The Dallas Morning News: Steve Helber/AP
Interpreters such as Janice Canaday and Robert Watson Jr. stroll the streets attired in period dress.
January 2, 2016
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Despite a growing and continuing emphasis on
African-American history, Colonial Williamsburg has struggled to attract
more black visitors to the historic village where interpreters stroll
the streets attired in bonnets and tricorn hats. It’s a hard sell when
human enslavement is a part of the story you’re trying to tell.
But
now, a church founded by slaves is at the center of an initiative to
reintroduce African-Americans to Colonial Williamsburg and perhaps
inspire a national conversation on race and the nation’s origins.
Hip-hop
impresario Russell Simmons, artists such as Aretha Franklin and
African-American scholars are on board to give some star power and
intellectual heft to the effort. Organizers are hopeful President Barack
Obama will join in.
The concept is simple and symbolic: Colonial
Williamsburg has loaned a team of its vaunted historic conservation
experts to the First Baptist Church to repair its long-silenced bell. In
February, Black History Month, the newly conserved bell will ring for
the first time in decades, signaling the start of a conversation on
racial healing and activities throughout the community and at the
historic attraction.
The church and Colonial Williamsburg are inviting the nation and Obama to join in the bell-ringing, called “Let Freedom Ring.”
“It’s
a clarion call to finish the unfinished work of liberty and justice for
all, and we have to embrace that,” First Baptist pastor Reginald Davis
said in an interview of the basement of his sanctuary. “This is our goal
— to make people come together to make this a more perfect union.”
As
for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, CEO Mitchell B. Reiss said
the event represents the start of “a fresh conversation with the
African-American community, perhaps to have them perceive or see
Colonial Williamsburg in a new way.”
No comments:
Post a Comment