How does a museum curator work? Slate’s Working podcast interviews Smithsonian specialist Mary Elliot.

What’s a Day in the Life of a Museum Curator?

What’s a Day in the Life of a Museum Curator?

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May 17 2016 11:12 AM
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A People’s History of Slavery

This exhibition at the upcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture seeks the human face of slavery.

Mary Elliott.
Mary Elliott.

Photo illustration by Sofya Levina. Image by Michael R Barnes/Smithsonian.

In this episode of Working, Slate’s Jacob Brogan talks to museum specialist, Mary Elliott, about her work curating an exhibition for the Smithsonian’s soon-to-open National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The exhibition, “Slavery and Freedom,” reconstructs the American story through the eyes of slaves. Elliott delved deep into her own family history in order to curate an exhibit that is both intimate and comprehensive. Want to learn more about what Elliot uncovered? Read about it here. And in this episode’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Elliot discusses her path to becoming the “family historian.”

Jacob Brogan: Welcome to Working, Slate’s podcast about what people do all day. I’m Jacob Brogan, and I write about technology and culture for Slate. Whenever I wander through a museum, I find myself wondering about who chose the artifacts on display, and who wrote the captions beneath them.

To learn a little bit more about that, we spoke to Mary Elliott, a museum specialist at The Smithsonian’s soon-to-open National Museum of African American History and Culture. Along with her colleague, Nancy Bercaw, Elliott has been working for years to assemble a massive exhibit that explores the global history of slavery and the makings of America. We talked with Elliott about how she and her fellow curators build a story within the museum’s spaces.

And in a Slate Plus extra, Mary Elliott tells us more about her early forays into history, researching her own family. Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

Mary Elliott: My name is Mary Elliott and I am a museum specialist at The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. And I am co-curating the “Slavery and Freedom” exhibition with my colleague, Dr. Nancy Bercaw.

Jacob Brogan: So what does that entail?

Elliott: A lot. Every day is different. I can definitely say that. And it’s particularly exciting because right now we’re working on this brand new highly anticipated museum.

Brogan: This museum has in one way or another been in progress since 1929, right?

Elliott: Well, actually even before then, you know.

There were a group of African American men who formerly served in the Civil War. And so they actually wanted to create a monument that honored African Americans that served in the military. And that discussion started around 1916.

Brogan: Wow. How did you become involved in the recent years?

Elliott: I actually came on board in 2011. I had been doing family history research that turned into a larger research project related to African American history and culture and just American history.

Brogan: You were originally researching your own family history?

Elliott: I was. And my family actually they were enslaved in South Carolina and they were emancipated in Mississippi.

Brogan: What did that research entail?

Elliott: I had finished law school and my uncle was sick. I had done a little bit of research, but I remember our conversation:

My uncle: Mary, whatever you do, please promise me you’ll continue to do this research.
Me: I remember someone saying that our family was friends with Booker T. Washington.
My uncle: Yeah, they were friends. Right?”
Me: Oh, OK.

So I went to church and I talked to a friend— a scholar. She said, “Washington’s papers are on file at the Library of Congress. So, let me go over there and check.”

But before that I called and asked:

Me: Do you have any Elliotts in the index for the manuscript collection?
LoC: No, we don’t have any.
Me: Do you mind if I come in and just look?

You have to keep in mind this is a huge volume of paper. So I went in and I opened up one of the indexes and I saw 1914 Oklahoma. So, I was like well let me check this out, because that’s where my family was. And I pulled a roll of microfilm and I was flipping through the microfilm and I was almost to the end and I got ready to leave, and as I flipped the roll the next thing that came up was a letter from my great-grandfather’s brother to Booker T. Washington. I screamed. I was like, “Oh my god!” The librarians were shocked. They were like, “What?” As I continued to roll through, the entire rest of the microfilm was correspondence between these men.

Brogan: Amazing.

