International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-021-00593-9

“It’s Not About Us”: Exploring White‑Public Heritage Space,

Community, and Commemoration on Jamestown Island,
Virginia

L. Chardé Reid1

Accepted: 29 January 2021 / Published online: 23 February 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
This article explores the complex dynamics involved in making African Diaspora
histories and cultures visible at Historic Jamestowne, a setting traditionally viewed
as white public heritage space. In response to the 4­ 00th anniversary of the forcible
arrival of Africans in Virginia, archaeologists and heritage professionals at James-
town are engaging the local African American descendant community in collective
knowledge production centered around Angela, one of the first African women that
lived at Jamestown in the 1620s. This article explores the production of dominant
histories, alternative interpretations of the (colonial) past, and relationships between
heritage sites and local descendant communities.

Keywords African diaspora · Community-based archaeology · Black feminist

archaeology · Memory · Heritage · Jamestown · Virginia

Introduction

On July ­30th, 2019, President Donald Trump addressed a crowd at the Jamestown
Settlement Museum in commemoration of the first legislative assembly in Virginia.
His speech skirted through “American History” with two mentions of Native Ameri-
cans and a mollified history of enslaved Africans. There was no mention of the con-
tradiction of a free nation built on land dispossession and slavery. The telos of this
history was a nationalistic rendering of American exceptionalism, as Trump echoed
dominant public history narratives of Virginia’s first General Assembly, depicting
the gathering of a group of elite landowning English men in Jamestown’s church
four hundred years earlier as the beginning of “our nation’s priceless culture of free-
dom, independence, equality, justice, and self-determination” (Edlund 2019).

* L. Chardé Reid
[email protected]
1
Anthropology Department, William & Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187‑8795,
USA

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 23

Trump did not deliver his speech without challenge. Black lawmakers in Vir-
ginia boycotted Trump’s visit after he made a series of remarks deemed racist in
an attempt to disparage minority lawmakers. Democratic Virginia State Delegate,
Ibraheem Samirah, disrupted Trump’s speech and held up signs that read “deport
hate,” “reunite my family,” and “go back to your corrupted home” (Samirah 2019).
At nearby Jamestown High School, about 350 protestors gathered in opposition of
Trump’s visit, chanting protest phrases like, “this is what democracy looks like” and
“No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!” (Roberts 2019).
A few weeks later, on August 18th, national and local officers of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a small delegation
from Ghana represented by members of the Adinkra Group, and over 200 people
gathered at Historic Jamestowne to remember the first Africans who were forcibly
brought to Virginia in 1619 (Fig. 1). For them, and for many who gathered to listen
to them, the ­400th anniversary of the forcible arrival of Africans in Virginia offered
an invitation to challenge the over 100-year-old dominant historical narratives of
Jamestown. The anniversary was a call to refuse an (American) universal history
in favor of a particular one grounded in the histories and cultures of the African
diaspora.
This article examines how local archaeologists and descendants of enslaved Afri-
cans fashioned the commemoration of the ­400th year since the first arrival of the
First Africans in Virginia into the start of a public process of reclaiming and refram-
ing their historical contemporary experiences at Jamestown. By enforcing a (white)
nationalistic framing and rejecting a local narrative of Jamestown’s past during the
Jim Crow era, Jamestown became uniquely regarded as the “Birthplace of American
Democracy.” Although archaeologists and heritage professionals at Jamestown have

Fig. 1  National and local officers of NAACP and community members marching to the Angela Site on
Jamestown Island, Virginia to commemorate the ­400th anniversary of the forced arrival of a group of
captive Africans in Virginia on August ­18th, 2019, looking northwest (Photograph by the author)

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24 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

contested Jim Crow-era retellings since the 1990s, many local African Americans
still perceive Jamestown as a heritage space only for whites. For example, one Afri-
can American woman who grew up a few miles from Jamestown Island told me,
“Why would we want to go to Jamestown? It’s not about us” (Descendant “S”, pers.
comm., 2019). Collective memories of Jim Crow discriminatory practices and inter-
pretation still influence perceptions of who is and is not welcomed at Jamestown
and whose heritage is represented. In 2017, a new public archaeology project broke
ground at the site where Angela, one of the first documented African women in Vir-
ginia, lived in the 1620s. Archaeologists and heritage professionals at the Angela
Site are now implementing community-based approaches to share knowledge pro-
duction at Jamestown with the local African American community. This approach
is literally and figuratively groundbreaking for an early seventeenth-century public
archaeological site.
People of African descent lived and labored on Jamestown Island for nearly three
hundred years. However, the memory of their presence was purposefully erased
from the heritage site during the Jim Crow era (late nineteenth–mid twentieth centu-
ries) (Horning 2006; Lindgren 1993). Central to this project was the Association for
the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), whose members transformed the
island from a regional tourist attraction in ruins into a National heritage space that
valorized perceptions of seventeenth-century American whiteness and excluded con-
tributions of nonwhite peoples, all in service of twentieth-century social and politi-
cal white supremacy. Specifically, by using archaeology, artifacts, historical events,
and the spaces these took place in, Virginian Anglo-American elites beginning in
1893 asserted their Anglo-Saxon, Protestant identity on the Jamestown colony and
reclaimed a southern white racial, political, and economic power that was threatened
as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction period. Although having been popu-
lated by Indigenous Algonquian peoples and, since 1619, enslaved Africans, these
elites declared the island hallowed ground just as their colonial predecessors had
and, in so doing, constructed a shrine to white America (Lindgren 1993:110).
Connecting postcolonial theory and a community-collaborative approach enables
researchers to explore the production of dominant histories, alternative interpreta-
tions of the colonial past, and relationships between heritage sites and local descend-
ant communities. In this article I examine African American descendant community
members’ collective histories of Historic Jamestowne and ideas and efforts toward
decentering dominant heritage narratives that ignore or downplay the early African
presence in Virginia. I also explain the major challenges facing archaeologists as
they struggle to assert the visibility and importance of African Diasporic histories
and cultures in a place that has been constructed as a “white public space” (Page
1999; Page and Thomas 1994) since the early twentieth century. I modify this con-
cept to consider white public heritage space as an analytic tool for investigating the
intersection of the politics of heritage, memory, race, and history.
Through historical research and oral biographical interviews with six local Afri-
can American women (IRB protocol PHSC-2019–02-07–13,412-jljones01), this
article explores (1) how white public heritage space was instituted over time mate-
rially and ideologically; (2) how the erasure of African and African Americans at
Jamestown has affected perceptions of belonging and civic estrangement amongst

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local African American descendants; and (3) how archaeologists may work to
empower marginalized communities to contest such spaces. I address how people
of African descent living in Tidewater Virginia construct collective memory, com-
munity, and landscape histories. It also sets the stage for a larger, archaeological
study of seventeenth-century African perspectives and influences in the Historic
Triangle (Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg) region that decenters Eurocen-
tric practices and knowledge hierarchies to facilitate multiple epistemologies for
anthropological knowledge production about the nation’s founding and early history
(Edwards-Ingram 2001; Franklin 1997; Harrison 1995; Risam 2018; Said 1997).

