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THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER |
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Dispatches from the Santa Fe Trail
The racial diversity of the region came alive with visits to Indian reservations, border towns, historic Black settlements, specialty museums, sugar plantations and other unique sites. This piece reflects the perspectives of several students on the trail — Maria Bibbs, Kelly Roark, Jerome Dotson, Mark Goldberg, and Ryan Quintana. Gateways to the West — Old and New The “City of the Sun” seemed to be the ideal place to start a discussion about American history. A University of Wisconsin-Madison class of 35 students and eight faculty began their exploration of the American Southwest in what was once a major cultural center of American Indian life: Cahokia, Ill. With 20,000 residents, this was North America’s most densely populated city until 1800. One of the highlights of the students’ visit to Cahokia was the time they spent standing at the top of a temple mound that towered a hundred feet above a plaza and several smaller mounds, experiencing the breathtaking view of the distant St. Louis Arch glowing in the sunset. But the museum tour was bittersweet for most. With crude dioramas, cold glass, and the harsh juxtaposition of the words of American archeologists with those of unknown indigenous storytellers, the museum left students feeling that archeologists had constructed the history of this Mississippian tribe with little more than speculation. After the tour, students mulled over questions of cultural representation in history. Ned Blackhawk, assistant professor of history and ethnic studies at UW-Madison, suggested that the experience could inspire new ways of thinking about history. The next morning, we started our day with a bus tour of St. Louis’ historic riverfront, guided by University of Missouri-St. Louis history professor Andrew Hurley. The riverfront was once a center of civic life in St. Louis, but now it is teeming with more tourists than residents. One of the tour’s most poignant moments involved a monument called the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, hidden away behind a river bluff on the north side of the riverfront. The monument memorializes a freedwoman’s attempts to help nine slaves escape by crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois. St. Louis has a secret history of transporting such precious cargo on the Underground Railroad. “This was a dangerous river to cross,” said Hurley. “It’s the fastest- flowing river in the world, so you can appreciate the danger they faced to experience freedom.” The memorial, which includes a mural painted by local high school students, was not the product of business interests, but a grassroots effort by North St. Louis residents with a stake in recovering their neighborhood’s history. “We usually don’t think of history as a way to empower people in a direct way, but with this Mary Meachum project, North St. Louis community leaders have done so,” Hurley said. After the bus tour, students visited the Gateway Arch, the courthouse where the Dred Scott case was tried, and the Museum of Westward Expansion. Students were especially glad to see St. Louis through new eyes and drew similarities between the city’s complicated regional identity and their own knowledge of modern urbanization in Madison. “Black Wall Street,” Cherokee heritage, and a dose of Oklahoma blues Justice has been a long time coming for the children of Tulsa, Okla.’s historic “Black Wall Street” neighborhood. This district is remembered as a both an example of Black economic independence and the site of the United States’ most devastating race riot, which took place in 1921. The class visited the neighborhood’s memorial at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa to see how the riot’s survivors and local activists have worked to reclaim this history and demand reparations for the economic losses and trauma the community has suffered. At Tahlequah, Okla.’s Cherokee Heritage Center, students got a glimpse of several of the Cherokee Nation’s rich cultural traditions and learned about its early social infrastructure. The museum’s tour guide dispelled myths about American Indian life by engaging students in several role-playing scenarios where the men hunted, the women cooked, and everyone played lacrosse. After the tour, Chad Smith, chief of the Cherokee Nation, gave the group an update on the community’s contemporary political concerns. One of the most critical issues, Smith said, was the Nation’s effort to sustain the Cherokee language for future generations. “The vessel of the culture is its language,” Smith said. Next, the group stopped at one of the country’s last remaining historically Black towns — Rentiesville, Okla., a group of rural settlements established by African-American “exodusters” seeking sanctuary after emancipation. “I’m about to take you down to the cut,” said tour guide Cassandra Gaines. The group shared a moment of heart-stopping astonishment upon seeing the letters “KKK” etched on the town’s Civil War memorial celebrating the contributions of African-American soldiers. After reconvening to discuss the issue, they moved on to the Down Home Blues Club to hear a performance by renowned bluesman D.C. Minner. With silver rings lined up to his knuckles, Minner strummed both the hits and original material, giving the class a lesson in music history that we could dance to. While we were finishing the last dance, lightning illuminated the night sky like dropping bombs. We were caught in the middle of one of the plains region’s trademark thunderstorms. In the morning, the class attended a service at the Praise Center Family Worship Church. Many students commented on the community’s hospitality and warm send-off as the bus made its way to Texas. While en route to Houston, the class engaged in its first heated debate and grappled with several of the issues of race, culture, language and tourism that these sites provoked. It was a sign that as we finally crossed the border into the Lone Star State, we were no