How do you think you would respond to a historically accurate reenactment of a slave auction?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I live in a 19th century city that has a major rebel flag waving component. I accept that it’s not a rational issue to them and that they are never going away- they’re masters of cognitive dissonance and Jesus Christ Himself could come down and turn the flags into Jell-O saying “Those things are sick, wrong, and socially unacceptable and those who wave them risk damnation!” and they’d pick up a new rebel flag on their way to church without ever thinking another moment of it. However, there are some for whom there might be hope.

The city is abuzz with plans for the bicentennial of the city and the state. There’s also to be a new monument to blacks (and presumably the others [e.g. Leo Frank]) who were lynched in the 19th/20th centuries. In the downtown area there’s a 1 block square restored 19th century district that has living history exhibits with people in authentic costume from the 1850s.

I have suggested that one of the activities that should be included is a reenactment of an 1850s slave auction. They happened at least once per week here during the 1850s, sometimes multiple times (though where they actually occurred is now too busy a traffic spot and looks nothing like it would have in the 1850s). It would be a docudrama but I would not go for melodrama: as simple a “plot” as possible: a local planter has died and his slaves are being liquidated to settle his estate (I could show you hundreds and hundreds of pages detailing this and the prices brought and other such things in this courthouse alone), and the slaves are presented one by one. Some are auctioned with the tools of their trade, their skills are outlined, people (in character- not the audience) come forward to examine them, terms of payment are discussed, etc… Some are stoic, some are frantic, a family is separated, the attractive young girls are terrified- all of these things are not melodrama but were weekly events.
My thought is that people intellectually know there were slaves here (though they might not know that two of the big still in use buildings downtown were slave depots, or human stockyards, and that the big nice fountain with the statue was where they were auctioned, or that this was a major hub for the slave trade due to being a transportation/legislative/mercantile hub) but I don’t think most think about the human aspect. I think that seeing it, even if a dramatization (and again, not going for cheap cable TV melodrama, but a standard run of the mill Thursday slave auction of the sort that happened here for more than 40 years and that happened around the continent for more than 240 years and that happened in South America and the Caribbean 20 times more often and for 400 years) is a more impactful event, especially to kids and to those who have the “slaves were members of the family” mythola. (Members of the family who you could rape with impunity and sell to settle a debt, specifically.)

I’m told this would be too incendiary and make too many people (especially black people) uncomfortable. My point is that it’s SUPPOSED to make people uncomfortable, white and black, and hopefully reflective of what society is not only capable of but DID on this very spot and not in an isolated incident but as a weekly occurrence and not a thousand years ago but so recently that there are video and audio recordings of people recalling it. (I turn 50 this year- not old as most define it- and my parents’ wedding was attended by a former slaveowner who remembered the auction of her father’s slaves when she was a little girl in 1862.)

Anyway, there are precedents: it’s been done in Williamsburg (both as a play and as a matter-of-fact regular auction reenactment) and other locations. I believe it would serve a purpose, and there’s plenty of acting talent in this region (one of the local historically black colleges has an outstanding multi-award winning theater department). I think it should be as objective as possible while being real, no sensationalism, but let the emotions be as they would have been then.

What would be your opinion? Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks.

PS- I’ve mentioned before how an off-hand comment by my great aunt about an old light skinned black lady they knew as a child and who had no nose (her mother cut it off to keep white men from lusting after her) did more to steer me away from the “happy darkies in the field/members of the family” Magnolia mythology than any history book I ever read, and I’m hoping for that sort of moment to others who didn’t have the opportunity of knowing people who had known actual former slaves.

PPS- For historical accuracy, one thing I hate in some bad movies is the auctioneer who does the sing-song cadence- those weren’t done at slave auctions. The auctioneer yodel really didn’t become standard until the 20th century, and even then not at most high end auctions, and slaves were VERY high end.

2

I love the idea in general; I think it’s a valuable lesson to be had. And I agree that an actual, realistically portrayed depiction would have a far greater impact than any general knowledge of or discussion about it might have.

On the other hand, you’re talking about a bicentennial celebration in a town where you say some of the occupants might in some ways long for the good ol’ days. I worry that such a portrayal as part of what I think of as a festive event might be seen as a celebration of the slave trade, even though that is clearly not your intent. Combine that with those who are sure to grump and protest about bringing up the negative aspects of the city’s past, and I’d wonder if the overall backlash might reflect more poorly on the event and the city than positively. I wonder if there might be an opportunity during a more sober occasion to highlight that particular history lesson.

Those are my initial thoughts, anyway, though I admit I’m waffling. I also think there’s value in bringing sobriety to the occasion.

3

Considering how other people (not just blacks) were enslaved right up until that period, I would want to go beyond just the Black American experience. The Slavs of eastern europe? Yeah, that’s where the word “slave” came from. The whole “Shores of Tripoli” from the song is about the Barbary states, who were taking European (and early American) ships and enslaving the crews if a ransom wasn’t paid.

Talk about how Humans have been enslaving each other, under varying conditions, since the dawn of man. The Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, then had their own slaves. The Akkadians, the Chinese, the Indians, slavery was a near universal experience. Entire peoples were liquidated and their surviving women and children born off into slavery.

