Make Room for Historic Reenactors
Douglas A. Johnston
EDITOR'S NOTE: Douglas A. Johnston is a graduate of the University of North Carolina
(UNC) at Chapel Hill and its School of Law, a retired U.S. Navy commander, a Raleigh
attorney who teaches in the UNC School of Public Health, and a supporter of every effort
to preserve and present the state’s history.
Historic reenactors do not get the attention they deserve. Ironically, while
earning the highest praise from their audiences, they are too often taken lightly, or
worse, belittled and ignored. Some uninformed critics scorn reenactors as amateurs
and as grown-ups playing at war.
Yet for ages the paramount method of presenting history to the average audi¬
ence, referred to then as the “common people,” was through drama. Of Shake¬
speare’s plays, at least ten are histories, and others involve historical persons. As
time passed, museums became the preferred forum for presenting history, later
augmented by historic sites and parks. Today history is delivered through publica¬
tions, classes, documentary films, exhibitions, preservation, and public history. It
is time now to frilly and fairly recognize reenactors’ place in presenting history.
Underlying the criticism of reenactments is their characterization as a harmless
amusement. The charge that reenactments are for the entertainment of the
reenactors themselves is unfair. It is contradicted by the single, overriding reason
tor their efforts — to bring alive the people and events of the period they represent.
With this focus, reenactors reach out beyond battlefields and veterans’ groups to a
range of community organizations from the I
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to the chamber of commerce.
Further, it is charged that reenactors present a narrow view of history — too
romanticized, too sentimentalized. Reenactors refute this charge, too, with their
broad commitment to education. Reenactors compare life in earlier societies with
that in later ones (seventeenth-century warfare with that of subsequent centuries),
cultural groups in different areas with one another (Confederate and Union sol¬
diers), and the various coexisting segments within a community (planter gentility,
yeoman farmers, free blacks, and slaves). Like historical interpreters at historic sites,
reenactors depict domestic, business, and political life and attitudes, as well as illu¬
minate different regional and racial perspectives. Like the best current research,
they discredit myths and dismantle stereotypes, (continued)
the Ciuil War, made two presentations on Saturday. The Cape Fear Chapter #3 of the
United Daughters of the Confederacy hosted a mid-nineteenth-century fashion show.
Vignettes in guided lantern tours of the interior of Fort Anderson focused on the Confed¬
erate evacuation and Federal occupation of the fort. There were medical demonstrations
on both days of the event, and the tour finale featured a graphic interpretation of military
surgeons at work. “Sutler Row” was inhabited by a number of general goods merchants, a
maker of ironclad models, two blacksmiths, a period photographer, and a chaplain.
Historical Commission Seeks to Diversify Capitol Memorials
At its meeting on August 27, 2009, the North Carolina Historical Commission
appointed a committee to examine alternatives for diversifying memorials in the State
Capitol and upon the grounds of Union Square, with the objective of commemorating
the contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, and women to North Carolina
history. The action came after the commission heard an appeal from retired Durham
educator Eddie Davis for the establishment of a “Hall of Inclusion” in the rotunda area on
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