Jamestown as White Public Heritage Space

In order to understand Jamestown as a white public heritage space, it is necessary to

understand what I mean by whiteness and how it is perpetuated and maintained in
this context. Racial whiteness refers to a constructed identity with material conse-
quences for health, wealth, and other lived experiences that was first invented in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Blakey 1999; Epperson 2004; Goodman et al.
2020; Orser 2007; Smedley and Smedley 2012; Trouillot 2015). Like other identity
constructs, whiteness has changed over time (Painter 2010) even as nonwhite iden-
tities have consistently served as a boundary allowing for the creation of binaries
which promote the perceived backwardness of nonwhite peoples (Fanon 1963). Page
(1999:118) argues that “Europeans in America and elsewhere made themselves into
a transnational group called whites to distinguish themselves and their supremacist
entitlements from those designated nonwhites and seen as deserving few or no racial
entitlements.” Whiteness is attached to material privileges that influence social and
economic relations (Collins 2017; Harrison 1995). Since the boundaries of white-
ness continue to expand and contract, some groups are included and others are not
(DuBois 2005[1915]; Painter 2010; Goodman et al. 2020; Lewis 2015). For exam-
ple, it was not until the mid-twentieth century that Jewish groups came to be con-
sidered white (Orser 2007). Conversely, Mexicans at one time in the early twentieth
century were considered white, but today are considered a minority and have faced
increased discrimination and dehumanization (Camp 2011). Thus, how race has
been negotiated and enacted varies, allowing whiteness to be continually defended
and reasserted (Lewis 2015).
Page and Thomas (1994;111) coined the term white public space and defined it
as a system or network of “locations, sites, patterns, configurations or devices that
routinely discursively, and sometimes coercively privilege Euro-Americans over
nonwhites.” Here, I augment their term to specify white public heritage space, or
those spaces constructed to privilege heritage and historical narratives that pro-
mote white solidarity through appeals to white supremacy. Racial agents who man-
age white public space construct spatial and symbolic boundaries similar to those
that were marked during Jim Crow (Lewis 2015; Page 1999). Thus, historical nar-
ratives detailing past societies are usually aimed at a white, middle-class public,
resulting in static and essentialized views of nonwhites when they are included in
these narratives. At Jamestown, Anglo-Protestant elites used segregationist practices

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26 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

and selective cultural memory to create white public heritage space during the Jim
Crow-era, reaffirming racist narratives through their interpretation of historical
events, archaeological sites, and artifacts. Jamestown emerges paradoxically as the
birthplace of American freedom and white supremacy. Thus, that African American
visitation and engagement has been noticably low at Historic Jamestowne through-
out the history of the site is perhaps unsurprising.
By using white supremacist symbols and selective cultural memory of the past
as early twentieth-century APVA members did at Jamestown, white public heritage
space establishes a historical context for a social and economic materiality which
privileges contemporary whites and separates them from nonwhites deemed as bio-
logical and social inferiors. White public heritage space naturalizes white privilege
and systematically excludes nonwhite people and their histories (see for instance,
Trouillot 2015). Altogether, these orchestrated exclusions construct an uneven past
that contribute to what Salamishah Tillet (2009:125) describes as alienation or
“civic estrangement […] from the rights and privileges of the contemporary public
sphere.” For African Americans, civic estrangement further complicates the always
complex process of identify formation and negatively affects transnational diasporic
relations. Tillet argues that the lack of formal association with the lives and con-
tributions of enslaved African Americans on national landscapes motivates some
African Americans to turn away from American national monuments and heritage
spaces. Instead, they reappropriate their “forgotten” history by turning to West Afri-
can sites and symbols. Thus, the national amnesia about American chattel slavery
causes these African Americans to dismiss American heritage symbols and sites and
instead embrace a transnational African Diasporic identity that reconstructs “their
unique history of American slavery, segregation, and post-Civil Rights racism onto
the racial histories of non-US subjects and places” (Tillet 2009:126).

Decolonizing the Heritage Site

The production of historical narratives is an unequal political process made up of

power differentials that encourage the creation of certain histories while silencing
others (Trouillot 2015). Moreover, defining what constitutes heritage and heritage
sites is loaded with social inequalities and political power disparities that are con-
nected to the legacy of colonialism (LaRoche and Blakey 1997). For the last 30
years, however, archaeologists at Jamestown have contested earlier interpretations
of Jamestown as a Anglo-Saxon, Protestant heritage space by exploring the roles of
Native Americans and African Americans in the colony (Brown and Horning 2004;
Horning 2006; Horning et al. 2001). Researchers have sought to decenter western
hegemonic knowledge hierarchies and facilitate multiple epistemologies in knowl-
edge production (Perry and Paynter 1999). Building on this research, I apply Black
feminist thought and archaeologies to move away from practices that reinforce the
production of white public heritage space at Jamestown.
The 2020 uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd, coupled with the
beginnings of a racial reckoning within the field of archaeology (see, for instance,
SBA et al. 2020), add emphasis to Paul Mullins’ (2008a, 2008b) call for an

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 27

empirically and politically rigorous African Diasporan archaeology that focuses on

activism in the present. Mullins (2008a:104) suggests that a diasporic analysis must
take a position in “antiracial discourses” rather than “negotiating between Afri-
can anti-essentialism and the evidence for African cultural persistence.” Historical
archaeology should actively dismantle racist stereotypes in order to create a “vindi-
cationist archaeology” that can contribute to present-day discourses on race, class,
and gender (Battle-Baptiste 2011; Blakey 2001; Drake 1980). Black Feminist theory
advances this argument, making it a valuable theoretical framework for historical
archaeologists interested in interpreting identities and experiences of people of color
in the past. Additionally, it provides tools for researchers to engage in contemporary
political discourse (Bailey 2015; Battle-Baptiste 2011, 2017; Berry and Gross 2020;
Collins 2000; Crenshaw 1991; Franklin 1997, 2001; White 2001). This theoretical
framework is influenced by Black Feminist thought and literature that traces back
to the nineteenth century and draws on various intellectual traditions. Black Femi-
nists illustrate how Black women are marginalized through race and gender in mul-
tiple ways. Further, these writers argue the importance of recognizing “intersecting
oppressions” and asking new questions about relationships and social constructs that
shaped these relationships in the past (Berry and Gross 2020; Collins 2000; Cren-
shaw 1991; White 2001).
Black Feminist archaeologists such as Maria Franklin and Whitney Battle-Bap-
tiste challenge researchers to question their own subjectivities as related to their
research and argues for research questions focused on counteracting modern-day
injustices. In her 1997 article, Franklin called for archaeologists to be self-reflex-
ive about the reasons they undertake African Diasporan archaeology. She urged
that researchers needed to orient themselves toward meaningful collaboration with
descendant communities at the critical moments during the formulation of research
questions as well as at other stages of research. Put simply, archaeologists must
question narratives of the African American past or they may be doomed to repeat
them. Further, Black Feminist theory allows researchers to explore the complexities
of subjects’ multitude of personhoods. This allows for a deeper understanding of not
only race, or even of race and gender, but of various modes of social identity, includ-
ing religious affiliation, occupation, sexuality, disability, or economic class (Meskell
2002).

Searching for Angela

In a continued struggle to counter early twentieth-century (mis)representations of

African American history and culture, archaeologists and heritage professionals at
Jamestown have started engaging local and descendant African American commu-
nity members in an inclusive production of knowledge centered on Angela, one of
the first African women that lived at Jamestown in the 1620s. According to the 1624
muster list, “Angelo,” or Angela, lived in the household of prominent planter and
merchant Captain William Peirce of Jamestown. Angela appears in the historical
record only one other time: a census conducted in the Virginia colony on January
24, 1625 (see Heywood and Thornton 2007 for theories of why the masculine form

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of Angela was recorded in these colonial documents). In the first, she is one of the
colony’s 21 Africans, identified as "Angelo a Negar" and living in “James Cittie,”
Virginia’s first capital located on Jamestown Island. The second record provides a
bit more detail as it groups residents according to household and transport vessels.
Here, Angela is still listed as living in the James City household of Captain Wil-
liam Peirce, along with Peirce’s wife, Joan, and three presumably European inden-
tured servants. In 1625, Angela is one of 23 Africans in the colony. She is identified
this time as "Angelo a Negro Woman in the Treasurer." The Peirce household was
described by a contemporary as "the fairest in Virginia" (McCartney 2007) and on
a large urban lot. It is likely that Angela worked alongside Ester, a European inden-
tured servant, and Joan Peirce in the garden and around the house (Brown and Horn-
ing 2004; Heywood and Thornton 2007; Horn 2018; Horning et al. 2001).
Although limited, these details about Angela’s daily work regime offer an
opportunity to apply bell hooks’ (1990) and Whitney Battle-Baptiste’s (2011)
concepts of homeplace and homespace, respectively, to explore multivalent
interpretations of material interactions within mixed ethnic households. Home-
place/space refers to the environment and objects that shape the experiences and
memories of Black individuals, families, and communities. Applying homespace
to the household and yardspaces of many early seventeenth-century African-Vir-
ginians offers a new way to interpret resistance, survival, and strength through
temporal, spatial, and conceptual boundaries constructed for captive Africans
during the seventeenth century. Additionally, homespace may offer archaeolo-
gists and descendant communities new insights into the making of the Black
subject in early America (Morris 2017). It also challenges us to think more
critically about the unique challenges Angela may have faced as the only Black
woman in the Peirce household. Although early seventeenth-century home-
places/spaces would have, in many cases, been less Afrocentric spaces since
Africans only accounted for about 2% of Virginia’s population for most of the
seventeenth century (Horn 2018), further archaeological analysis will be cru-
cial to allow us to more carefully consider how early captive Africans would
have created community, memory, and ultimately home in seventeenth-century
Virginia.

