Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

On June 17, 2015 a young white nationalist who wanted to start a race riot shot and killed nine African American church members after he sat through their entire evening Bible Study as a guest. Beforehand, the shooter sought out multiple historic sites to take pictures of the sites with the Confederate flag. In 2017, protests turned into an act of murder when a young white woman was mowed down by car. The woman was protesting in favor of the removal of a monument honoring a Confederate war hero in the city’s public park. Since these two critical events, the Southern United States has been embroiled in a battle of cultural heritage and museum collections. Some citizens called for all Confederate flags to be taken down and added to museum collections for display and interpretation as an artifact of Southern heritage. Others called for the removal of historic markers, sites, and homages to the Confederacy in public spaces; largely urban and/or rural as indication of a celebration of white supremacist attitudes. Still others, insisted that these cultural heritage artifacts should never be added to museum collections because they represent hatred; not heritage. This session will share Dr. Moore’s research at a Southern plantation nestled inside an urban space, examine the various critical incidents of protests regarding the heritage not hate activism, and integrate a short workshop/activity for guided discussion about interpretation of contested and/or challenged histories in the American South.