Facing Difficult History
A book that shows museum workers—and all educators—how to help audiences confront graphic, violent historical subjects
In the 1790s, Charlotte was an enslaved single mother who worked as a housekeeper at a plantation in Mobile, Alabama. Upon the marriage of the plantation owner's daughter, Charlotte was given as a wedding gift, and she and her daughter moved to Baton Rouge along with the bride to join the groom on his plantation. There, Charlotte and her daughter adapted to their new community, and Charlotte had a second daughter. Later, Charlotte and one of her daughters were sold together, and her other daughter was sold to a different plantation, separating parent from child and siblings from one another.
This is a difficult story to hear, let alone tell; but it is a clear example of the objectification suffered by slaves. It was also one instance of many that Dr. Julia Rose, director at the West Baton Rouge Museum, could cite as a violation of the Code Noir, which was supposed to have protected enslaved parents and children under the age of 10 from being separated. It was also the example that caused a reaction from two women who were being trained to lead tours at a local museum. One woman objected to the use of the word "objectification" to describe Charlotte's circumstance. Another, who knew about the Code Noir, doubted Rose's research. For both women, this story was a point of resistance, a vital fulcrum in a process of learning codified by Rose in her new book, Interpreting Difficult History at Museum's and Historic Sites.
Rose has always worked in American history museums, and the interpretation of the institution of slavery has been at the forefront of most of her work. "There was always a reticence or anxiety in taking on the project of developing exhibits and programming to interpret American slavery," Rose said. "Best practice really needed to be examined closely because, more than it being a sensitive topic, it was a difficult topic. It was a difficult topic for curators and museum personnel to learn about. It's a part of American history that only in recent memory, certainly since just the middle of the twentieth century, was beginning to show up in our history books and our popular culture." So Rose, who earned her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from LSU, set about establishing a framework for helping museum workers, visitors, and educators—all learners—engage with these difficult subjects.
Resistance, as Rose explains in her book, is one of five states that any learner may go through when confronting what she calls "difficult history," the sometimes graphic, traumatic, disturbing, violent aspects of our past that are so hard to look at. Of what she calls the five "Rs" (the others being receptiveness, repetition, reflection, and reconsideration) resistance is the most sensitive and constitutes a risky moment in the trajectory of learning. There are a range of responses that constitute resistance: anger, retreat, sadness, disbelief, confrontation, to name a few; and, Rose said, it is imperative that educators are trained to handle this moment because if you lose them here, you will have lost them forever.
The book also outlines many other frameworks to help learners reach a point of empathy, the desired outcome to stories of oppression. "When people are moved by history and they feel what I call historical empathy for the people from the past, they feel changed for the better," said Rose. "We are successful as museum workers when we've inspired historical empathy, when someone says, 'I demand to know more, I care.'"