Telling Our Stories: The Angela Site Project

The Angela Site project was inaugurated in 2017 (Young 2017; note Young’s obser-
vation about race and archaeology). However, the first systematic archaeology that
included portions of the Angela Site was conducted in 1934 by National Park Ser-
vice (NPS) field director H. Summerfield Day and a team of segregated African
American Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) archaeologists (Fig. 2). The driving
force behind this project was to test the hypothesis of Colonel Samuel Yonge, who
excavated with the APVA at the turn of the twentieth century, about the develop-
ment of Jamestown’s seventeenth-century town and Virginia’s first capital. Imple-
menting shovel test pits, cross trenching, and limited open-area excavations, Day
and the CCC archaeologists exposed foundations, ditches, wells, and burials related

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 29

Fig. 2  Left, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) archaeologists excavating near the Angela Site on
Jamestown Island in 1935, looking west (Courtesy of National Park Service, Colonial National Historical
Park, Jamestown Collection). Right, Angela Site project archaeologists (left to right) Chardé Reid, Katie
Dowling, Lee McBee, and David Givens with Mr. Purcell Bailey (second from right) who was a 1930s
CCC worker (Author’s photograph)

to the seventeenth-century town. The African American archaeologists were in fact

the first to excavate much of Jamestown, including portions of today’s Angela Site.
These men not only excavated, but recorded interpretations in the field and cleaned,
sorted, and cataloged artifacts. While these men were permitted on site as physical
and intellectual laborers, they were not permitted on the site as visitors due to Jim
Crow laws. Similar to the story of African and African Americans living at James-
town during the colonial and antebellum periods, the CCC workers’ experiences
at Jamestown were ultimately silenced in the official narrative that came to define
Jamestown as white public heritage space in the early to mid-twentieth century.
The Angela Site Project engages in a critical praxis that aims to decolonize
archaeology by reconstructing both traditional power relationships in the creation
of archaeological histories and recover formerly erased narratives (Allen and Jobson
2016; Blakey 1997; Fanon 1963; Harrison 1997; LaRoche and Blakey 1997). The
project is an attempt to render visible the life and influences of one of the first Afri-
can women to have lived and labored in the colony through material and documen-
tary records. The very act of naming the site after Angela also re-centers the narra-
tive by calling attention to her (reminiscent of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s #SayHerName
project) and to the other Africans who arrived in the Virginia colony in 1619. With
the guidance of descendant intellectual collaborators, we are prioritizing questions
about African agency rather than Eurocentric ones. This approach is literally and
figuratively groundbreaking for a seventeenth-century public archaeological site in
the United States.
I joined the Angela Site Project archaeological research team as the inaugu-
ral First Africans Research Fellow in May of 2018 to assist with excavations and
African American community engagement. As we began meeting with community
members and holding engagement meetings at Historic Jamestowne, the National
Park Service’s Colonial National Historical Park (COLO) and the Jamestown Redis-
covery Foundation (JRF) decided to advance engagment efforts beyond the usual

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NPS “stakeholder” model (building on previous critiques by Blakey 2001; Brady

2009; Castañeda 2008; Cook 2015; Handler 2008; La Salle 2010; McGill 2010;
Osei-Tutu 2002; Supernant and Warrick 2014), focusing on how archaeology can
be used as a vehicle to empower “descendant communities” of color while gaining
shared understandings of the role of Africans and African Americans in the colony.
This approach is unique because it focuses on the formation of African American
identity in the seventeenth century and links to the present-day, while also offer-
ing descendant community members the opportunity to reimagine futures of Black
transnational connections (Allen and Jobson 2016; Breunlin and Regis 2009; Gilroy
1993; Harrison 2016; Thomas 2018; Tillet 2009; Youngquist 2005).
The winter before I joined the First Africans archaeological research team at
Historic Jamestowne, Montpelier hosted the inaugural National Summit on Teach-
ing Slavery workshop. The workshop gathered a group of educators, curators, schol-
ars, activists, museum and historic site practitioners, and descendants to come up
with guidelines and practices for teaching slavery in a more engaging and inclusive
manner. Recently, James Madison’s Montpelier and the National Trust for Historic
Preservation African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund published Engaging
Descendant Communities in the Interpretation of Slavery at Museums and Historic
Sites: A Rubric of Best Practices Established by the National Summit on Teaching
Slavery (or the Rubric), which sets standards for community-collaborative engage-
ment. The standard stresses the importance of incorporating “the stories and experi-
ences of enslaved people through the voices of their descendants” by evaluating the
effectiveness of engagment practices on a scale 0–4 (James Madison’s Montpelier
2018:1). The scale rates institutions across three categories and related subcatego-
ries, including: multi-disciplinary research, relationship building with descendant
communities, and interpretation. The ultimate goal is for institutions to “consider
descendants not as a supplemental part of operations or programmatic offerings,
but as essential knowledge-keepers, experts, and advocates” (James Madison’s
Montpelier 2018:8). This rubric will be essential for heritage sites such as Historic
Jamestowne that set forth to engage and empower African American descendant
communities.
Archaeologists are able to engage diverse communities and individuals about the
meaning, value, and interpretation of “hard histories” around enslavement and nar-
ratives of resistance and resilience. Some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century era
heritage sites have heeded the call for more inclusive and antiracist representations
of the historic past. Several heritage sites are explicitly expressing values of inclu-
sion and antiracism by sharing power and authority with descendant communi-
ties, including the New York African Burial Ground in New York City, Montpel-
ier and Monticello in Virginia, Somerset Place and Stagville in North Carolina, and
Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. By incorporating “the stories and experiences of
enslaved people through the voices of their descendants” (James Madison’s Mont-
pelier 2018:1), these sites have been able to transform white public heritage spaces
into more inclusive sites that reflect American history in a spirit of restorative jus-
tice and shared understanding. Engaging descendants of enslaved communities is an
essential part of this process (La Roche and Blakey 1997). According to the Rubric,
“descendant community” is a group of people whose ancestors were enslaved at a

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particular heritage site, although this limited definition can be expanded to include
various other groups.
Currently, "descendant community" is defined at the Angela Site as all African
Americans with known ancestral ties to Tidewater Virginia (for example, through
oral history traditions) and symbolically through attachment to the research. When
working with African American communities, ethical questions addressing power
relations associated with structural racism and other colonial legacies of inequality
that still disproportionately affect communities of color must be considered (Battle-
Baptiste 2011; Franklin 2001; Grosfoguel et al. 2015; Horning 2016; La Roche and
Blakey 1997; SAA 2017). As Historic Jamestowne has not always been an inclusive
space for people of color, the 2019 commemoration was an opportunity to reflect on
these exclusionary legacies.

Creating Historic Jamestowne and A National Myth

Today, Jamestown is primarily a heritage tourist site and educational center (Fig. 3).
Located on the banks of the lower James River, Jamestown Island is a 1,561-
ac (632 ha) landform located in James City County, Virginia (Gould et al. 1993).
Many visitors are surprised to learn that the landform that makes up Jamestown has
been an island only since the twentieth century after the remaining isthmus con-
necting Jamestown to Glasshouse Point eroded away. Three organizations interpret
the island’s history: Preservation Virginia (PV; formerly APVA) which was founded
in 1889 by Mary Jeffery Galt and Cynthia Coleman; the National Park Service’s

Fig. 3  Map of Jamestown Island showing the locations of Jamestown Settlement living history museum,
Preservation Virginia’s museum and 1607 fort archaeology site, and NPS’s visitor center and archaeolog-
ical remains of the colonial town including the Angela Site (Esri ArcGIS Map produced by the author)

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Colonial National Historical Park (NPS) which purchased the remaining 1,500
ac (607 ha) of the island in 1934; and Jamestown Settlement, located 1.25 mi (2
km) away from Historic Jamestowne, formed in 1957 and operated by the James-
town-Yorktown Foundation and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Jamestown Island
became known as Historic Jamestowne shortly before the 4­ 00th anniversary in 2007,
and is jointly managed by NPS and PV. Each of these institutions played important
roles in the construction of Jamestown’s popular historical narrative.