Elliott: And so I spent two months in the Library of Congress researching this correspondence. I thought this was a family history project, but then I started to find out more about what these black men and women having come out of slavery, having come through reconstruction in the midst of Jim Crow. What they were doing to help move the race forward. How they were forming coalitions. What they were doing to ensure that there was equality, justice, opportunity, and maintaining freedom.

Brogan: That seems like the advantage of starting from personal familial history is that it really shows how diving down into a very particular story can unfold into the more national story. So, how long have you been working with the museum?

Elliott: I have been working on this exhibit since 2011. I came in on the tail end of the production of the exhibit on Monticello and the paradox of slavery. And so I helped with that and then I kicked in full gear on the “Slavery and Freedom” exhibition.

Brogan: Can you tell us a little bit about how you divided responsibilities and who you are dividing up responsibilities with?

Elliott: Yes. I am fortunate to work with a dynamic partner. Her name is Dr. Nancy Bercaw. And she started with us in 2013 and we had conceptualized the exhibit, we laid out the themes, we came up with some potential stories, but keeping in mind this exhibit is almost 18,000 square feet.

And so to have to write that complete script and collect all the objects for that exhibit, it really does take at least two people. So, Nancy and I do that together. And I actually took on the first part of the exhibit, which is looking at 15th century Africa, all the way through Revolutionary War. I look at free communities of color and domestic slave trade. And then Nancy took the second half of the exhibit. And while we were responsible for each of our own areas, we consulted with each other to review our research findings, to review that these are the objects we’re suggesting that we acquire. Then to say as a team, “Yes, we really want that particular object, or let’s consider something else.” We also worked together looking at graphics, just everything. I’ll say this, and someone might say, “Well, Mary, you don’t have to say that,” but I think it’s important. Nancy is white and I’m black. Right?

So you have these two women working together. We’ve had different experiences in life. But, I wouldn’t change it for the world because we really have worked together to try and make this the most powerful, informative, mind-bending—exhibits. We want people to think about this story, to reflect on it in new ways.

Brogan: Can you tell us a little bit about the way that you and your co-curator approach setting up these exhibits?

Elliott: The museum tells the American story through the African American lens.

So our exhibit is one of three in the history gallery. So, we start with 15th century Africa, going all the way through Reconstruction. And then the next exhibit is on segregation. Goes from 1877 to 1968. And then the next exhibit is “A Changing America,” which goes from 1968 to today. Now, I say that because it helped guide us on what are the stories we need to tell and the stories that people will look for, the stories people won’t expect, but also the stories that will the foundation for what comes next. It’s also helping people know about certain parts of history that sometimes they think they know, but there’s new scholarship that’s come out that really illuminates the story.

Brogan: Can you give us an example of how you might be representing new ideas?

Elliott: Well, this isn’t so much a new idea as much as just having people think in a different way. So, when people think of the antebellum period and they think of cotton, King Cotton, the driver of the trade, we want people to remember that it starts with the transatlantic slave trade, and the driver of the trade at that point was sugar. Sugar was like oil back then. The production of that sugar where the U.S. with at least 12.5 million enslaved Africans being shipped throughout the Atlantic world, the U.S. received about 400,000, right. But when you look at the Caribbean and you look at South America, and you see that there are millions and millions of people being brought over from Africa, and you realize that many of those folks were being brought over because essentially in those sugar fields they were churning people out. Lifespans were like seven years.

Brogan: Wow.

Elliott: Right. So, to have that realization is very important. And what’s at the heart of that realization is this juxtaposition of profit, which begets power, against the human cost.

Brogan: How do you represent that narrative in a physical space? What’s the first step as you think about framing this for the Smithsonian?

Elliott: I know that initially they look through like a bubble diagram. What are some of the larger themes we want to flesh out? And they also look at the design. Some are hard walls, and some you have a little more flexibility. So, I came on board after those hard walls were laid out, and I say that because we continue to work on, OK, what are the themes, what’s the concept here. And then having to look at the floor plan and go, OK, what’s the space that we’re dealing with, and how do we place these themes on the floor. And looking at how you place the themes on the floor helps you to understand how the narrative is going to flow. How do you group certain stories within a certain theme, right?

