Remembering Cherokee Removal in Civil Rights–Era Georgia

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cherokee Removal is most famous episode of South's Native American history. It is also an event that southerners have commemorated quite extensively. Tribal museums in North Carolina and Oklahoma, as well as parks and historic sites in at least five other states, tell story of Trail of Tears. Documentary films, multiple novels, a host of children's books, and at least one TV movie (starring Johnny Cash, no less) have also recounted forced migration. A nationally designated trail maps tribe's general route, and annual Trail of Tears Motorcycle Ride recalls journey. No other Indian event, except perhaps Battle of Little Big Horn, has received so much attention in America's culture of memory. Historical memory is a major concern for people who study South. Monuments, commemorations, and historical myths form a popular and important focus of southern cultural studies. Virtually none of this work, however, includes Native American topics. The recently published Myth, Manners, and Memory volume of New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, for example, contains no entries specific to Native Americans. Concerned more with Paul Bear Bryant than Cherokee leader Drowning Bear, it hardly mentions Indian people. Questions of race are at center of scholarship on southern memory, since much of it deals with Civil War, slavery, and segregation; however, literature almost always defines race in terms of black and white. Examining Trail of Tears commemoration, then, offers an opportunity to expand understandings of southern memory. (1) Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, is a good place to start. In early 1950s white residents began work to rebuild New Echota, town that had served as Cherokees' national capital in 1820s and 1830s, just prior to Trail of Tears. Local business leaders launched effort, identifying a section of farmland once occupied by town, raising money to purchase it, and then petitioning state government to make it a historic site and recreation area. The Georgia Historical Commission (GHC), a then newly formed state agency, managed project. Its directors viewed site as a unique place with potential to draw a great many visitors, and as work proceeded, New Echota became one of GHC's most important and highly publicized development efforts. By early 1960s, Commission had reconstructed a portion of village and was planning a museum. The state opened site to public in May 1962, dedicating it in a grand ceremony involving Georgia's governor, other high officials, and Cherokee representatives from North Carolina and Oklahoma. When state of Georgia rebuilt New Echota, it sanctified site. It not only marked location of old Cherokee capital, but set it apart in landscape, placing it outside of everyday life and protecting it as a location suited for contemplation. Sanctifying a historic site almost always involves an effort to derive some kind of clear moral message from events that have taken place there. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Preserved battlefields, for example, usually emphasize virtue of sacrifice for nation. At New Echota in early 1960s, that interpretive effort focused on story of Cherokee Removal, and moral message was atonement. As Governor Ernest Vandiver explained at opening, restoration of town represented white Georgians' apology for Removal, an apology for the unbridled avarice of our ancestors that had driven Cherokees from their homeland. The explicit moral purpose of site was to encourage visitors to guard against similar acts in present and future. As Secretary of State Ben Fortson remarked, New Echota will make us better Americans, for Americans use their mistakes as stepping stones for something more worthwhile. In supporting that proposition, GHC just prior to dedication sponsored a resolution in Georgia legislature repealing anti-Indian laws from late 1820s and early 1830s. …