How Do You Define Classroom?

People often ask me if I am a college professor or schoolteacher.  It must be my delivery when I present to audiences and my experience of being a Park Ranger for the National Park Service.  I’m neither schoolteacher nor professor; I can’t say that being one of those was not a wish in some fleeting moment of the past.  That said, I like teaching, to anyone who will listen, about what I engage in the most, and that is spending nights at historic sites where enslaved people inhabited.  My passion is my occupation. Sleeping in slave dwellings is not some crazy attempt to recreate something from the past, because that period in history only benefitted the enslavers. Sleeping in these dwellings is my way of honoring the enslaved Ancestors.  These historic sites have also become my classrooms. Every sleepover is an indication that class is in session. 

One measure of success is ensuring that historic sites include stories of the enslaved people.   Historic sites shouldn’t misinterpret acquiescence as happiness or weakness.  Anything beyond acquiescence could have caused the elimination of gene pools.  If more of the enslaved Ancestors rebelled, how many African Americans would not be here today?

Acquiescence was not the choice of all.  There were radicals such as Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey.  Some stole their freedom like Harriet Tubman, Henry Box Brown, and Frederick Douglas. Some were formerly enslaved people who joined the Union Army and Navy to fight for their freedom during the Civil War.  But, I digressed.

The Slave Dwelling Project has developed relationships with historic sites that have enabled it to return year after year to carry out its vision, mission, and goals.  It’s like we’re dating. Belle Grove Plantation in Middletown, Virginia, is one of those historic sites.

Belle Grove is a National Trust for Historic Preservation site, my former employer.  The National Park Service and other nonprofit entities are also in the mix at Belle Grove Plantation. The growing relationship with Belle Grove should come as no surprise.  I have seen the site evolve as it made it a priority to interpret the lives of the formerly enslaved people there.

At the beginning of this relationship, I was chasing quantity. Kristen Laise, Executive Director, saw more.  When I got involved, Belle Grove was in the beginning stages of telling a more inclusive story. Our relationship has evolved into much more than can be quantified.  The quality of the program has steadily increased.  Kristen and I always walk away knowing that we will do the program again in the upcoming year. 

I recall that twice I have called on Kristen because two different groups of students wanted to have an experience at a plantation, one from Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and one from Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Both times Kristen made it happen. 

I expected this time around to be business as usual.  What I experienced was far better.  The audience numbered more than in previous years and sustained itself throughout the day.  Three of my ex-coworkers from the National Trust for Historic Preservation showed up for the conversation and sleepover, quite exciting.

Dontavius Williams kept the audience engaged while he cooked in the hearth.  Park Ranger Shannon Moeck presented on Judah, the enslaved cook.

Be Careful What You Ask For

There was some point in this journey where the campfire conversation became more of a priority for me than sleeping in slave dwellings. I cannot pinpoint that transition, but I’ve realized that sleeping is natural and done by everyone.  I realized that people wanted to do more than gather at these historic sites and sleep.  The solution became campfire conversations, which are now more popular than the sleepovers.  Sometimes these conversations happen inside, like the case at Belle Grove.  Having the conversation indoors did not minimize its content. 

But first, the participants were mesmerized with storytelling by Dontavius Williams.  I did not know if this audience was ready for all of what we were throwing at them.

For the second time in the last three conversations, the audience was shocked by a stunning revelation by one of the participants.  Something that I cannot reveal in this blog.

In Conclusion

Again, Kristen Laise and I walked away from the occasion, knowing that we will do this again in 2020.  This upcoming program will mean more to the Slave Dwelling Project because 2020 will be our 10th anniversary.  It is appropriate that Belle Grove will be a part of this upcoming commemorative year.

I often ask the question, how do you define classroom?  After this most recent experience at Belle Grove, I asked the question again.  Here is one of the answers.

Joe Servis 

A classroom is wherever learning can happen. If I had unlimited time with my students we would have “place based learning” every week and go outside of “my” classroom. Where something actually happened is perhaps the best classroom. Being at a site creates an immediacy and a reality and a connection that I don’t think can be duplicated. This is especially true when you are teaching the “hard” topics like enslavement, Jim Crow, child labor, the Holocaust, and so on. When you have to confront a truth that is difficult because it is abstract, or outside of your personal experience, or something you’ve never considered, or it challenges your preconceptions, or you just don’t want to hear it because you find it disturbing and unsettling, being surrounded by and immersed in the place it happened has power. That, I think, is the best classroom.

Zachary Hottel

About 6 months ago I was invited by Belle Grove Plantation in Middletown Virginia to participate in their annual “Inalienable Rights: Free and Enslaved Black Crafting a Life in the Shenandoah Valley” program that was held on Saturday, November 7th.

Part of that event was a visit from the Slave Dwelling Project, and I had the opportunity to be a part of their evening meal and round table discussion. For several years I had been following Joe and his work with the project, so I was extremely excited to finally be a part of one of his visits.

This experience lived up to my expectations. The most powerful part of the night was the narrative provided by “Adam.” While I have interacted with several reenactors portraying enslaved people in the past, this narrative was different. It provided depth, emotion, and a storyline that tied all of the different aspects of slavery, including horror and hopelessness, together. This portrayal gave the participants the opportunity to almost “realistically” interact with the personal side of slavery.

The group discussion that followed touched on the narrative, project, interpreting African American history, and how our country’s past issues with slavery and racism continue to affect us today. Each participant brought a unique perspective that really added to the narrative. I was extremely interested in the conversation provided by several individuals in the group who are recent immigrants to the United States. Their unique perspective provided a different way of looking at slavery and racism that a native of the United States may never be able to see.