Brogan: So do you let people wander? Is it designed that way? Or are there beats that you want them to hit?

Elliott: There are beats that we want them to hit. The nice part is in the exhibit it is chronological, but it also has themes to it, right? So, to think about also what are the questions people are going to have when they come in, you know, how did this happen? Who was involved? Did Africans enslave other Africans? And so you think through the questions people will have, you think through the known story, and then you think through what are some new things we need to share with them. And even the complexity of it, yes, Africans enslaved other Africans, but what’s the complex part of that, right?

Brogan: And how do you show that off on the floor of a museum?

Elliott: Oh, you want me to tell you? I feel like I’ll give away the exhibit.

Brogan: Well, you don’t have to give away too much.

Elliott: Well, we broke it out in three beats. So, we look at two areas, Africa and Europe. And then we look at how they come together, through trade. And then we look at how that relationship evolved through trade. And then we look at what did that mean, and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade.

Brogan: So are there specific artifacts that help you represent this story?

Elliott: Yes. We go down through the floor plan. We say, “OK, so were going to have this section is going to be focused on prior to the transatlantic slave trade, or the development of the transatlantic slave trade.” Then we say, “OK, do we need casework here?” And if we have casework, “How many cases do we need?” And then we look at, “OK, in the cases what are the stories we’re going to tell?”

Brogan: And when you say cases, you literally mean a case with objects in it, right?

Elliott: Exactly. Right. So we have already developed, “OK, these are our stories, but how do we lay it out on the floor? Are we going to have one case, or two cases? Will they be on either side of the floor?” And then once we look at our cases we say, “OK, we need objects, we need graphics, we need labels.” So we look at what objects will help us tell this story. I will say that our museum started without a collection. And so we’ve done a wonderful job collecting— I believe at this point it’s 30,000 objects.

Brogan: Wow.

Elliott: And so to have a museum starting without any objects is pretty amazing to get where we are now.

Brogan: What are some of the objects that you’ve acquired during your time there, or that that the museum has acquired?

Elliott: Some of the objects we’ve acquired that are pretty powerful include one in the middle passage section. We have an amulet that was used by a member of the Lobi tribe in Western Africa as a form of protection to ensure that they wouldn’t be placed in the slave trade. Then we have a handmade tin by an African American man during the antebellum period. And he made this tin to protect his freedom papers, so that as a free African American man, if you were ever stopped, he could prove his freedom and not be placed back in slavery. Then we also have an antebellum period slave cabin. And so that gives you a snapshot of the breadth of our collecting from the different time periods, including the sizes. So, yeah, so the Lobi amulet literally is probably about as big as the tip of your finger.

Brogan: How do you find the kind of objects you’re going to use in the museum in the first place?

Elliott: Well, I’ll give you a good example. For the domestic slave trade section, I was reading a book about the domestic slave trade depicted in the artwork of Ira Crow. There was mention by the scholar, Maureen McGuiness, that there was this red flag that was actually placed outside of slave auction sites. And we see these historic images all the time, but many people ask and I’m like, no, I never noticed the flag placed outside the window where they used to tack on a piece of paper and list the inventory of men, women, and children for sale that day.

Brogan: On the flag?

Elliott: On the flag. Right? So, I thought to myself: Oh my god, if we could get one of those flags, that would be mind-blowing, because not many people are familiar with this flag. And we went down to South Carolina to do some other research down there. And while we were down there we met with the folks at the Charleston Museum. And the young lady who is over textiles there had to go out of town, but she laid out this table of all these materials knowing that we were coming. And each object had a card with it with all of the details, all of the provenance, and as I went upstairs and I saw the table, sitting on the table was this red flag.