longer strangers to one another. In Texas, some harsh lessons on cultural conflict Buried in the soft earth of a bayou southeast of Houston, archeologist Kenneth Brown of the University of Houston has uncovered what many now call “the Pompeii of African-American slave life.” In a decade-long project, Brown and his students have not only uncovered the remnants of the slave quarters on the Levi Jordan plantation, but have also uncovered evidence that points to an incredibly complex culture that existed on one of South Texas’ largest sugar plantations. Braving several of nature’s obstacles, including fire ants, snakes, and heat and humidity that never visit Madison, Brown led the class to the Levi Jordan Plantation in Brazoria County and presented his findings. There, the students learned about the harsh reality of forced labor on a sugar plantation. As slaves and as tenant farmers, the members of the African-American community on the Levi Jordan plantation, numbering around 144 souls, toiled in extreme conditions most of the year, six days a week, from sunup to sundown. Brown’s research has revealed that despite these harsh conditions, they created a unique culture that thrived within the slave quarters. The class trekked through the overgrown brush that now covers the site of 26 slave cabins—a site where slaves laughed, worked, wept and prayed. Words cannot describe the emotions that many of the students felt as they stood on this now-sacred site. Many students who are descendants of African-American slaves dealt with the emotional realization that they were standing on the site where their ancestors labored, loved, and lived. Later that day, the class moved on to the Varner-Hogg plantation. A smaller sugar plantation than the Jordan property, the Varner-Hogg plantation was transformed into a romanticized celebration of Southern plantation life in the 20th century. Unlike the Jordan site, this shrine to Southern history purposefully obscured the presence of the slaves who made up the majority of the land’s population. Indeed, many students were shocked by the stark difference between the two plantations. Nonetheless, this site allowed the students on this journey to begin the process of understanding the violence of plantation slavery and its connection to the racism of the 20th century and today. Ultimately, the journey to the plantations reminded the students that the trip was not only educational, but emotional. In order to uncover the multiracial West, they not only had to be willing to confront many of the nation’s most difficult historical stories, but also struggle through the various feelings that inevitably accompany such a journey. "Transforming communities” in Corpus Christi and Houston When we arrived—sweaty, tired, and sore—we did not expect them. But truthfully, who expects that kind of attention? Yet, as we stepped off our bus onto the sun-bleached concrete of Corpus Christi, they were there. The television cameras-- at least five — were waiting for us. Microphones in hand, the reporters pressed forward, eagerly requesting interviews. Some of us turned away, while others clamored for a portion of our 15 minutes of fame. What we did not realize was that the cameras and the attention were not for us. They were for the man that the post office, the armory, schools, streets, and children were named for: Dr. Hector P. Garcia. Dr. Garcia, a World War II veteran, was the founder of the American G. I. Forum, a Mexican-American civil rights group that struggled for equal protection under the law for Hispanics. After the war, Garcia found that many Mexican Americans who fought in the war faced incredible discrimination. Using his financial resources, charisma and passion, Garcia mobilized the civil rights efforts of the post-war Mexican-American community in Corpus Christi, Texas. Garcia is idolized in this city, where Mexican Americans constitute more than half of the population. For many of the students on our trip, Garcia’s near-icon status may have been difficult to understand. The morning before we arrived in Corpus Christi, we visited Houston’s historic Third Ward, a predominantly working-class African American community. Facing many of the problems that other similar communities face, the Third Ward has been transformed recently by Rick Lowe, a local artist, who has turned much of the area into a living sculpture--Project Row House. Created in 1992 as a way to revitalize the community by providing homes for young mothers, offering scholarships, and inviting world-renowned artists into the community—all without sacrificing the community’s character and affordability to gentrification—Project Row House works to retain the original beauty and character of the neighborhood while simultaneously reinvigorating it with new energy. Words cannot describe the hope that this project gave our class. As we explored the shotgun houses that filled the neighborhood’s blocks, you could imagine that each person in our group began to ask themselves, “How can we make our space into a sculpture?” These feelings accompanied us as we traveled to Corpus Christi. And while many on the bus did not know of Dr. Hector Garcia before we arrived, the history we learned about in Corpus Christi reflected the same hopes and efforts present in Houston’s Project Row House. In Madison, we are distanced from the struggles that many impoverished Americans suffer through each day. From our safe distance, those struggles can seem abstract, isolated, and even simplistic. The experiences that many of us shared in Houston and Corpus Christi began the process of transforming that perspective. Next week’s issue will feature reflections on the group’s visit to The Alamo.
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Editor’s note: An unusual
UW-Madison “traveling classroom” hit the road for three weeks
in June in search of firsthand perspectives on the cultural
history of the American West. The three-credit course, “In Search
of the Multiracial West: The Santa Fe Trail,” offered by the
Chicano and Latino Studies Department, traveled through Missouri,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.