That at the end stages of European slavery, our United States experience is of it being limited to Africans, but in South American, people were still being enslaved, in Europe, people were being made debtor and criminal slaves.

And that ultimately, in the American south, we still have this going on to an extent with the focus on criminalizing people, putting them in jail and then renting them out to companies as workers.

4

If your description of your city is at all accurate, I suspect it will make a lot more black people uncomfortable than white ones.

How would I react? Meh. Slavery was never common in my part of the country, so I don’t have a particularly strong reaction. I suppose it would depend on how it was staged. Maybe you could present it as a series of vignettes, where the action freezes at the end of each sale and you give a brief description of what happened to each slave and slave owner. Especially if you could tie it to the present day - “Tom was never heard from again, but his descendants still live in this city, and one became assistant mayor” or “That slave owner died bankrupt after the Civil War” or things like that. That would take a fair amount of work.

The temptation would be to play it up in a sort of Uncle Tom’s Cabin way with children torn from their mother’s arms and weeping families being sold down the river, vs. presenting it as an everyday commonplace.

Regards,
Shodan

5

The thing is children torn from their mother’s arms and weeping families being sold down river was everyday commonplace for a slave auction.

6

http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/index/

No need to use the past tense when speaking of slaves globally.
To the OP, it’s history. A dark part of our history, but it happened. I’d just treat it as any other dark part of history (burning people alive as witches comes to mind). No need to celebrate it, but too important to ignore. Remember that Roots was a huge cultural touchstone in its day, Emmys, Peabodys, record ratings. It’s not like you are trying to bring slavery back.

7

The reason I say no contrived melodrama is because you’d actually have to tone down the happenings of just a “regular” auction to make it digestible. In addition to children being taken from their mother’s (it was technically illegal in some states if the child was under 14, but it was never enforced and happened all the time) both violence and nudity were fairly frequent. Young women were routinely bare breasted and children frequently totally naked.

Lots of male (and probably some female) slaves had their heads shaved before the auction to stop any gray from being visible.

8

My reaction would depend entirely on context.

In a historical district, or a museum, then I would be interested in the slave auction re-enactment. I’m not sure if I’d stop to watch very much of it, but I’d see it as an educational opportunity to see what really happened.

In a historical celebration, I expect things to be more, you know, celebratory. I don’t want something that’s designed to make me feel bad about history in an event like that. I’m not saying that we should idealize history or say anything untrue, but I want to focus on what was good about history during a celebration. I would assume that the re-enactment during a celebration has a political motivation rather than an educational one, and I would question whether it was accurate or whether they just want to get a rise out of people.

9

I would seriously be uncomfortable attending something like that, especially if they went for historical authenticity. I think that it could be done well, and historically accurate, but it wouldn’t be something I would attend voluntarily.

10

How would I respond? If it were done well, I imagine I’d be deeply shaken, and moved. And impressed that anybody managed to put it together and make it happen, given the certainty of misinterpretation and various kinds of backlash.

It’s a great idea, and I would love to see it done, done right and honestly, including the violence and nudity. But I’m reminded of how “Exhibit B” went over, and you’re talking something even more dangerous.

11

I think that presenting this in an intermediated way - say, as a play, on a stage, with a seated audience - would be safer and saner. I love the audacity of incorporating it into the public celebration and recreation, but you are, in effect, asking people to take time and effort to watch something awful. Giving them the theatrical “fourth wall,” separating them from people who are part of the overall celebration, letting the audience members slip from members of the public to isolated spectators, creating an atmosphere of solemnity - I can’t help feeling that this is a better way of handling difficult subject matter.

And there’s no need to think of this as hand-holding; follow the play with a brief lecture/soliloquy tying it into the larger celebration (“such and such fountain, two blocks away …”), and there you go.

Good luck!

12

It would make me uncomfortable, but I’d still appreciate seeing something like that.

13

Tasteless and disrespectful for me. But I’m just a whitey Canadian.

14

I don’t need to see kittens and puppies being raped to death to have my awareness raised that kittens and puppies sometimes get raped to death.

15

The problem isn’t with the people who’ll feel uncomfortable - the problem is with the people who won’t. What’ll happen if a bunch of drunk white frat boys shows up and finds the whole thing hilarious?

16

Not a good idea for a live re-enactment. Even a documentary doesn’t need to be extensive to get the point across. Sorry, but what kind of dumbass doesn’t get what it’s all about?

17

Yeah. This. I was a college student in Williamsburg when they did it there, and it caused a whole shitstorm of controversy – in part because there were spectators who treated it as entertainment, and in some cases actually tried to get in on the action by bidding on the slaves. I can see the point that it’s important not to present a sanitized version of history, but I wouldn’t trust audiences to be respectful, and if they aren’t, the whole thing could turn into a massive clusterfuck.

18

To take it to an extreme, why not reenact a lynching? That’s certainly in poor taste and out of bounds, except it’s “history” so some people say we should show it. I vote no in both cases.

19

What about as not a live event with audience but a filmed event, with as much realism and accuracy as possible? Along with educational materials about the historicity and all.

20

As mentioned, there’s a huge new monument to lynchings being built here, and in fact it incorporates nooses into the design.