"Saying Their Names": Decolonizing Interpretation of the Liberty Hall Academic and Plantation Landscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2021, Washington and Lee University opted to continue under the names of two slaveholders while pledging support for increased racial diversity. An earlier name of the institution was “Liberty Hall,” the ruins of which remain a cherished icon of collective identity rooted in the 18th-century instruction of young white men. Ironically, Liberty Hall stood as a school for ten years but was, subsequently, the site of a slave plantation for sixty. What was the “steward’s house” for a decade was a homeplace for generations of captive people, and thus might be more appropriately called “Tildy’s house” or “John’s place,” acknowledging people who lived and labored on the plantation. We seek to decolonize interpretation of this landscape and its historic sites. Rather than seeing archaeological features as distinct household sites, we ask how enslaved people might have experienced them as connected nodes in a larger “homespace” that facilitated mutual support.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology