Remembering Cherokee Removal in Civil Rights–Era Georgia

When the state of Georgia rebuilt New Echota, it sanctified the site. It not only marked the location of the old Cherokee capital, but set it apart in the landscape, placing it outside of everyday life and protecting it as a location suited for contemplation, in part to derive a clear moral message from the events that took place there. The New Echota marker, erected in 1931 at the approximate site of the old capital, courtesy of the author.

Cherokee Removal is the most famous episode of the South's Native American history. It is also an event that southerners have commemorated quite extensively. Tribal museums in North Carolina and Oklahoma, as well as parks and historic sites in at least five other states, tell the story of the Trail of Tears. Documentary films, multiple novels, a host of children's books, and at least one TV movie (starring Johnny Cash, no less) have also recounted the Cherokees' forced migration. A nationally designated trail maps the tribe's general route, and the annual Trail of Tears Motorcycle Ride recalls the journey. No other Indian event, except perhaps the Battle of the Little Big Horn, has received so much attention in America's culture of memory.

Historical memory is a major concern for people who study the South. Monuments, commemorations, and historical myths form a popular and important focus of southern cultural studies. Virtually none of this work, however, includes Native American topics. The recently published Myth, Manners, and Memory volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, for example, contains no entries specific to Native Americans. Concerned more with Paul "Bear" Bryant than Cherokee leader Drowning Bear, it hardly mentions Indian people. Questions of race are at the center of the scholarship on southern memory, since much of it deals with the Civil War, slavery, and segregation; however, the literature almost always defines race in terms of black and white. Examining Trail of Tears commemoration, then, offers an opportunity to expand understandings of southern memory.¹

Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, is a good place to start. In the early 1950s white residents began work to rebuild New Echota, the town that had served as the Cherokees' national capital in the 1820s and 1830s, just prior to the Trail of Tears. Local business leaders launched the effort, identifying a section of farmland once occupied by the town, raising money to purchase it, and then petitioning the state government to make it a historic site and recreation area. The Georgia Historical Commission (GHC), a then newly formed state agency, managed the project. Its directors viewed the site as a unique place with the potential to draw a great many visitors, and as work proceeded, New Echota became one of the GHC's most important and highly publicized development efforts. By the early 1960s, the Commission had reconstructed a portion of the village and was planning a museum. The state opened the site to the public in May 1962, dedicating it in a grand ceremony involving Georgia's governor, other high officials, and Cherokee representatives from North Carolina and Oklahoma.

When the state of Georgia rebuilt New Echota, it sanctified the site. It not only marked the location of the old Cherokee capital, but set it apart in the landscape, placing it outside of everyday life and protecting it as a location suited for contemplation. Sanctifying a historic site almost always involves an effort to derive some kind of clear moral message from the events that have taken place there.

"New Echota was the scene of an intense drama in which an Indian nation took upon itself all the monumental responsibilities of modern civilization, created for itself a written language, established a national newspaper, evolved a code of written laws, and created a supreme court to administer these laws," said Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver at the opening ceremony. Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet (depicted on tablet), courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress.

Preserved battlefields, for example, usually emphasize...