Southern Memories

8 Historically Speaking · May/June 2006 once had, praise) without completely dismissing its welcome trappings. Through the virtues that American food embraced—frugality, simplicity , pragmatism, unpretentiousness—the United States could grow into a sophisticated nation while avoiding the enervating habit of complacency into which the British had fallen. It could announce, as Thomas Jefferson did, "how unripe we yet are," all the while knowing that ripeness, like an overly refined cuisine , was something to avoid. Most importantly , they could strike this balance by growing, cooking, and eating food. James E. McWilliams is assistantprofessor ofhistory at Texas State UniversitySan Marcos. A past winner ofthe Whitehill Prize in Colonial History awarded by the New England Quarterly for the best essay ofthe year, he is the author ofA Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Columbia University Press, 2005) and Puritan Pioneers: Economy and Society in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (University of Virginia Press, forthcoming ). Southern Memories W. Fitzhugh Brundage In 2000 an extended controversy erupted in Caroline County, Virginia, after the board of supervisors refused to approve a proposed black history monument to be erected in the county's courthouse square. Several supervisors objected to the monument's commemoration of Gabriel's Rebellion, a failed slave revolt in 1 800 that ended with the execution of dozens of alleged conspirators, including its purported leader, Gabriel Prosser. The supervisors subsequently rejected a proposal to commemorate Mildred and Richard Loving, a local interracial couple whose 1957 conviction for violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriage was overturned ten years later by a landmark United State Supreme Court decision. Proponents of the monument then turned to the NAACP, claiming that their equal-protection guarantees as citizens had been violated by the county board, which imposed standards on the black history monument that had not been applied to previous monuments, including the Confederate memorial that towered over the courthouse square. The outlines of the controversy suggest a familiar contest between African Americans insistent upon drawing attention to the South's troubled past and whites equally intent on using their inherited power to avoid doing so. Certainly, one outspoken advocate of the Prosser monument saw herself as a crusader for truth in the face of willful ignorance. "Until we accept Gabriel," she insisted, "we accept the myth that slaves were content with their condition, had no interest in freedom and were not entitled to it." The chairman of the Capitol Square, Richmond, Virginia, ca. 1909. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-1 22240], tourism committee, who originally proposed the monument, contended that a monument to celebrate African-American history was needed to balance out the tributes to the Confederacy that dotted the landscape. Opponents also stood on principle, insisting that the monument glorified violence and inflamed racial tensions. One of the county supervisors explained, "We should have no part as a county in glorifying someone who wanted to kill whites and kidnap the governor ." The flap in Caroline County highlights the complexities of debates over the southern past. There was broad local support for memorializing African-American heritage, but residents divided over the appropriateness of recognizing a planned revolt that only tangentialIy involved residents of Caroline County. At the same time, some residents opposed undue recognition of the antislavery activism of white Quakers because it threatened to overshadow the more furtive yet arguably more heroic resistance ofthe enslaved. Nor were the racial lines in the controversy clearly drawn. One of the monument's most ardent champions was a white Alabamian who had moved to the county after achieving prominence in the national anti-abortion movement. Another supporter, one of the supervisors who voted for the monument, was a white man who represented a majority black district. Meanwhile, a leading opponent of the monument was an African American elected by a majority white district to the board of supervisors. This contretemps is only one example of the memory wars that have erupted in the American South during the past several decades. Given the heat generated by many of these controversies, both journalists and, more recently, scholars have shown an interest in tracing their historical origins and effects. Consequently, the South...