Reflections on Research: Race and the Virginia Blue Ridge

Audrey Horning

doi:10.1007/s41636-021-00295-3

Audrey Horning

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-021-00295-3

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Abstract

In the 1930s, Shenandoah National Park was established in the Virginia Blue Ridge through the displacement of nearly 500 white families. In recent decades, my scholarship and that of others focused upon the manner in which hackneyed stereotypes about backward mountaineers were mobilized to garner public support for the condemnation of family farms and, in some cases, the institutionalization, sterilization, and incarceration of some of the most impoverished. But, in focusing solely upon the 20th century and the impacts on the white displaced, this research has perpetrated structural violence by obscuring the role of race and racism in the wider Blue Ridge. Archaeological and documentary evidence from the 1990s National Park Service–funded “Survey of Rural Mountain Settlement” is reexamined and reconsidered to begin the process of redressing the silencing of African American histories in the Blue Ridge and surrounding valley and piedmont regions.

Highlights

Honesty and self-reflection must be at the core of ethical archaeological practice
The new light that I wish to cast on this project and the historical archaeology of the park more broadly is one that illuminates the realities of racism in the broader park region and the impact of structural violence in shaping the histories of settlement, of displacement, and of scholarship on the Blue Ridge as it has come to be defined by a narrow focus on the Shenandoah National Park case
Subsequent considerations of park-area history have focused on the experiences of European Americans, because the whiteness of the early 20th-century displaced inhabitants of the park area has been taken to mean that the entirety of the history of the Blue Ridge is, de facto, a white history

Summary

Introduction

Honesty and self-reflection must be at the core of ethical archaeological practice. This is uncontroversial as a principle, but rather more challenging in practice, when we archaeologists take the time to look back at our own work as well as position ourselves in the lived present. The new light that I wish to cast on this project and the historical archaeology of the park more broadly is one that illuminates the realities of racism in the broader park region and the impact of structural violence in shaping the histories of settlement, of displacement, and of scholarship on the Blue Ridge as it has come to be defined by a narrow focus on the Shenandoah National Park case. Subsequent considerations of park-area history have focused on the experiences of European Americans, because the whiteness of the early 20th-century displaced inhabitants of the park area has been taken to mean that the entirety of the history of the Blue Ridge is, de facto, a white history This presumption is at odds with both broader regional experiences and the. Before addressing this critique, a bit of background is required

Background

A Family Tale

Findings

Concluding Thoughts