To be honest, it sounds like a tempest in a teapot, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless.
The Boston Globe reported recently that the people who run the Black Heritage Trail in Boston are angry with the people who run the Freedom Trail in that city. The latter have published a 64-page guide to Boston’s role in the lead-up to the Civil War, and the Black Heritage Trail folks believe that guide “gives short shrift to institutions that for decades have ventured to educate visitors about Boston’s little-known black history,” the Globe reports.
Having read the whole story, it sounds like coordination between these two worthy groups is not what it should be and, as a result, well-intentioned people are at odds over deficiencies in the guide that are not monumental but that could have been avoided. The details of the disagreement aren’t especially compelling. What’s significant here, if you step back from the “he said this and she said that,” is that this is a story about people who care enough about history to fight over it.
What the people in charge of the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail have in common, despite their current disagreement, is that the past - in this case, the history of Boston - is very much alive for both groups. It's not dusty archives and moth-eaten artifacts but the fascinating stuff upon which our 21st-century lives are built.
It was Henry Ford who said: “History is more or less bunk.” The more widespread that attitude becomes, the more we will see and hear ill-informed politicians like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin flaunting their ignorance of the past by grossly misrepresenting what came before.
The Boston Globe reported recently that the people who run the Black Heritage Trail in Boston are angry with the people who run the Freedom Trail in that city. The latter have published a 64-page guide to Boston’s role in the lead-up to the Civil War, and the Black Heritage Trail folks believe that guide “gives short shrift to institutions that for decades have ventured to educate visitors about Boston’s little-known black history,” the Globe reports.
Having read the whole story, it sounds like coordination between these two worthy groups is not what it should be and, as a result, well-intentioned people are at odds over deficiencies in the guide that are not monumental but that could have been avoided. The details of the disagreement aren’t especially compelling. What’s significant here, if you step back from the “he said this and she said that,” is that this is a story about people who care enough about history to fight over it.
What the people in charge of the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail have in common, despite their current disagreement, is that the past - in this case, the history of Boston - is very much alive for both groups. It's not dusty archives and moth-eaten artifacts but the fascinating stuff upon which our 21st-century lives are built.
It was Henry Ford who said: “History is more or less bunk.” The more widespread that attitude becomes, the more we will see and hear ill-informed politicians like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin flaunting their ignorance of the past by grossly misrepresenting what came before.
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