Changing Ideas about Heritage & Heritage Management in Historically Segregated Communities by Antoinette T. Jackson, PH.D

Summarize the lecture and draw links between racism, cultural survival, and heritage management.

The lecture by Dr. Antoinette T. Jackson was about the research she conducted in Sulphur Springs, Florida in regard to building a historical museum and heritage center to represent the community's history. Dr. Jackson explained her passion is to locate unmarked sites of history and heritage. Unmarked sites of history and heritage, according to Dr. Jackson, are locations within the neighborhood that are of importance and significance that most people would not realize it if they were passing by them. An example of such a place would be the site of a home depot. This location was considered to be of historical significance to the people of the community because it was the previous location to an elementary school for all black girls. And how she represented "uncontested history" for the people of Spring Hill, a community among Sulphur Springs who has been neglected and ignored due to their high rates in crime and poverty levels. Dr. Jackson discusses the challenges her and her team faced when conduction the research and resource management of the Spring Hill community. The challenges arose in the interview process, the people of the community did not want to talk about the era when segragation affected their community. Dr. Jackson and her team would ask unrealeated interview questions that would also date back to the segragation era and obtain the information through that. An example of one of those questions would be in reagards to their cooking. The team would collect historical data through oral recollection of accounts. There were also community meetings held in order to include the people of the community in the decision making of what type of information would be represented by the Museum and Heritage Center. Those meeting would unite and also distance a few of the community members due to the similarities or different experiences and view points of their community. Another conflict in the research came up when the community did not want to be portrayed as victims of segragation, race, and slavery; but only show their accomplishments and what their community is now like.

The community of Spring Hill ws greatly affected by racisim in their past. Although the community wanted to exclude those events from their history, Dr. Jackson felt that those were significant parts in the history of Spring Hill that her team and herself would interview people of the community to obtain information in an indirect manner, as explained above. The community was affected by racism through the use of segregation and slavery in the past. Dr. Jackson explains that the community was split up on Water Street. Water St. was used as the boundry line that shouldn't be crossed. Crossing that street would be very dangerous because people would get beat up, chased back to the other side, or end up dead. People would be identified depending on what side of Water Street you were on.

The creation of the Museum and Heritage Management Center was a grass movement of the people of Spring hill to maintain their culture alive for future generations to come. This was because today the knowledge of the elders of Spring Hill is not passed down from generation to generation. The Museum is a way to create cultural survival for the community of Spring Hill. The community's control of information that was made available in the Museum allowed for a controlled cultural survival for the community. This was an effort to move away from their image of being a city with high crime, poverty, and low educational standard. Controlling the flow of information with the use of the community meeting allowed for a greater participation on the community's grass root effort to maintain their rich history alive. A piece of their history that the community wanted to be remembered for was the Arcade. The Arcade was thought by many to be their first indoor mall in the city. Although largely segragated, many on the community had nothing but positive comments in regard. A few of those comments are: " it torn down my heart" refering to the destruction of the arcade in 1970's. Versus other statements of excitement to see the Arcade go down, "happy because I never got to go." Many were shocked to hear that people were happy to see such an important historical structure get torn down.