In addition, other individual’s personal experiences with racism, neo-nazis, etc. really brought to the forefront the reality that issues stemming from the past continue to impact individuals around the country and had a strong impact on me. Working in a smaller community and being white often leads to one often being insulated from those confrontations. However, in this setting, the fact that the people surrounding me were struggling with those issues, brought it directly into my focus. This reinforced the need for me to continue my efforts on a professional level to collect and share the stories/history of African Americans and other minorities in my community.

The reality is, events like this have the opportunity to change your perspective. Attending the slave dwelling project event did. As a local history professional, it challenged me, compelled me to look at what I do, and pushed me to move forward.

Check out  Zachary Hottel’s work titled: Bondage Biographies: Enslaved People of Shenandoah County

Susan West Montgomery

The Slave Dwelling Project Sleepover at Belle Grove Plantation, VA

As we settled in for a night of conversation and eventually sleep, someone innocently enough asked if there were other plantations like Belle Grove in the Shenandoah Valley?   The answer came swiftly, “yes, oh my yes.” That answer, while expected, deeply transformed my understanding of the Slave Dwelling Project’s mission and impact. 

Yes, we were sleeping at Belle Grove, but we could have been sleeping in a commercial building in Philadelphia, a factory in Baltimore, on a college campus in Washington, DC.  Our sleeping bags could have been laid out near a mill, a wood lot, a mine, a rail yard, a bustling port, or along a trade route headed west.  We could have been sleeping just about anywhere in the United States because just about anywhere you find the legacies of enslaved people.  Just about anywhere, their knowledge, creativity, ingenuity, skill, and tools fundamentally shaped this nation and certainly built is wealth.  

When Hiram, the protagonist of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ novel The Water Dancer, surveys the estate of his enslaver, who is also his father, he comes to understand that everything around him — the tobacco fields, the manor house, the tools, the furniture, the food — is all  produced by, and dependent on, enslaved labor.  There would be no shelter, no produce, no beauty, no wealth without enslaved people.  All that has been made possible in our nation by a people’s harrowing exploitation and their enormous intellectual, artistic and physical contributions is our inheritance.  And yet, it has never been taught to us as our history.     

The Slave Dwelling Project wants to “change the narrative,” but really it inspires us to go even further.  I think it calls on us to literally “flip” the narrative.  To begin the story of this nation with enslaved people and exploited indigenous people and work our way from there.  To start by understanding that if you follow the thread of history far enough back and all the way forward, there are precious few places that are not slave dwelling places.  And with that recognition, to fully honor and to tell ourstory. 

Kristen Laise

The house is quiet now. Sleeping bags all toted away, tin plates and mugs washed and stored, and (as much as I don’t want to think about it) maybe a lucky field mouse has squeezed into the historic kitchen and found a yummy crumb of Dontavius Williams and Terry James’ cornbread that the broom missed. But when I creak open the staff entrance each morning, a distinct scent greets me. When Belle Grove hosts events that include hearth cooking, we smell residual smoke for about a month. For a variety of reasons, we can’t conduct hearth cooking on a regular basis, but even the lingering scent of it sparks visitors’ imaginations and great conversation about the work that went on in the kitchen and who did that work.

During our most recent program with the Slave Dwelling Project: “Inalienable Rights: Free and Enslaved Blacks Crafting a Life in the Shenandoah Valley” another thing filled the space, seeped into the mortar of the limestone walls, rose up to the ceiling rafters and through the floorboards: voices. And names. These linger like woodsmoke too. Some of those voices conveyed information that planted new concepts, realizations, or connections for the attendees. Joe McGill’s presentation about the work of the Slave Dwelling Project, brought in stories about the many sites around the nation that he has worked with, indelibly linking Belle Grove to them. Archaeologist Matthew Greer’s research tells new stories about what the life of the enslaved was like. Adeela Al-Khalili from the Josephine School Community Museum shared how voices in literature have failed and succeeded to covey information about the past. Archivists Zach Hottel and Eryn Kawecki demonstrated efforts to identify enslaved Africans in neighboring Shenandoah County and showed us the sober reality that it may not be possible to find recorded names for many individuals. Ranger Shannon Moeck presented on the challenges of finding and maintaining freedom in the Northern Shenandoah Valley and she introduced us to Daniel, Henry, and others who had tried.

In the Winter Kitchen visitors met Dontavius and Terry and learned about the food they were preparing for the Slave Dwelling Project’s overnight guests. And they met Judah. A cook at Belle Grove enslaved by the Hite family and mother of twelve children. And, on Dontavius’ prompting, they said her name. Loudly. And again. And again. Speaking her name powerfully affirms her humanity. In Ranger Shannon’s program, we say the names of Judah’s children and grandchildren too.

This is has been the fourth time Belle Grove has held an overnight with Joe and the Slave Dwelling Project. But it is the first, and hopefully not the last time, we have hosted Dontavius and his storytelling initiative, The Chronicles of Adam. This experience was part of the overnight program because Dontavius has been focused during the day on preparing the evening meal. Adam walked into the room where we had gathered to listen to his story and we were transfixed and transported by it. The story he told about his enslavement so easily could have been the story of any enslaved man at Belle Grove who walked in that very room. That story, that voice, that message hangs in the air and inspires more research to be done and more stories to be uncovered and told.