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Saying Something Now W hat are the social and ethical consequences of revisiting a powerful myth, such as the contested stories of Bishop Andrew and Miss Kitty? Are such efforts most likely to exacerbate old wounds, polarize communities, and deepen suspicions across lines of race and related distinctions? Or might there be ways, through alternate engagements with such deeply held narratives, to contribute to mutual understanding, bridge building, and social transformation? These questions are vital ones, as scholars and activists in diverse locations ponder how interventions in public history might best be framed and articulated. Are there ways for public scholars to pursue serious academic research while responsibly contributing to the building of what Martin Luther King Jr. long ago termed the “beloved community”? In short, how might a commitment to documenting the intersection of myth and history help redraw the contours of our body politic? In retrospect, initial efforts to revisit the “myth of Kitty” had decidedly mixed results. Beginning in spring 2000 my Oxford College students and I worked closely with local African American church congregations to research the campus’s early African American history, and to restore African American grave plots in the city cemetery. The work elicited a wide range of responses, ranging from exhilaration and joy to rage and condemnation. As we have seen, the story of Kitty became quickly entangled in a wider set of struggles, over the desegregation to the cemetery and the city police force, the distribution of political power in the city and the county, and continuing debates over race and social justice within the Methodist Church. In some instances, as white leaders in the community began to shift their position on the cemetery, they also began to discuss other possible readings of the Kitty story. One older white man, a great-grandson of one of the Emory College faculty’s leading slaveowners, quietly acknowledged to me that he had long suspected that Chapter Nine 272 ch ap ter nine the full story of Kitty and James Andrew had not been properly aired. “Seems to me we might have another Sally Hemmings story right here in town,” he said with a broad smile to a group of my students. “Can’t hurt to talk some of this through.” He chuckled, “We’re all family after all, aren’t we?” Yet some white residents were infuriated that any questions were being raised about the standard narrative. When the class mounted an exhibition about Oxford’s African American history in the college library, some white visitors took great exception to exhibition text that indicated that the precise relationship between Kitty and Bishop Andrew remained a matter of debate. Outraged letter writers to the college dean and the university president asserted that “all of this nonsense” was a libel against the Bishop and the Methodist Church, and suggested that the class was falling under “communist influence.” At a public lecture I gave in the college chapel on the varying white and African American versions of the story, several prominent audience members stood up to denounce the “lies” being circulated about James Osgood Andrew and Emory’s history. Such accounts, they claimed, were a “slur on southern heritage.” When I tried to explain that I was simply trying to document the varying versions of the story, a well-known white attorney and political figure retorted, “You aren’t documenting anything. You are just spreading scandal!” A few days later, a middle-aged white woman whom I had long regarded as a friend approached me at a public gathering and asked me angrily, “Why are you doing all these terrible things, stirring up so much trouble about Kitty and Bishop Andrew, and make a mess of things in the cemetery?” I was, she told me with tears in her eyes, breaking the heart of Martin Porter, who had devoted his life to preserving the city’s proud heritage. “He is such a dear man, who loves this college and this town. You and your students have no right to be doing this!” The same week, an older white woman angrily remonstrated with J. P. Godfrey, who was leading the struggle on the city council to desegregate the cemetery and who had publicly spoken on alternate versions of the Kitty-Andrew story. “What would you like me to do?” J.P. asked, taken aback. “I just want you to go away,” she responded, “Just go away!” The week after my public lecture on Kitty, I received three...

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