Commemorating Jamestown and Virginia’s Lost Cause Narrative

Over three million people visited Jamestown and Yorktown in 2019 (NPS 2020),
but interest in Jamestown’s recent past traces back centuries. Beginning in at least
1707, Virginians began making pilgrimages to Jamestown to commemorate the
1607 colony (Horning 2006). The size of the crowds flocking to Jamestown to com-
memorate the colony would continue to grow during the nineteenth century (King
2001). These events could get quite rowdy at times. For example, during one cel-
ebration in May 1822, an overzealous crowd swarmed the island and “burnt down
one of two large brick houses on the island and broke the tombstones into fragments
and scattered them over the face of the earth so that the whole island exhibited one
wide spread field of desolation” (Ambler 1826; Horning 2006:5). Accounts of these
events note that virtually all those who participated “were male, and all but one was
white” (Horning 2006:5; King 2001:1). James Lindgren (1993) argues that these
nineteenth-century events aimed to reassert Virginia’s role in the founding of Eng-
lish-speaking America, serving as something of a counterweight to Plymouth where
New Englanders celebrated with annual festivals. In 1859, Edward Everett called
for the preservation of the decaying colony, invoking proto-American narratives of
Jamestown “where the germs of the mighty republic, now almost coextensive with
the continent, were planted in 1607” (Lindgren 1993:92). Pilgrimages to the site
continued to increase after the Civil War and steamboats began running daily from
Richmond and Norfolk to the historic site (Horning 2006).
Ownership of the island was also an issue that underscored the need to affirm
Jamestown’s – and the South’s – key role in the founding of America. When a New
Yorker purchased the island for $9,000 at an auction in 1879, the extreme state of
decay of the seventeenth-century church tower ruins and associated burial ground
became a rallying cry for a group of Virginian white women seeking to preserve
the “hallowed grounds” from “the depredations of that modern vandal, the Relic
Hunter” (Lindgren 1993:92). It was under this perceived threat of northern aggres-
sion against southern antiquities that the APVA began fundraising to purchase the
land around the church ruins in 1889. In 1892, Edward E. Barney, an industrial-
ist from Ohio, purchased Jamestown and planned a residential development of the
area. Barney refused to sell the church property to APVA. Instead, he promised to
preserve the remains of the seventeenth-century church tower and build a seawall.
Unconvinced, Galt and Coleman persuaded the General Assembly to give them the
power to seize the land. It was under this threat that Barney decided to donate 22.5
ac (9 ha) (including the 1647 church ruins, graveyard, a colonial magazine, and the

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Civil-War-era Fort Pocahontas) to APVA in March 1893 (Horning 2006; Lindgren

1993). Soon after, APVA member Elizabeth Henry Lyons declared that the associa-
tion would preserve the site as “the Mecca of all true worshippers of a free govern-
ment” (Lindgren 1993:97).
The APVA set to work stabilizing the ruins, investigating archaeological sites,
and abating river erosion at Jamestown in anticipation of the ­300th anniversary.
Although the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition was held in Norfolk, the APVA
received $50,000 in federal funding and an increase in visitation in association with
the celebration. Mary Galt directed much of this work alongside Lucy Parke Cham-
berlayne Bagby. A descendant of the prominent Byrd family, Bagby referred to her-
self as “eternally a Confederate” and would chair the APVA’s Jamestown committee
for 20 years (Lindgren 1993:111). Bagby was outspoken and persistent. With Galt,
she ushered in what Lindgren (1993) describes as prevailing nineteenth-century
racialized viewpoints of traditionalism with the use of cultural symbols and selective
cultural memory. Traditionalism opposed social pluralism, venerated social posi-
tion by birth rather than achievement, stressed individual responsibility over envi-
ronmental determinism, and emphasized historical idealism over historical realism.
Another main focus of the APVA was to dispel the "lies" that northern textbooks
had promoted about the Pilgrims being the “first” Americans. An important goal
was to reassert not only that Jamestown was the first permanent English colony, but,
as the president of the APVA stated in 1896, that “America was rescued from the
grasp of Spain and France, and reserved to become the home of the Anglo-Saxon
race" (Lindgren 1993:95).
From the traditionalist perspective, Jamestown and the United States belonged
to Anglo-Protestants and certainly not to people of African descent. Any cultural
memory of the First Africans or other founding African peoples was actively dimin-
ished and erased from the symbolic and physical landscape of Jamestown. Further-
more, Jamestown’s official guidelines reflected Virginia’s Jim Crow policies, stat-
ing that “negro excursions or picnic parties are not admitted” (Lindgren 1993:109).
Similarly, the APVA homogenized, trivialized, and even tried to claim the Virginia
Indian past as their own, dismissing contemporary Virginian Indians’ ancestral ties
to the margins on land stolen from them three hundred years earlier (see Gallivan
et al. 2011; Hantman 2008 for a more thorough discussion of how Virginia Indian
communities contested and continue to contest these narratives).
This racist treatment led some African Americans to refuse to participate in the
Jamestown Exposition, but others, including Giles B. Jackson, W. Isaac Johnson,
and Reverend A. Binga, Jr. took a different approach. They continued to challenge
directly their exclusion and the erasure of their ancestors from the landscape. In an
"Address to the American Negro," the group made the case that as a consequence
of "the uncertain and unsatisfactory conditions now existing as to the Negro in this
country…a creditable exhibit of his industrial capacities would result in untold
good to the entire race" (Yarsinske 1999:32). The group’s efforts were successful
and Congress appropriated $100,000 for a Negro Building at the Jamestown Expo-
sition in Norfolk for the creation of an exhibit hall honoring African American
industry, history, and culture. The Virginia legislature refused to support it and Jim
Crow laws allowed exposition officials to separate African American materials from

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34 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

the white ones. Jackson, who was formerly enslaved and in 1887 became the first
African American attorney certified to argue before the Virginia Supreme Court of
Appeals, led building and organizing efforts (Lee 2014). Designed by a Black archi-
tect and constructed by Black artisans and laborers, the Negro Building was filled
with the products of Black virtuosity and technical skill such as African American
life dioramas by sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, which included a depiction of
the forced arrival of Africans in 1619 (Fitzhugh Brundage 2003). Unfortunately,
these dioramas were destroyed when Fuller’s Philadelphia warehouse burned down
in 1910. Throughout the fair the building received "unstinting commendation" from
both Black and white visitors, some of whom considered its exhibits among the
"most instructive features" of the entire exposition (Lee 2014; Yarsinske 1999:174).
Despite being relegated to the periphery of the fairgrounds, the Negro Building drew
in over 750,000 visitors (Lee 2014; Lindgren 1993; Yarsinske 1999).
Following the exposition, in 1916, J. M. Gandy, president of the Virginia Normal
and Industrial Institute in Petersburg, requested permission from the APVA to erect
a monument to the First Africans at Jamestown. The APVA responded with a rejec-
tion, stating:
Jamestown was the first permanent Colony of the English speaking people
in this Country…and the incident of bringing the negros by the Dutch ship
to Jamestown forms no such part in the life of the Colony as will justify our
granting permission to erect a memorial to that event (Lindgren 1993:110,
“Report of the Jamestown Committee,” YB 1931:23; Meeting, 6 Nov 1916,
MB).
By interpreting Jamestown in this way, early preservationists obtained national
recognition to force "an acceptance of the propriety, validity, and effectiveness of
the Old South civilization. The past became a prologue to the present" (Lindgren
1993: 245). The APVA actively transformed Jamestown in order to link the colonial
past to the Lost Cause by selectively presenting past (and even fictional) events, tra-
ditionalizing celebrations, placing commemorative plaques to solidify the intended
interpretation, and beautifying the landscape and architecture. By denying Gandy’s
request the APVA promoted the erasure of the role of colonial Africans in the found-
ing of America. Thomas Nelson Page, a frequent advisor, orator, and interpreter of
history for the APVA, claimed that slavery “was brought upon the South without its
fault, and continued to be forced upon her against her protests” (Lindgren 1993:110).
Joseph Bryan, a Confederate veteran and APVA advisor, argued that slavery was a
Northern creation and found “great gratification … to know that careful investiga-
tion has failed to show that any Virginian was ever engaged in the African slave
trade” (Lindgren 1993:110). The blatant disregard or denial of Jamestown’s role in
the subjugation, dehumanization, and dependency on forced labor fostered contin-
ued structural violence against Native Americans and people of African descent.
These formulas of erasure and banalization (Trouillot 2015), were a continuation of
the scientific racist ideals that began at Jamestown in the seventeenth century, which
continued to be transformed and only became more rigid after Reconstruction.
Some African Americans regularly inhabited Jamestown even as it transformed
into a white public space. For example, although the APVA embraced Jim Crow

