Black re-enactors strike delicate balance between tribute and tact

Black re-enactors strike delicate balance between tribute and tact

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Last week's "dustup over photos":http://www.thegrio.com/politics/gop-leader-defends-civil-war-era-reenactment-at-party-event.php of a South Carolina senator dressed in Civil War officer's uniform flanked by two African-Americans dressed in period costumes included some angry comments from around the Internet and theGrio readers. "The photos":http://www.thegrio.com/sc-party-slideshow.php, taken at a recent meeting of the National Federation of Republican Women, included Senate leader Glenn F. McConnell, who portrays Confederate and Union soldiers and sailors as a hobby, and professional Gullah culture preservationists Frank Murray and Sharon Cooper-Murray. Criticism was swift and severe from the blogosphere. "Why are so many black people surprised that extreme right wing, racist, neo-con tea party Republicans in South Carolina would perpetrate acts of racism against African Americans?" commented ODDOWL. "After all, S.C. is the cradle of the Confederacy." "Wrong, just wrong. The Republican party just ignored the highly charged emotional issues this type of party would bring about no matter how they were dressed," commented Khandi Myers. "Recognize Stockholm syndrome when you see it," commented Marvelus. African-American re-enactors and historians didn't hesitate to explain why they do what they do, and its value. Harvey Bakari, African-American Research Historian at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, acknowledged that "costumes for African-Americans can be a problem. A lot of people project their notion of history onto images. If that man was Frederick Douglass and that woman was Harriet Tubman, they would perceive it differently." Colonial Williamsburg has been bold, and sometimes controversial, in its retelling of colonial black history. It held a re-enacted slave auction in 1994, an "Enslaving Virginia" program in 1999, and a recent nighttime program about miscegenation. On Sept. 25, _Grey's Anatomy_ star "Jesse Williams":http://www.history.org/visit/whattoseeanddo/jessewilliams will appear there in a program called "What Holds the Future?" A video celebrating 30 years of African American programming at Colonial Williamsburg can be viewed "here":http://www.history.org/media/videoplayer/?cat=africanamericans&file=AA30_April_800K_ws. "We do handle the subject with dignity," Bakari said. "We're knowledgeable and balanced. History is much more difficult and much more complicated than it was in history books ... and if you don't have time to really understand it, you will be vulnerable to popular notions of the past." The reward, Bakari said, is educating people. "When the light comes on in that person's mind, that is very gratifying whether it's a black family or a white family. When people have that aha moment, it can change the way they see themselves, the country, what's going on right now. It's a personal reconciliation." Sharon Cooper-Murray has worked at interpreting and preserving "Gullah culture":http://www.nps.gov/guge/ in South Carolina for 20 years. "I've worked at every plantation at some time," she said. "There has always been someone who would come and say, 'How do you bear doing this?' I say to them if you don't confront issues within the culture or within yourself, those issues gnaw at you forever. I can wear the clothes and I can talk about life on plantations and the kind of work that people did. My heart says I'm so thankful that those people did what they were able to do and survived. Because they survived, I live."