Making the Absent Present: Forgetting and Remembering the African American Past in Putnam County, Indiana

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Monuments, Memory, and Commemoration" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Exodus of African Americans from the U.S. South in the late 1870s and early 1880s encompassed the relocation of tens of thousands of people to a variety of Midwestern and western states. Hundreds of “Exoduster” migrants came to Indiana’s Putnam County following promises of available farm work, good wages, and the opportunity to exercise their hard-fought right to the vote. Yet, this migration is now little remembered in the area. Exodusters are not part of the story that residents of the county tell themselves about its past. They are no public monuments commemorating the Exoduster migration and few that focus on any other aspect of African American history in the county. Nonetheless, material traces of the migration abound, however unrecognized they remain in the present.   This paper considers how such historical silences developed; it also suggests ways that archaeology can help to better memorialize Exoduster history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Monuments, Memory, and Commemoration   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 379