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 35

laws to ensure Jamestown’s continued role as a shrine to white America, it employed

African American custodians who ironically often acted as interpreters. Moreover,
these African American men were responsible for giving the APVA-approved tours
of the island to the scores of visitors who made pilgrimages to the site each year.
Sam Robinson was hired by the APVA in 1934 and famously told “The Mother-
in-Law” legend to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip when they visited the 3­ 50th
commemorative events in 1957. According to this legend, the roots of a Sycamore
tree that pushed apart the graves of husband Rev. James Blair (the first president of
the College of William and Mary) and wife Sarah Harrison, moving her grave closer
to her family’s plot, was an act beyond the grave of her mother who never approved
of the marriage. (An audio recording of one of Robinson’s 1957 tours has been pre-
served on YouTube; see: Archive Williamsburg 2016.)
Erosion concerns led to the construction of the seawall by the US Army Corps
of Engineers, which included African American laborers from South Carolina. Galt
grew concerned about the location of the labor camp at her sacred site, complaining
about “the unsightly tents of the colored people so very near [the ruins] – the scene
cannot be very attractive” (Lindgren 1993:119). Bagby worried that the laborers
would disturb visitors and requested that police be on site “to keep order & ensure
protection” (Lindgren 1993:119).
In 1930, Jamestown was authorized by Congress as a Colonial National Monu-
ment. The National Park Service purchased the remaining 1,500 ac (607 ha) and
founded Colonial National Historical Park. The National Park Service partnered
with the APVA to preserve and manage the island’s historical resources for the pub-
lic in an educational manner. Jamestown remained racially segregated, but African
Americans continued to fight their unequal access. For example, after being refused
admittance with some friends, Richmond clergyman W. L. Ransome wrote The Rich-
mond News Leader to express feelings of “pain to know that Negroes are counted
unworthy and unfit to stand on the soil to which their fathers were brought in 1619”
(Smith 2002). In response, the APVA began allowing African Americans admission
twice a year through the Hampton Institute. Presumably, the presence of the federal
government also allowed for more access to the site for African American visitors as
national legislation and rulings outlawed Jim Crow policies. Although it must also
be noted that NPS continued to perpetuate the APVA’s racialized historical narra-
tives of Jamestown’s past into the mid-twentieth century.
In 1957, a commision was founded to build Jamestown Festival Park in cel-
ebration of the 3­ 50th anniversary of the 1607 landing. In anticipation of the event,
archaeologists John Cotter and H. Summerfield Day directed successive teams of
African American Civilian Conservation Corps workers in the archaeological inves-
tigation and conservation of Jamestown. Much of the landscape familiar to visitors
today is the result of their expert excavation, conservation, and restorations. Nota-
bly, the detailed personal notes of foreman Empy Jones would help archaeologists
in the 1990s and 2010s reevaluate the diverse history of the island. This event was,
in economic terms, a success. Once again, tourism increased and a new generation
of visitors was exposed to the traditionalist narrative of Virginia’s leading role in the
founding and social development of the United States first promoted by the APVA.
The 1957 commemoration melodramatically played up the role of the English

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36 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

colonists and included a speculative reconstruction of the 1607 fort, wattle-and-daub

buildings, and replica versions of the three English ships that made the first journey
to the Chesapeake (Grasso and Wulf 2008).
The Festival Commission alloted a large portion of its resources to publishing
educational booklets and microfilming important English documents (Yarsinske
1999). On Jamestown Island, a new Visitor Center was built, interpretive signage
was placed throughout the town site and island, and artist Sydney King was commis-
sioned to paint colonial scenes based on 1930s-50s architectural and archaeological
interpretations (Horning 2006). This more scholarly approach to the telling of the
Jamestown story still focused primarly on Anglo-Protestant influences on the found-
ing of America. However, the Jamestown story broadened beyond adventure tales of
famous colonists like John Smith to include the lifeways of the colonial port town,
the roles of European women, and a more accurate portrayal of the role of Virginia
Indians in the establishment of the English colony. Nonetheless, the experiences of
African Americans and the origins of slavery and its central role in the develop-
ment of the colony received virtually no attention (Yarsinske 1999). This interpre-
tation helped solidify the public’s understanding of the American or, as Horning
(2006) notes, “proto-American,” aspect of the site. African Americans, in the minds
of many white southerners, were not part of the American story. For instance, the
official commission report attributed the “success” of the colony solely to the Eng-
lish colonists, stating:
The colonists brought with them the law, language, and religion of England.
They convened in 1619 the first representative assembly in the New World.
One hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, they resisted the
British governor when he abused his authority and failed to provide adequate
protection for the growing frontier population. At Jamestown, European agri-
culture and rudimentary industry were implanted in the area of what were to
become the 13 original States (The Jamestown-Williamsburg-Yorktown Cel-
ebration Commission 1958: 2).
There is not a single mention of the contributions and roles of Africans or Afri-
can Americans in the colony in any of the official sesquarcentennial booklets or
reports. The memories of two African American women I met with who visited
the 1957 celebrations as children corroborate this attempted erasure of an early
African presence at Jamestown. They remember the thrill of visiting the Virginia
Indian village reconstruction, but neither has any memory of the arrival or the role
of Africans being acknowledged or represented. To these two women (and others,
as discussed below), Jamestown represented and persists as a white space. Histori-
ans point to the social, cultural, and political upheaval of this period as the reason
for Park officials’ narrow focus on Anglo-Protestant accomplishment at this time
(McLennan 2012). The country was still in the midst of legal segregation and Black
activists and their allies were beginning to win human rights victories in the Fed-
eral courts. Most famously, the 1954 United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the
case of Brown v. Board of Education rendered segregation in public schools illegal.
However, in 1956, Virginia in reaction to this ruling adopted the policy of “mas-
sive resistance” to block desegregation efforts. Certainly, these events influenced the

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 37

festival’s celebratory interpretation of colonial history at Jamestown. However, these

traditionalist interpretations continued a half-century practice of constructing a nar-
rative of Anglo-Protestant exceptionalism at the expense of a fuller, more accurate,
multiethnic history. This white supremacist version of the history of the founding of
English North America would influence many textbooks and popular writings, pro-
moting race-class hierarchial ideologies and the further erasue of people of African
descent in early America (Lindgren 1993). Thus, Anglo-Protestant elites were able
to use “archival power” (Trouillot 2015) to further influence what is and is not a
serious object of research, and, by extension, who was considered American.