Your face looks like mine. I literally— I’m not going to lie, I screamed. I was like, “Oh my god, there it is!” I was blown away. And so they were so kind to work with us. It is actually in fact owned by the South Carolina Historical Society. I don’t know of any other red flags that survived. And so we are able to feature it as one of the loaned objects from South Carolina Historical Society. And it will be in our story on the domestic slave trade.

So, how we go about finding objects includes just like what I did, which was reading about the subject matter. Well, what would be the material culture that will help tell this story, right? And sometimes there is the obvious, people know about restraints, shackles. People know about whips, right. And it is part of the harsh reality of the story of slavery. But then, again, there’s like the red flag, which talks about the business of the slave trade. And we actually acquired the Black Fashion Museum collection. Well, within that collection is a skirt that was worn by a young girl who was enslaved when she was about 5 years old, I believe.

So that tells you the human cost story, right. And you can imagine just seeing this little skirt and imagining the young lady who wore that skirt, and what life was like. Nancy actually has done an amazing job unfolding that story. And we have a dynamic team of people who work with us. Our colleagues include a genealogist on staff. And so we say here’s this object. We know so many things about the object. We need to do further research to find out can we trace the young lady who actually wore this skirt.

Brogan: How do you decide what to say about it? You have this huge amount of information available, but presumably the average person passing through the museum, you can’t expect them to read a whole book on that one skirt. So you have to decide what to tell and what to hold back. What goes into those decisions?

Elliott: Pain and heartache. Because the stories are so amazing. And we have a hierarchy of a label system. So, you will have a primary label, a secondary label, an object label, a graphic label, an extended object label, an extended graphic label, right. Each one has a certain word count: 75, 50 words. So…

Brogan: What’s standard across the museum?

Elliott: Yes. And when we initially write everything, we just write. But then we, of course, have to scale down. And so it’s a team effort where we really sift through and go what are the key points. What is the most important thing that the visitor needs to know?

But, also, how do you say it in a way that it really helps the visitor understand the power of the object, or understand the larger theme, right? And so word choice is very important, too. And we work with an editor who helps us to make sure that our writing is very tight, yeah. We’d like to say we’re perfect at writing, but it’s good to have an editor because as part of the team curating the exhibition, we do get so moved by these stories. And so we can want to write a whole dissertation on one thing.

The other thing is the design features in the exhibit help— it’s like layers. So you have the object, you have the graphic, you have the label, and then you have the design itself, right?

Brogan: What do you mean by design features?

Elliott: Design includes a wall that lists hundreds of slave ships. So you get that sense of the extensiveness of this business of the trade. But along that wall we still have labels that tell that story.

But you imagine you read a label, you stand up close, you’re reading a label. But when you stand back and you look at this wall with hundreds of slave ship names, embarkation numbers, disembarkation numbers, it becomes very clear how massive this was.

Brogan: Apart from the artifacts that you acquire, from the objects that you bring in, these historical objects, you also have to make certain things for the exhibits, right? What are some of the things that you’ve had to produce for the museum?

Elliott: Short films. And we have audio features that will be in the exhibit. And then we have cast figures. So if I were to speak to you about the cast figures …

Brogan: The cast figures are the figurines that the clothes go on and such?

Elliott: It’s like a cast figure depiction of Thomas Jefferson.

Brogan: So like the cast of the museum itself?

Elliott: Well, it’s the cast—yes!

Brogan: It’s also a cast.

Elliott: Yes.

So, we have—in this case I’ll tell you a few. We have Thomas Jefferson. We have Toussaint Louverture. We can’t just look at an artist depiction of Toussaint or Thomas Jefferson. We actually had to do research on each of these people. And really develop a character study on them. Because we wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just physically this is what they look like. But we wanted to capture the essence of who they were and capture their demeanor. And capture their demeanor at a certain point in time. So, that can go from: “Are we going to capture the demeanor of Thomas Jefferson when he’s a younger man or an older man?”

