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Speaking for the Enslaved: Heritage Interpretation at Antebellum Plantation Sites
Author(s): Antoinette T Jackson (Author)
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publication Date: 30 Jun. 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 178 pages
- ISBN-10: 1598745484
- ISBN-13: 9781598745481
Book Description
Focusing on the agency of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the South, this work argues for the systematic unveiling and recovery of subjugated knowledge, histories, and cultural practices of those traditionally silenced and overlooked by national heritage projects and national public memories. Jackson uses both ethnographic and ethnohistorical data to show the various ways African Americans actively created and maintained their own heritage and cultural formations. Viewed through the lens of four distinctive plantation sites―including the one on which that the ancestors of First Lady Michelle Obama lived―everyday acts of living, learning, and surviving profoundly challenge the way American heritage has been constructed and represented. A fascinating, critical view of the ways culture, history, social policy, and identity influence heritage sites and the business of heritage research management in public spaces.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“With a keen eye for detail, sharp analytical insight, and methodological innovation, Jackson’s book ends the practice of privileging the powerful at plantation museum heritage sites and gives voice to those previously silenced.”
–Stephen Small, University of California, Berkeley
“Antoinette Jackson’s book is about extending and complicating the history of African Americans, and providing a new and more inclusive perspective for our national public memory. Speaking for the Enslaved lays a foundation to challenge the dominant narrative and it shows how the descendant community can add a more inclusive and textured story about the past.”
–From the Foreword by Paul Shackel, University of Maryland
About the Author
Antoinette T Jackson