Inscribing Whiteness on Jamestown’s Cultural Landscape

The monumental architecture of Jamestown continues to support the traditionalist

ideology first disseminated by the APVA. This includes statues dedicated to well-
known individuals like Pocahontas (dedicated in 1922) and Captain John Smith
(1909) and a shrine dedicated to Rev. Robert Hunt (1922), the colony’s first Angli-
can minister. Other memorials commemorate famous events (i.e., the Tercentennial
Monument unveiled in 1907) and symbolic places (i.e., the Wooden Cross dedicated
in 1957 to mark the location of the early burial grounds). Only one of these com-
memorative works, the Pocahontas statue, is dedicated to a non-English individual.
Yet, even this statue lacks the cultural sensitivity it deserves as the Virginia Indian
culture is misrepresented by clothing more indicative of a Plains Indian woman
(Fig. 4). Ultimately, this statue represents the appropriation of Pocahontas by west-
ern civilization and silences the complexities of Powhatan-English relations during
her lifetime (Horning 2006).
Additionally, the dedicational text on many of these monuments is extremely eth-
nocentric and seems to serve early twentieth-century white supremacist practices of
erasing Black and Native people from the historical record. For example, the text for
the Tercentennial Monument simply focuses on the English inhabitants that occu-
pied the fort and later colonial town (Fig. 5). This is striking because early James-
town was a diverse place with people living in the colony from numerous European
regions, Persia, West and Central Africa, and several different Virginia Indian tribal
nations. Further, even primary accounts from seventeenth-century colonists confirm
that the English colony would not have survived without the aid and labor of the
Powhatan Indians. Nor would the colony have thrived without the labor of Africans
and African Americans. As Horning (2006) has previously stated, the celebratory
landscape which transformed Jamestown from a southern to a national shrine is still
appealing to twenty-first-century visitors, but this landscape reveals more about
the Jamestown of the Jim Crow era than the Jamestown of the 1600s. Jamestown
became central to Virginia’s Anglo-American elites’ efforts to reassert their power
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By retaking not only political
control through Jim Crow laws, but also social control by using the past as a means
to assert white supremacy, elite governance, and social hierarchy, Southern elites
were also able to define what was and was not “American” by reconstructing James-
town as a national symbol (Horning 2006).

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38 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

Fig. 4  Left, Statue of Pocahontas by William Ordway Partridge was erected in 1922 at Jamestown (Pho-
tograph courtesy of Hfdapuirhdk via Wikimedia Commons). Right, A young gentle Woman Daughter of
Secota, ca. 1590 engraving by Theodore de Bry based on John White’s watercolors (Courtesy of Special
Collections Research Center, William & Mary Libraries). Both images are European depictions of south-
eastern Algonquin Indian women during the early period of European contact. These artistic renderings
and associated texts continue to influence perceptions of Native American peoples and the North Ameri-
can past

Fig. 5  The Tercentennial Monument dedicated at Historic Jamestowne in 1907 to mark the 3­ 00th anni-
versary of the founding of the Jamestown Colony. The monument multiple engravings only focus on the
English people roles in founding the colony while overlooking the important contributions of Virginia
Indians, captive Africans, and other European peoples in securing the permanency of the colony (Photo-
graphs by the author)

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 39

Contesting Jamestown’s “White” Past: 1990 to Present

Certainly, the founding of Jamestown as the first permanent English colony is an

important history that should continue to be preserved and studied. Still, misconcep-
tions of an isolated colony inhabited only by Anglo-Protestant people must be chal-
lenged and addressed. An aim of recent rehistoricization efforts at Jamestown has
been to gain a better understanding of interethnic relationships. Over the last three
decades archaeologists, historians, and Native American and African Diasporic
scholars have worked to recontextualize the cultural landscape of Jamestown
Island (Brown and Horning 2004; Horn 2018; Horning 1995; Horning et al. 1998;
Kelso et al. 1995; Kelso and Straube 2004; McCartney and Walsh 2003). During
the lead up to the quadricentennial celebrations at Jamestown, two projects led to
more nuanced understanding of the island’s multiethnic seventeenth-century settle-
ment. The Jamestown Archaeological Assessment (JAA), led by Cary Carson, Mar-
ley Brown, III, and Audrey Horning from 1992 to 1996, conducted a reassessment
of human history and activity on the island as a whole (Brown and Horning 2004;
Horning 1995, 2007). This reanalysis led to better understanding of the long history
of Virginia’s First People on the island, the colonial town site, the historic landhold-
ings, reassessment of earlier excavations, and burial reassessments. It also led to a
better understanding of the roles that enslaved, indentured, and free Africans and
African Americans played in founding this nation. Another important contribution
of the JAA project was supporting and utilizing the research skills of graduate and
postgraduate African American students in the archival and archaeological research
program, including Maria Franklin and Anna Agbe-Davies. In fact, Agbe-Davies’
dissertation (and later book) included a large sample of pipes from Jamestown
(Agbe-Davies 2004, 2015; Brown and Horning 2004). Although the JAA project
made giant strides toward better understanding the interethnic community of early
Jamestown, questions still remain about the lives and influences of people of Afri-
can descent. Accordingly, researchers recommended that further research into the
roles of enslaved, indentured, and free Africans and African Americans would con-
tribute to the overall understanding of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Virginia
(Brown and Horning 2004; Horning et al. 2001).
Similarly, beginning in 1994 Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation (JRF) con-
ducted open air excavations of Preservation Virginia’s parcel (formerly APVA)
(Kelso 1995, 2006; Kelso and Straube 2004). These excavations continued to focus
on the first decade of the colony, leading to the rediscovery of the 1607 fort and bet-
ter understandings of Powhatan-English relations (Kelso and Straube 2004). Addi-
tionally, Jamestown Settlement (formerly Jamestown Festival Park) unveiled their
“Three Cultures, One Century, America’s Story” permanent exhibit in 2007, contex-
tualizing the historical and cultural milieu of Native Americans, Africans, and Euro-
peans (Grasso and Wulf 2008). The “From Africa to Virginia” section contributed
to previously overlooked influences of the Central African orgins of early seven-
teenth-century enslaved Africans and included videos, text, and seventeenth-century
objects excavated or recovered from present-day Angola.
However, although the archaeological research led to better interpretation of the
diverse group of actors that lived, labored, and died in the early colony, the 4­ 00th

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40 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

commemoration of Jamestown once again focused on the master narrative of James-

town as “America’s Birthplace” (Gallivan et al. 2011; Grasso and Wulf 2008; Horn-
ing 2006). For instance, when President George W. Bush visited Jamestown during
the 2007 commemoration, instead of framing the event as a time for reflection as
some Native American and African American groups encouraged, he saw it as a
time to “celebrate,” stating “Yet they are more than just American values and British
values, or Western values. They are universal values that come from a power greater
than any man or any country. These values took root at Jamestown four centuries
ago” (Bush 2007). Addresses like this and Trump’s 2019 address ignore the history
of violence, enslavement, and warfare that took place at Jamestown, and may con-
tribute to feelings of estrangement from this version of history and heritage sites by
marginalized groups (Gallivan et al. 2011; Grasso and Wulf 2008).
Despite the strides that have been made over the last three decades, misunder-
standings of Jamestown’s historical past still persist in public memory. Only one
of the six interviewees remembers attending the 2007 commemoration. Having
grown up only a few miles from Jamestown, she had no memory of being taught
about the First Africans in school and believes she first heard of Africans living in
colonial Jamestown during one of the 2007 commemorative events. History exists
only in relation to the present, thus individual and collective memory are shaped by
the politics and power relations of the present (Trouillot 2015). As Quentin Lewis
(2015:279) notes, “Disjunctures between historical events and the narratives that
describe those events reveal underlying power relations and inequality” such that
revisions to historical narratives must also take into account various retelling of
those events across time and space. Failure to challenge these narratives only reaf-
firms Jamestown as white public heritage space.

Outsiders Within

In order to explore questions about inclusion and exclusion at Jamestown, I began

meeting with African American community collaborators beginning in the sum-
mer of 2018 who shared their stories, insights, and recommendations for respect-
ful remembrance of African and African American culture and history. In early
2019 I conducted a pilot study with six African American women who live locally
in southeastern Virginia and/or self-identify as descendants of First Africans. The
interviews were semi-structured, allowing the women to decide what they wished
to highlight and what they did not want to discuss. Therefore, the knowledge pro-
duction at work is collaborative, shaped by the desires and ideas of the interviewees
and interviewer, but also accounting for the social and cultural context (Valkonen
and Wallenius-Korkalo 2016). The interviewees were selected through informal
conversations with local community members identified through Angela Site com-
munity meetings and various African Diasporic-related history, culture, and social
justice events.
This project presented me with unique opportunites and challenges given my role
as researcher and my social postion as an African American woman who descends
from a family of early eighteenth-century free people of color in Tidewater Virginia.