Brogan: And Thomas Jefferson we typically see depicted as a kind of heroic constitutional figure. But presumably here you’re representing the less savory side of him.

Elliott: We are depicting the complexity of Thomas Jefferson. He was not unlike many people of his time. And you want people to be able to say, “Hmm, that could have been me. What would I have done in that situation?” Here’s this moral question: “He looks like me. He looks like me say in: age, stature, the way he stands, the look on his face.” So we wanted to make sure he didn’t look like a demigod. We want everyone to be able to look at this person and say “That could be me, what would I have done?”

You look at Toussaint Louverture and you think of this man who led this revolution and had this fight for freedom in his heart. But, it’s also what am I leading people into and I have to be a leader in this moment. And how do I present myself to the world. We want people to look at these people as people that they could say, “If that were me, what would I have done?”

Brogan: Does that mean that you’re talking with artists about how to represent their faces? Is it about posture?

Elliott: Yes.

Brogan: What goes into that?

Elliott: So when you do the character study, let’s say ... I’ll give you an example. Phillis Wheatley. Phillis Wheatley was a frail woman. If you look at the image of her on the frontispiece of her book, she is wearing very delicate clothing. And a more ornate bonnet. And she has more fine features.

So, we put that in the character study. And we asked them to design the model to that depiction. And when we get back the initial models, they’ll show us the hands. Literally we have to look at the hands. Are the hands delicate enough? How do we position her hands? Is she holding a quill? Is she holding a book? Then we look at the clothing.

One person said they looked at her and thought of her station in life as being a slave. But it’s very clear on the frontispiece of her book, that whoever modeled her or however she chose to wear her clothes— her clothes are not like a gingham scarf. She’s wearing a very nice linen scarf is what it appears on the cover. And then, again, you see the bonnet, and the bonnet has a bow at the top of it. And it looks very feminine. We wanted to make sure that it got down to the detail of how she depicted herself on that frontispiece.

It helps us give a better picture of African Americans not having this monolithic appearance. The outside world can say, well, they just look like a black person, but each person had their own personality, their own features. They were their own person.

Brogan: So it sounds like what you really focused on when you’re thinking about how to represent these details is how to restore kind of humanity?

Elliott: That’s the exact word.

Brogan: In a context of story that was very much about stripping people of humanity.

Elliott: Exactly. That’s exactly it.

Brogan: Are there other sensory details that help shape that humanizing experience that you’re creating?

Elliott: Yes. Nancy did an amazing job with the story on the builders, let’s say. And there’s a gentleman named Solomon Williams. And Solomon Williams was a blacksmith on a plantation in Louisiana. And oftentimes you’ll hear the story of slavery and it’s told:

This is Joe, this is Joe with his hoe, and Joe worked in a field. He worked in a field. He’d get up in the morning at 3 a.m. He’d have this to eat for breakfast. And then he would have to go out to the field and have painstaking hours of work. And then Joe would go home and then he would start it all over again.

Very simple. No humanity there. Just Joe and his tool. And in some ways it turns Joe into a tool himself. Nancy did an amazing job of showing the humanity, the life of this person. And we talked it through because we were like, OK, who makes up this community. And then we talked through Joe is more than that. He actually has a faith system. He has someone he loves. And in even in slavery, he has his own aspirations.

Joe has things that he likes to do. Joe has friends. But it’s still the harsh reality of slavery. And Joe has skills. So, in this case Joe is Solomon Williams. And Solomon Williams as a blacksmith has a story that is told through life, work, and enslavement. Solomon Williams created this beautiful ornate double helix drill bit. And it required a lot of mathematical knowledge. He didn’t have an education, but his skills enabled him to create this amazing tool.

As a blacksmith, he also in his life created grave markers. And they are these iron grave markers that have ornate scrolling design on them. And we have had the opportunity to display the drill bit. And we will also display the grave marker that he designed for his wife. In enslavement, as a blacksmith no doubt, Solomon Williams had to make the restraints on the plantation.

