferences like this one are themselves acts of commemoration.
They highlight what we’ve chosen as important to remember as a society and show how, in the remembering, we re-examine and redefine our past for the present day. We need commemoration and memorials so we don’t forget these events that seem in the distant past, but really weren’t so long ago.
Claire Gould is a Writer-Editor in Colonial Williamsburg’s Education Outreach Department.
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