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 41

I share a similar cultural background with the women I interviewed. The shared con-
nection helped create a safe and confidential space in which creating knowledge
from inside the African American community became possible. One interviewee
described the importance of including African American voices in the interpretation
of First Africans at Jamestown:
I think it matters a lot. And I think it’s the African Americans who should be
talking about their own history because the other folks on the outside looking
in don’t really know what happened. We know what happened. We know how
we feel. And some of them looking on don’t really see what they need to see.
They might see what they want to see, but they don’t really see what really is
to write anything. It needs to be people who are African American. The other
folks who write books, they may have some of it right, but not all the time
right. (Descendant “P”, pers. comm., 2019).
At the same time, generational and other differences in our backgrounds allowed
for rich exchanges and discussion of ideas from varied perspectives. Additionally,
my privileged position as a researcher attached to both a university and a federal
government agency allowed me a forum to amplify the voices of local African
Americans who feel like their and their ancestors’ narratives have been purposefully
left out of historical and anthropological knowledge productions. However, these
differences and my role as researcher may also affect the disscussed topics and the
information that was revealed.
The interviewees are in a unique position of knowledge having grown up around
or living near symbols of national heritage that have, in many cases, trivialized or
erased the narratives of them and their ancestors. Furthermore, these interviews
offer an opportunity for community collaborators to inform researchers about the
specific questions they have about the local past and particular research topics they
would like to be explored.

“It’s Not About Us”

Despite these more inclusive methods and interpretations recently developed at the
Historic Jamestowne heritage site, many African Americans still consider James-
town a space packaged for and consumed exclusively by whites. As previously
stated, one African American woman told me, “Why would we want to go to James-
town? It’s not about us” (Descendant “S”, pers. comm., 2019). Collective memo-
ries among local Black communities dating back to the Jim Crow era still influence
perceptions of who is welcomed at Jamestown and whose heritage is actually rep-
resented. During Jim Crow, African Americans were not simply excluded figura-
tively from the Jamestown site narrative, but were physically barred from the site as
well. During oral biographical interviews with descendants, the long-term effects of
white public heritage space and the transformative power of the First Africans story
became clear.
Historically, “First Africans” refers to the “28 or 32” Africans that arrived in
Jamestown in August of 1619, who were captured the previous year during the

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42 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

Portuguese wars in the regions surrounding and within modern-day Angola (Hey-
wood and Thornton 2007; Horn 2018; Thornton 1998), of whom, as mentioned
earlier, Angela was one. To the women I interviewed, First Africans represent the
foremothers and forefathers of African American culture and recovering their sto-
ries and heritage may be the key to unlocking the origins of anti-Black racism in
America.
The personal histories shared by the six women range in time from the legal seg-
regation era to the present day. The act of enunciating this history and producing this
material is part of the decolonizing process as the women’s stories form a counter-
narrative to the hegemonic white public space narratives and exemplify the value
of an oral biographical approach (Valkonen and Wallenius-Korkalo 2016). Addi-
tionally, these narratives can be regarded as retrospectives on the effects of civic
estrangement and assessments on how white public heritage space (especially in the
education system) has impacted them.
According to the women I interviewed, many local African Americans see
Jamestown as a middle and upper middle class “white people’s” heritage site. Most
recalled past visits where they felt they were treated like they did not belong. One
interviewee spoke of the long cultural memory of local African American com-
munities and when asked why many of these communities may not engage at sites
like Historic Jamestowne, stated that it was likely that “somebody said something
inappropriate or awkward” when they were on a tour, “so why keep setting yourself
up for that?” (Descendant “L”, pers. comm., 2019). Another interviewee laughed at
the idea that the site welcomed Black people (Descendant “A”, pers. comm., 2019).
While many did not express a negative feeling toward the site, they noted its insig-
nificance to them, their families, and communities. When asked whether she and her
family visited Jamestown while she was growing up, one woman who grew up 5 mi
(8 km) away from Jamestown responded, “We knew Jamestown was down [the road]
there, but we didn’t go there. It was not something that was thrown out there as ‘you
need to go there’ or ‘you need to find out about it.’ We just knew it was there and
that was it” (Descendant “S”, pers. comm., 2019).
While the opinions of the women were shaped by past experiences at Historic
Jamestowne, school textbooks, popular writings, and media representations also
influenced their responses. In particular, these opinions were formed early for the
four women who grew up in the area through school field trips or family visits
during or immediately after the Jim Crow era. One woman, remembering visiting
Jamestown in the early 1960s during a fourth-grade field trip, recollected:
Why would we want to go to Jamestown? It’s not about us, so people just
didn’t try to go to Jamestown, except for if you were taken there for your
school trip because fourth grade was the year that everyone got to go to James-
town […] There was nothing mentioned about any Blacks living at Jamestown
[…] Nobody knew anything. Nobody talked about it. It wasn’t talked about. It
wasn’t brought up. (Descendant “S”, pers. comm., 2019).
Five of the six women I interviewed did not remember hearing any conversations
about black people or recall historic interpretations of “Black people being there”
when they visited the Park prior to the existence of the Angela Site. In fact, the only

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 43

woman who did not view Jamestown with a sense of detachment had not been to the
Park until 2018 when she specifically visited for Angela site-related activities.
My questions about the Jamestowne heritage site in particular elicited broader
histories of racial violence in the area. One informant recalled witnessing a Klan
rally in the early 1970s when driving down what she believes was the Colonial Park-
way. While with her family, she recalls seeing a Ku Klux Klan rally in a clearing that
took place under the guard of state troopers with shotguns. She recalled that “What I
remember is that they were just kind of standing around and I remember this vision
of them, and I remember my mom saying ‘[Father’s name], we gotta get out of here’
and he didn’t question that… I remember that very clearly.” (Descendant “L”, pers.
comm., 2019). Although she could not recall exactly where this event took place in
the Williamsburg/Jamestown area, it was a vivid memory that she attached to feel-
ings toward visiting the area as a child. These experiences with racist and exclusion-
ary symbols both at the heritage site and nearby are likely shared across local Afri-
can American communities and become part of the cultural memory of Jamestown
for some.
For others, the “unwelcoming” feeling is linked to the impression that Jamestown
chooses to set itself apart from the rest of the Hampton Roads community. Some of
the women mentioned that public events at Historic Jamestowne were not broad-
casted to local Hampton Roads communities – especially African American groups.
Their exclusion from the advertising efforts of events further solidifies their sense
that Historic Jamestowne is more of a site for middle class, white tourists than for
local African American families. However, the incorporation of diverse narratives
like the story of Angela and the First Africans at Historic Jamestowne is creating
new spaces for archaeologists and community members to explore together. As a
result of the Angela narrative, some community members are reconsidering their
impressions of whose heritage is represented at Jamestown.
The Angela Site is opening up space for Historic Jamestowne and local com-
munity members to reflect on the history and influences of Africans and African
Americans in Tidewater Virginia (Figs. 6 and 7). Building upon the research and
interpretations of the 1990s JAA project, archaeologists and public historians are
publicizing the history of seventeenth-century captive Africans, later enslaved popu-
lations, and the 1930s and 1950s CCC archaeologists in myriad ways. The “First
Africans” walking tour by JRF public historian Mark Summers focuses on African
and African American life and culture at Jamestown. The archaeological site serves
as an outdoor museum, archaeologists interact with visitors and keep them informed
about the most recent research on Angela and the First Africans narrative. They
explain the process of archaeology to visitors and allow hands-on opportunities with
some artifacts. These interactions give visitors a tangible connection to the past,
and many express feelings of great empathy and emotion when they realize they are
standing where Angela once lived and worked (Levin 2011; Morris 2017).
This connection has been important to many of the women I spoke with who have
visited Jamestown since the start of the Angela project. All of the women I inter-
viewed also expressed interest in learning more about the First Africans and par-
ticipating in future engagement opportunities at the site. One woman I interviewed

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44 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

Fig. 6  A break-out session during one of the Angela Site community events in 2019 at the Historic
Jamestowne Visitor Center. Community members led conversations with each other and researchers and
gave feedback on questions and themes they wanted the Angela Site research team to focus on (Photo-
graph courtesy of Carolyn Black)

began probing her past attitude toward Historic Jamestowne and what has been writ-
ten about early American history, stating:
That’s when I go back to that history book thought process. Has this been
edited? Is this the true story? Or is this just the “white wash” of it? How many
times have I heard this story before? Is it anything new I’m learning? So, I
really am going to be honest and transparent – I come in with this bias. I come
in with a very strong bias. I remember a family visited us in Williamsburg and
we were like “What do we want to do?” and they were like “I am not going
to Colonial Williamsburg because I don’t want to see any more ‘slave stuff.’”

