Episode Summary:
This episode looks at communities that have suffered neglect from official history, and the example of African American landmarks and burial grounds in Virginia. Some families and communities have pushed to reclaim their place and spaces, often using tools employed earlier by the Federal Writers’ Project. Project workers often consulted landmarks and cemetery headstones to present a fuller picture of local history.
In southern states, the Writers’ Project encountered the Lost Cause, the effort emerging after the Civil War that aimed to rewrite the war’s meaning and origins in slavery. The myth shaped the environment for white writers of the WPA Guide to Virginia, and it continues to hold influence even today. Yet the field research underlying the WPA guide – the details the federal writers uncovered in records, interviews and landmarks – as well as another Project publication, The Negro in Virginia, provide a way to untangle the Lost Cause myth. We probe that history with poet Kiki Petrosino as she researches her family’s Virginia history, and with historians at the Library of Virginia, the Alexandria Black History Museum and the University of Richmond.
Speakers:
Audrey Davis, historian
Julian Hayter, historian
Gregg Kimball, historian
Kiki Petrosino, poet
Alton Darden, Helping Hand Cemetery trustee
Maurice Darden, Helping Hand Cemetery trustee
Dolores Peterson, Helping Hand Cemetery trustee
Links and Resources:
Photo Essay about East End Cemetery by Kiki Petrosino and Brian Palmer
Encyclopedia Virginia entry on the Lost Cause
Alexandria Black History Museum
Further Reading:
The Negro in Virginia by the Federal Writers’ Project
White Blood by Kiki Petrosino
Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers’ Project, edited by Sara Rutkowski
How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith
The Dream is Lost by Julian Hayter
American City, Southern Place by Gregg Kimball
Credits:
Host: Chris Haley
Director: Andrea Kalin
Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello
Writer: David A. Taylor
Editors: Ethan Oser and Julie Chalhoub
Story Editor: Michael May
Additional Voices: Skip Coblyn, James Mirabello, Jared Buggage, Jerry Ray and Danielle Nance
Featuring music and archival material from:
Pond5
Library of Congress
National Archives and Records Administration
NPR
WUSA9
ABC News
News2Share
For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder
Produced with support from:
National Endowment for the Humanities
Virginia Humanities
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