And so we have to represent that. A set of shackles. That while we don’t know that he created those shackles, we know that that was likely something he had to do. So, how that display is laid out is you have the story of Solomon Williams that personalizes it, but it also allows us to look at the humanity of him through life, work, and enslavement.

Brogan: So the objects fill out the story of an enslaved person? Instead of just reducing him to an object once again as he was under slavery?

Elliott: Yes.

Brogan: Right now you’re in the installation phase. The museum opens soon?

Elliott: Yes. Sept. 24.

Brogan: So what’s that process like? How involved are you in the kind of day-to-day work of making sure that these exhibitions you’ve been working on for years come to fruition in the right ways?

Elliott: We continue to work on the objects and the graphics as things are starting to come into focus. And we say, OK, well actually maybe this graphic needs to be switched out, or this object, make sure that it’s the right object we were supposed to acquire.

And that actually does fit the case. Also, looking at how we mount certain objects. Also getting ready for opening, we have to look at the proofs. And we have to go line by line and make sure that everything is accurate.

Brogan: Wow.

Elliott: Make sure that we didn’t miss a single word. Make sure that even our writing, now that you look at it in an actual rendering we say, “It actually looks better if we change this.”

Brogan: We talk about the history of slavery, we’re talking about hundreds of years of violence and oppression. There are so many voices. How do you capture the kind of polyvalence, the range? Do you ever find yourselves worrying about leaving things out?

Elliott: We have not worried about leaving any voices out. I’d heard people say, “Well, it’s hard to find first person voices that early of Africans in America, African American.” But we found them.

Africans along the West African coast. And we found those voices in narratives, in documents related to the slave trade. And we were able to bring those voices forward, and those are those quotes you’ll see on the wall. It really does humanize this story. And it helps you understand that at every step of the way, Africans in colonial North America, African Americans, have always been involved in helping to develop this nation.

Brogan: Do you ever have to think about possible controversies or struggle/disagreements?

Elliott: We think through all of that. We thought through all of that. And there are three points I would make. One, when you walk into this exhibit there is a quote from John Hope Franklin, the renowned historian/scholar. He said, “We have to tell the unvarnished truth.” And that truth encompasses a lot, even some harsh realities. The other thing is we worked with a team of scholars that met with us quarterly throughout this process. And they are some of the top scholars, including Taylor Branch, Johnnetta Cole.

There were so many on the council that have generously given their time, talent, intellect to help us parse through some of these stories and issues. And they made seem like you were presenting your dissertation. Rhey actually said:

[bq]

Well, why are you making this point? How are you making this point? What do you know about this? Have you mentioned this? Is this still accurate?

[/bq]

So they really challenged us to make sure that we knew all of the information, the scholarship that’s out there now, and also that we were interpreting it properly. So that was phenomenal. And sometimes terrifying. But…

Brogan: From my own dissertation defense in grad school, I can imagine.

Elliott: Yes. So, it was wonderful because they really pushed us to do our best work. In addition to the scholars, and he is a scholar in his own right, our director, Lonnie Bunch, who is a renowned historian and highly regarded museum professional, was also part of this. And he pushed us to make sure that we were hitting all the right points, but looking at even those harsher stories. It’s not that I don’t see it as a harsh story, it’s just a question that many people will have: Africans enslaving other Africans. Well, it can be simply stated. Africans enslaved other Africans. But it’s more complex than that. Because you have Africans who enslaved other Africans for many reasons.

And we actually have this in a label where we talk about it was done to save themselves from being enslaved. It was done because as a result of warfare. But also there were different types of slavery in Africa versus this New World slavery that was commercialized and racialized. And then there’s also the notion that some people did it merely for profit. So, it’s not as simple as, well, Africans just enslaved other Africans. So, we break down the complexity of all of that.

Brogan: Something that you can do when you have 60,000 square feet of space to work with I imagine.