Fig. 7  Descendant community members visiting the Angela Site after a community meeting in 2019
(Photographs taken by the author)

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International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 45

So it’s just like this bias of what to expect and it wasn’t until this Angela Pro-
ject – I’m like “Maybe I should open my eyes?” And the [events around] 1619
that’s going on [made me think] maybe I should start shedding these biases.”
(Descendant “A”, pers. comm., 2019).
As examined above, these “biases” are informed by how African and African
American history has been taught and interpreted traditionally at white public her-
itage sites. The Angela Site offers space to contest white public heritage space by
essentially becoming an outdoor forum for visitors. Offering a space for open dia-
logue to confront these misrepresentations will be critical in order to topple white
public heritage narratives. Similarly, Historic Jamestowne archaeologists and edu-
cation staff are offering opportunities for classrooms to bring students to the site to
learn about the science of archaeology, to engage hands-on with history, and to think
critically about what artifacts may tell us about obscured realities of the colony. Pro-
ject archaeologists have also visited local Hampton Roads classrooms to talk to stu-
dents about the Angela Site and the diversity of early America. These classroom
interactions show students how the past informs the present, allowing students to
see that this history is not static and foreign, but that all have an active role in inter-
preting history and the legacies of the past. This is critical since all of the women I
talked to stated that they learned virtually nothing about the First Africans in Vir-
ginia while in K-12 classrooms. Consequently, one community member expressed
the importance of Angela and the First Africans story as part of the larger Afri-
can American narrative of oppression, resistance, and resilience, remarking that the
Angela Site has the potential to further others’ “understanding of what a group of
people have gone through if it’s told right” (Descendant “A”, pers. comm., 2019).
However, another woman expressed concerns about historians and archaeologists
reinterpreting the status of the First Africans from indentured to enslaved from the
beginning, asking, “if that indeed did happen – what governing bodies were instru-
mental in bringing that about? They were still human beings, why were they treated
differently because of the color of their skin? If that started back then, is that why
we still have it now? Is that related?” (Descendant “P”, pers. comm., 2019).
Work at the Angela Site counters the traditional view of colonial history by allow-
ing visitors, local community members, and descendants to ask questions and to
critically examine the origins of the complex and paradoxical relationship of Black
people to America. Through community events and one-on-one interviews, we
are also soliciting and incorporating important themes and questions from African
American descendant community members into the project. Empowering descend-
ant voices challenges the public to consider the points of view of the historically
marginalized. Beyond simply gaining historical information, archaeologists work-
ing respectfully with descendants can forge connections and transform concepts and
narratives of heritage sites. The Angela Site advances the praxis of decolonizing
anthropological approaches by shedding light on counter-histories of seventeenth-
century Virginia and creating spaces for descendant communities to produce and
share their own knowledges should they wish.

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46 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

Conclusion

The archaeology and history of the First Africans represents an important counter
to white public heritage space. In order to advance this research, scholars must
continue to involve descendant communities and share the power of knowledge
production. An oral biographical emphasis allows Jamestown (and other area
sites) to transform from a “top down” approach to allow for history to be told
“from within” the communities they affect most (Valkonen and Wallenius-Kork-
alo 2016). Further, this approach creates collaborative knowledge production
within the community where the site is located (Atalay 2012; James Madison’s
Montpelier 2018; LaRoche and Blakey 1997; SAA 2017). This study begins to
illustrate that we as archaeologists are not always effective at sharing the knowl-
edge we are creating with the communities in which our sites and research are
based. Twenty-two years after Maria Franklin (1997:39) argued that “it is a sad
irony that archaeology is perhaps the only discipline involved in the study of early
black lifeways which has yet to incorporate significant contributions from any
segment of black society,” this remains an unfortunate reality at many African
Diasporic archaeology sites. The discipline of archaeology and the heritage sites
many of us practice in are not timeless or static, nor are our positions within the
cultures and communities that we study. While Jamestown is uniquely regarded as
the “Birthplace of American Democracy,” we must recognize that each site that
we investigate is part of a larger community with living descendants. The Angela
Site is bringing archaeologists and the descendant community together to com-
plicate traditional narratives of American history by exploring questions about
how Black people were central to the founding of this country, and how they were
exploited to help create and maintain white supremacy (Berry and Gross 2020).
Descendant community voices should and must be included and taken seriously.
Although racist violence has been a reality of American society over the last
four centuries, recent anti-Black police and white vigilante violence against Black
Americans emphasize the lack of ethical education about the history and lasting
legacies of American chattel slavery, and the need for shared understandings (EJI
2017). Protests over racialized policing and Confederate/Lost Cause symbolism
have created a space and desire for more earnest and thorough explorations of
Americans’ shared histories across identity lines that intersect even as they divide
us. In this moment, archaeologists must more carefully examine who benefits
from our research and empower the communities our research impacts by seeking
their input.
The Angela Site project members, including myself, are committed to con-
tinuing the task of decolonizing history at Jamestowne. We have started an oral
history project to investigate the experiences of the 1930s and 1950s segregated
African American CCC field and lab technicians (Fig. 8). We will also continue
to present research at local venues and look forward to creating an affinity con-
sultation group with descendants and other interested people. Through the com-
munity engagement meetings, we will continue to create a space for research-
ers, community collaborators, and park managers to evolve Historic Jamestowne

13
International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52 47

Fig. 8  The author interviewing Mr. Purcell Bailey, of Surry County, a former CCC worker who mainly
worked at the Williamsburg CCC Camp in the late 1930s, but visited the Jamestown excavations regu-
larly. Mr. Bailey, who will be 102 years old in September, 2021, shared his memories about his CCC
service and the Jamestown excavation crew with Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation in 2018 and 2019
(Photograph courtesy of Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation)

beyond its role as white public heritage space by uncovering and exploring more
diverse and accurate narratives of our shared past.
By focusing on diverse stories that are so often sidelined, we are not necessar-
ily advocating for replacing narratives of English colonists like John Smith. Rather,
as one of the interviewees in the pilot study pointed out, we are enhancing them
(Descendant “H”, pers. comm., 2019). Jamestown’s importance as the first perma-
nent English settlement in North America should not be diminished. Instead, mis-
conceptions that were promoted at the heritage site during the early Jim Crow era
should continue to be challenged and contested by all who work and volunteer at the
site, as well as by those who visit it. At Jamestown, archaeologists began confront-
ing and complicating the story of English America’s first colony in the 1990s, but as
another commemorative event faded from the minds of the public much of the gains
were lost once again. It is the hope that an affinity group of descendant community
members will help hold Historic Jamestowne accountable and reshape the James-
town experience for future generations. But only time will tell if the current efforts
will help break the symbolic power of white public heritage space.

Acknowledgments This article is adapted from my master’s thesis, undertaken at the Department of
Anthropology at the College of William and Mary, on the intersection of race, memory, community, and
archaeology on Jamestown Island in southeast Virginia. I would like to express my sincerest thanks to
the community collaborators who shared their knowledge, questions, and memories with me. I am grate-
ful to my faculty advisor Joseph Jones for his guidance, encouragement, and thoughtfulness. I would
like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee members, Michael Blakey and Audrey Horning
for their enthusiasm, constructive criticisms, and feedback. I greatly appreciate the support and fund-
ing I received from Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, the National Park Service’s Colonial National
Historical Park, and William & Mary’s Office of Graduate Studies and Research to conduct research at
the Angela Site. A special thanks to Camille Westmont and Elizabeth Clay for inviting me to participate
in this thematic issue. I would like to thank Adela Amaral, Neil Norman, Ravynn Stringfield, Jennifer

13
48 International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2022) 26:22–52

Porter-Lupu, Tiffany Cain-Fryer, and Aja Lans for reviewing versions of this article and offering helpful
suggestions.

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