The Challenge of Language: Talking about Slavery and the Past in Museums

Museum professionals today understand that their institutions must present inclusive histories, including such topics as slavery. However, moving from this understanding to developing exhibits to bring the story of slavery into their organizations can be difficult for some staff, boards, and members of a community. Difficulties can arise for a number of reasons, including personal discomfort, a sense of challenge to identity, or an uncertainty of how to incorporate the story into a museum's overall narrative. Often language is at the heart of these difficulties. The presentation offers two examples that illustrate the challenge language can present in bringing stories about slavery into museums. As director of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, the presenter led the organization's efforts to talk about Twain's most challenged work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Each year school systems in the United States remove the work from its curriculum because of its racially charged language, specifically the n___ word. As part of its mission to teach visitors about Twain, the museum developed an exhibit to help the public understand the controversy and consider the value of the work. This process was not without controversy itself. The presenter is now director at Historic St. Mary's City, located in Southern Maryland, a region where indentured servitude was replaced by enslaved labor during the 17th century. The story of this transition has been introduced through new exhibits. Research for further exhibits is underway, but it is difficult from the language of the extant record to determine exactly why and how a “servant” became a “slave” and how African Americans became the only group to be enslaved. Also hidden by 17th century legal language is the role that gender and the control of sexuality played in making slavery a legally defined, racially based, and heritable status.