Elliott: Exactly. And then the last thing I’ll say is we made sure that all of this exhibit, the writing, how we selected objects, even down to the graphics we chose, it’s all grounded in scholarship and documented. So, we made sure that we have all of our sources tight and that we used the latest scholarship so that people can feel confident that this is telling the unvarnished truth with a solid foundation of research.

Brogan: The museum will open in September. What’s next for you after that?

Elliott: Well, I’ll continue to work with Nancy. And I’m excited about that. We continue to work on “Slavery and Freedom.” In addition to creating the exhibition, we also have the opportunity to do public programs to publish some things together, and continue to collect objects related to slavery and freedom in the period that we work on.

And I’m excited because while I love working with Nancy, I’m now working with my colleague, Dr. Paul Gardullo, who along with our founding director Lonnie Bunch, helped to establish the Slave Wrecks Project. We are looking at slave shipwrecks around the world. So, featured in the “Slavery and Freedom” exhibit, we will have artifacts from a slave shipwreck, the Sao Jose, which wrecked off the coast of South Africa.

It started in Lisbon, Portugal, went to Mozambique to pick up enslaved Africans, and then carried them to Brazil. But on the way to Brazil it wrecked off the coast of South Africa. I think it was around 1794. And there were 400 souls on board. 200 of them died. 200 survived. And then were later sold. And, of course, they were saved because they were human cargo, and they were a form of profit.

So, it’s a very powerful story, but equally powerful is that this is a global story, so we are looking at slave shipwrecks around the world. And so now we’re extending that story to look at potential slave shipwrecks in the water at St. Croix. So …

Brogan: Do you work with divers?

Elliott: We work with divers. We’ve been working with the National Park Service. We are looking at working with the local university, University of Virgin Islands. And what’s really powerful about this project is it’s not just about the artifacts that is at the center of this right, to help illuminate this story about the transatlantic slave trade, and the humanity— it may sound interesting to use that word, but the human story of the experience, right.

But the other part of that is the legacy of slavery in a particular site, so while we can get artifacts and bring them to the museum and tell it on a national level and international level, we also work with local communities to make sure that that story is told from a community perspective as well, to help develop local exhibits.

And those artifacts go back to those communities. So, we will be rotating artifacts based on the different slave shipwrecks that we uncover and really help tell the larger story of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the African diaspora as well.

Brogan: Thanks for listening to this episode of Working. I’m Jacob Brogan. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast. Our email address is Working@Slate.com. You can listen to all six seasons at Slate.com/Working. This episode was produced by the brilliant Mickey Capper. Our executive producer is Steve Lickteig, and the chief content officer of the Panoply Network is Andy Bowers.

In this Slate Plus extra, Mary Elliott tells us more about her early forays into history researching her own family. So when you were looking into your own family history, what was that experience like?

Elliott: My family has family reunions every two years. And so I have an older cousin who we just always, you know, look to her. At every family reunion she’d bring a comprehensive booklet about, OK, here is the family history, and here is where the family is now:

I thought how did I end up doing this family history research in the first place. And I don’t know what happened, I was at my mother’s house, I was digging through some old papers, and I found a letter from when I graduated from undergrad and it was going into the summer. And I had written this letter, but I had never sent it off. And I said:

Dear (I called her Aunt Mary),
Unfortunately, I can’t help with doing the family history. I’m in the middle of trying to get ready to graduate.

And so I was literally telling her I don’t have time for this. I have to graduate. I have so many other things I have to do. And it’s funny to think that that far back, you know, she had plans for me and I found out later that my family had plans for me. They were like, “You’re going to be the family historian.” So, I ended up doing that research and the manuscript collection. But then I also heard that there was a relative who was the president of Virginia State University.

And turned out he was the president of Virginia State University from 1914 for about 20 years. And he was friends with Booker T. Washington, Robert R. Moton, Maggie Walker, the first black female bank owner. And he was doing in Virginia the same thing that the family was doing in Oklahoma. So, he was involved in the church, he was involved in higher education. He was involved in civic engagement. All of that.

