David Blight: Prof. debunks Douglass myth
A granite quilt, a small plaque and one woman’s story have suddenly come under fire in New York City, thanks in part to Yale Civil War historian David Blight.
After hearing of the city of New York’s plans to construct the $15 million Frederick Douglass Circle in the northwest corner of Central Park, Blight voiced concerns about the historical accuracy and relevance of the memorial’s centerpiece, a granite replica of a quilt that a nearby plaque says was used as a means of covert communication for slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad.
“I simply object to associating Frederick Douglass in a major public memorial with such a legend,” Blight wrote in an e-mail. “Frederick Douglass never saw, nor did he even hear of, a quilt used to signal a runaway slave like himself, on his or her desperate journey to freedom.”
The quilt’s meteoric rise to fame began when “Hidden in Plain View,” a book describing the role quilts may have played as a means of communication for escaping slaves, was featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” a year before the book’s 1999 release. The authors, Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard, interviewed a schoolteacher, Ozella McDaniel Williams, who described a code her family sewed into textiles to instruct escaping slaves. Algernon Miller, who designed the memorial, told the New York Times that Williams’s story directly inspired his design.
Like Miller, many schoolteachers, readers and amateur historians quickly accepted Williams’s account, but professional historians have been less easily convinced. Blight’s comments on the monument have sparked a national debate over what to do about the memorial plans and what role historical accuracy plays in people’s understanding of the past....
Read entire article at Yale Daily News
After hearing of the city of New York’s plans to construct the $15 million Frederick Douglass Circle in the northwest corner of Central Park, Blight voiced concerns about the historical accuracy and relevance of the memorial’s centerpiece, a granite replica of a quilt that a nearby plaque says was used as a means of covert communication for slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad.
“I simply object to associating Frederick Douglass in a major public memorial with such a legend,” Blight wrote in an e-mail. “Frederick Douglass never saw, nor did he even hear of, a quilt used to signal a runaway slave like himself, on his or her desperate journey to freedom.”
The quilt’s meteoric rise to fame began when “Hidden in Plain View,” a book describing the role quilts may have played as a means of communication for escaping slaves, was featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” a year before the book’s 1999 release. The authors, Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard, interviewed a schoolteacher, Ozella McDaniel Williams, who described a code her family sewed into textiles to instruct escaping slaves. Algernon Miller, who designed the memorial, told the New York Times that Williams’s story directly inspired his design.
Like Miller, many schoolteachers, readers and amateur historians quickly accepted Williams’s account, but professional historians have been less easily convinced. Blight’s comments on the monument have sparked a national debate over what to do about the memorial plans and what role historical accuracy plays in people’s understanding of the past....