Historic Tours, Ethical Responsibility, and the Challenge of Memory

The other day I mentioned that I am putting together a tour of Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood for historians, who will be in town this weekend for the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little nervous.

This is my first tour since before the pandemic. Most of the tours that I lead are for teachers, students, and private groups. Rarely do I lead professional historians around. Last night I had a nightmare that I froze in front of a group that included David Blight, Manisha Sinha, and Steve Kantrowitz. Today and tomorrow I plan on walking the tour to gather my thoughts and hopefully alleviate some of my concerns.

The tour is centered around the monument landscape between the Boston Common and Public Garden. It also includes a walk through the north slope of Beacon Hill, which was the center of one of the most vibrant Black neighborhoods in the nineteenth century. I use it to bring context and a little tension in thinking about the monuments. Let me explain.

We’ve seen countless communities—mainly in the South—take up the question of whether monuments located in public spaces are appropriate and reflect the collective past of the entire community. It’s a reminder that communities make choices about what to remember, which, in turn, means that other aspects of the past are pushed aside and often forgotten. In most cases, the choices that are made have everything to do with who wields political power.

Boston has not been immune to such a discussion. In 2020 the city decided to remove a statue honoring Abraham Lincoln after holding numerous public discussions that showcased what many residents viewed as a problematic depiction of African Americans.

I welcome these conversations as a historian, educator, and resident.

I do my best to structure my tours in a way that forces people to think about questions at the intersection of history and memory.

The Shaw/54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial across from the State House on Beacon Hill captures some very important history, but it is also offers an opportunity to think about issues of memory and forgetting when placed in a broader context and narrative.

What do we learn when we acknowledge that the Black community, which played such an important role in advancing the cause of abolitionism, civil rights, and the raising of the regiment during the war, had largely been displaced by the time the memorial was dedicated?

How does our understanding of the memorial change when we explore the protests of Black Bostonians surrounding the premier of Birth of a Nation in 1915 and the film studio’s decision to promote it just feet from the memorial with horses draped in white Klan robes and Confederate reenactors?

What did African American activist Ralph J. Banks mean when he addressed a legislative committee in the State House, calling for the passage of a Fair Employment Practice Act in 1945?:

You can’t have a job in this state if you are a black man, in the ordinary course of events…but we are human beings and we are going to eat…You have given us monuments. you have given us the Shaw monument opposite the State House, but we can’t eat monuments.

How, if at all, did a white student interpret the Shaw Memorial in 1979 when he gathered at its base to protest the integration of public schools?

In the second half of the tour we focus on the statues to some of Boston’s most important abolitionists in the Public Garden. All of them are white and were dedicated roughly between 1880 and 1920 as the Back Bay was being filled in and developed into one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city.

How do we understand the complete absence of statues that honor Boston’s Black abolitionists just steps from where their voices once rang out? What role have these statues played in minimizing and largely erasing the story of these men from the city’s collective memory?

Monuments and statues are not static. Their meaning is constantly changing based on how they are appropriated, the history of the landscape on which they are located, and depending on the broader trajectory of the larger community.

Preparing for this tour is a reminder of the ethical responsibility that goes into making choices about what stories to tell and in fleshing out the kinds of questions you want your group to think about during your time together and hopefully to grapple with after they have left.

Wish me luck. :-)