And so what I started to see was this picture of these black men and women essentially looking at the nation as their chessboard, and strategically moving people around. Strategically creating coalitions to help strengthen the black community. And it was so fascinating to me to think about what they were doing after slavery. And then to also think about I need to know more about what was going on when they were enslaved.

So, I actually did the research from when they were in South Carolina enslaved, all the way up through that period of 1914 and then even going forward. The relative who was president of Virginia State University wrote an unpublished manuscript, or unpublished autobiography. And in it he wrote, “My mother, her sister, and my grandmother were enslaved by Colonel Adley Hogan Gladden in South Carolina.”

He sold them to his brother-in-law, who then carried them to Oktibbeha County, Mississippi. And so I started to look into this story. And I ended up connecting with the descendants of Adley Hogan Gladden. And as I started peeling back the layers, I started finding out more and more about the story of this family and the places where they lived. So, the most amazing part was in that unpublished autobiography he talked about being in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi.

And he said, “This is where I went to school. This is where I went to church.” And he listed all these places. I’d never heard of Mississippi in our family. At our family reunions I I never really heard it discussed. And my mother said, “We need to go to Mississippi. And so we took this unpublished autobiography and we went to Starkville, Mississippi.”

And we didn’t know anyone there. And so we said, “OK, well the first black person we see, we’re going to ask them do you know where this is, the things that he described.” We saw a woman at the gas station and she said, “Sure, follow me.” And so we drove past Mississippi State University and there was a fork in the road. And you could go right or left, either way you’d come full circle. And she said, “Just follow the road.” And we drove down the road and the trees cleared and you could see where all these plantations had been there.

And as we drove down and drove through, we met people who there was one woman sitting on her porch and I pulled up and I said, “I’m looking for some Gandy’s.” And she said, “Uh-huh.” She just—she was sitting on her porch rocking, and she just looked and she said, “Uh-huh.” And I said, “Do you know some Gandy’s?” And she was like, “Uh-huh.” And my mom was in the car. My mother was in the car and she said, “Mary …” and I was like “What.” She said, “You know she’s a Gandy.” And I was like, “What?”

I looked at the woman and I said, “Are you a Gandy?” And she said, “Uh-huh.” And then from there she called all these people in the community and said these young ladies are here. You need to meet them. And people opened their doors. In the end, we found the church he attended, two of them. We found the school, the site of the school where he went to school. And these were all sites that were related to my great-great-grandmother, my great-great-great-grandmother, my great-grandfather.

All of them there before they left to go to Oklahoma or Indian Territory. The important part about one of the churches is that it is the site where there was the confrontation between African Americans and white residents at that time. And it was around 1890. It was around the time that they were being disenfranchised, right.

And so this ancestor wrote about that. But then I found a book called The Historic Sketches of Oktibbeha County, and it was written by a judge who was a white man in that area. And he wrote very unapologetically. This gentleman was a well-known doctor and he was a member of the Klan. This man was a well-known attorney and he did all these things to African Americans in the community that were harsh things.

Brogan: He probably didn’t say African Americans.

Elliott: No.

And it turned out he wrote about the same incident that this ancestor wrote about. And so I was able to put them side-by-side and see, you know, what was actually happening at the time and to get it from two different perspectives.

Brogan: Amazing. It seems like the advantage of starting from personal familial history is that it really shows how diving down into a very particular incident, or a very particular story can unfold into a more collective, a more national, more political story.

Elliott: It really is an example of learning about the American story through the African American lens. And that African American lens sees black people and white people. So, even when you have that African American lens, it’s not a lens of just African Americans. And it is a lens that does reflect on the making of this nation in many ways. So, that was really powerful to learn about South Carolina/Mississippi. And then again, like I said, they were very successful in Oklahoma.

I’m very proud of that. But I’m most proud of what they did to not only once they got out of slavery, but also the principles they held high: education, community, faith, civic engagement. All of that is very important.