The Challenge of Public History

Abstract

Harpers Ferry, situated on the Potomac River where the Shenandoah and the Allegheny Rivers converge, about 30 miles west of Washington, D.C., was an industrial village during the nineteenth century. It is now a small, quiet West Virginia town and a national historic park administered by the National Park Service and noted as the site of John Brown's raid. Some think of Old John Brown as a mad man following illusionary visions of open slave warfare. Some see him as a dedicated abolitionist, a revolutionary in the name of liberty. Many believe that he was black. He did have five blacks among his small band, but whatever else was true about him, John Brown was not black. He was, however, a central figure in African-American history and in the history of race in nineteenth-century America. It is fitting, then, that African-American history should be critical to the annals of Harpers Ferry, and not only for the town's connection with John Brown. For, as Black Voices of Harpers Ferry, a new permanent National Park Service exhibition there, makes clear, black people were an integral part of the town's early life. At mid-nineteenth century, almost 12 percent of town residents were black, and although Virginia was a state largely supported by slave labor, half of the blacks in Harpers Ferry were free. The exhibit tells the story of the town's African Americans with dramatic words, impressive pictures, creative audio and video presentations, and a striking map lighted to display the places where the town's blacks, free and slave, lived.