99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-60b- BackStory- Heyward Shepherd Memorial

Episode Date: September 10, 2012

I only recently started listening to BackStory with the American History Guys, but it’s already earned a top spot in my crowded weekly rotation. With great stories and lively discussion, the “History Guys” connect our history to the present day. … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Hello friends. We have just 10 days before season 3 starts. September 19th is the big day. The plan is a new episode every 9 days, and Sam is here keeping us all in task, and you're going to really enjoy the new shows we're working on. In the meantime, I literally have 10,000 tiny pocket sized notebooks at my house that have to package and ship along with a thousand D-shirts. This is all a result of a fantastic Kickstarter campaign, not complaining at all. It's great, but we're working day and night here at 99PI HQ.

So rather than reorder the feed with a repeat or make you wait another week and a half, I have a story from a radio show that I've only recently started listening to, but it's just great. It's called Backstory with the American History Guys. And it's just a highly enjoyable show and you don't even need to love history to enjoy it. You just need to be curious about the world around you and like stories about how it got that way, which I guess is the definition of history, but the point is I think you're

going to like it. Since 99% of visible is obsessed with the things we build and what these things say about us, usually in indirect or abstract ways, I'm drawn to monuments because these are things we build that from the moment of their inception, they're desperately trying to tell you a story to give a place or a moment in time, significance and meaning. But that meaning that's infused in the concrete and stone can be slanted, hurtful, bigoted, maybe misguided or even misunderstood. Anyway, this is a story about a monument that I couldn't get out of my head the first

time I heard it on the show backstory. One of the hosts of backstory, the 19th century century history guy Ed Ayers is going to take it from here. In the 1890s, the first decade of 20th century, the veterans in both the union and the Confederacy were dying off and their sons and daughters noticed that they better acknowledge their enormous sacrifices and began to kind of mania putting up monuments and towns and cities and villages all across the country. And even into the early 1930s people were still trying to nail down all the meanings of

this complicated Civil War by memorializing it. And one place with a memorialization of the Civil War was played out was at one of the places where the Civil War in some ways began. Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, where John Brown led his famous raid in 1859, a band of white and black abolitionists trying to inspire a slavery bellion. Today, there are two monuments there. One is a six-foot tall obelisk. It kind of looks like a miniature of Washington Monument. And that monument marks the original location of the old federal armory

that was so important in John Brown's raid. Today, across the street, maybe a hundred feet away, up against the side of a large brick building, is another memorial. And that one looks like a big tombstone, frankly, about the size of a refrigerator. It's a large granite and scribed monument. This is Todd Bolton. He works for the National Park Service at Harpers Ferry.

Two of our producers, Eric Menel and Nale Besson Stein, talked to him when they visited the town. And the monument he's describing was dedicated to 1931, in honor of the first person killed in John Brown's raid, a man by the name of Hayward Shepherd. There's no images on it, no bronze, it's text, and it's like what, six, four maybe? It's best how old you are.

That's in good shape. It really is. It's for a hunk of rock, yeah. Hunk of rock, it's in pretty good shape. The interesting thing about Hayward Shepherd isn't just that he was the first person killed by Brown and his raiders. It's that Hayward Shepard was African American, a free black man, a fact that has made this

memorial more than a little problematic over the years. Eric and Nell tell the story. Hayward Shepard worked as a porter for the B&O railroad in Harper's Ferry. He was on duty the night of October 19, 1859, the night of John Brown's raid. Aware of a commotion outside, Shepard took his lantern and walked down to the train. Brown and company were on their way into town. It was dark, and Shepard was in their path. Either Brown himself or one of his men shot Shepard, leaving him badly injured.

He died shortly after. Now, Heyward Shepard's name might have been forgotten, had it not been for the efforts of two groups. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the UDC and the SCV. They are run by the descendants of Confederate soldiers and their job is to preserve Confederate heritage, memorials, flags, archives, that kind of stuff. In 1931, the local chapters of the UDC and the SCV erected a memorial to Hayward Shepherd in Harper's Ferry. They placed it directly across the street from the John Brown obelisk.

In one long sentence, the memorial reads, this boulder is set up by the sons of Confederate veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy as a memorial to Hayward Shepherd exemplifying the character and faithfulness of thousands of Negroes who, under many temptations throughout the subsequent years of war, so conducted themselves that no stain was left upon a record, which is the peculiar heritage of the American people, and an everlasting tribute

to the best in both races. Okay, so to translate that from Monument Speak, we, the SCV and the UDC would like to honor Hayward Shepard and all the other black people in the South who were good and faithful to their white superiors, never rebelling against them or the status quo. The groups had a nickname for this monument. The Faithful Slave Memorial. The Faithful Slave was an idea Confederate heritage groups have been pushing for years. The logic was, since most slaves didn't rebele, they must have been happy.

And if they were happy, it's because their masters treated them well. Slaves were faithful because they knew slavery was better than any other situation available to them. Of course, Hayward Shepard wasn't a slave, so even if there were such a thing as a faithful slave, Shepard wouldn't have fit the bill. But that was no matter. The monument was built and dedicated with plenty of fanfare and plenty of controversy. W.E.B. Du Bois called the dedication a quote, pro-slavery celebration.

For 40 years, the monument stood undisturbed. During that time, the National Park Service acquired a bunch of the land and artifacts in Arpers' Ferry, including the Hayward Shepard Memorial and all the problems attached to it. Then, in the 1970s, the park service began restoring some of the old buildings in town. In order to keep the memorial from being damaged, they put it away in a maintenance yard or it stayed for five years. When they put it back in its original location, they made one notable change.

It was covered with a wooden box. This is Elliott Cummings, former commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in the nearby Maryland Division. Remember, the SCV is one of the two groups who originally funded the memorial, so needless to say, they were upset when they found out it had been covered. Todd Bolton, the park service employee, says he wasn't at the top level of memorial discussions, but he had a sense of why certain decisions were being made. My understanding was that there had been the park had had some threats of violence or

defacing of the monument. So it stayed in storage for some years. By in storage you mean covered or you were covered. There was a shell over it. So the wooden box was painted brown to make it blended in with the trash can covers. Again, Elliot Cummings. So it is concerned me that a legitimate monument at a National Park Service would be covered up in that manner. We kind of worked from there. In the early 90s, Cummings, the sons of Confederate veterans member, began a letter writing campaign to get the box removed. I wrote to Bruce Babitt, who at the time was Secretary of the Interior

on your Bill Clinton. I wrote to center of Bird, who was the senior center from West Virginia where Harper's phrase located. In 1995, enough political pressure mounted to force the park service to uncover the memorial. But they added a little something of their own. About 10 feet to the right of the memorial is a small interpretive plaque explaining who Hayward Jeepard was,

and what the 1931 controversy was all about. It also offers a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois. Quote, here John Brown aimed at human history a blow that woke a guilty nation, with him fought seven slaves and sons of slaves. The quote was on about John Brown, but mentions neither Hayward Shepard nor the idea of the faithful slave. This is Jim Tolbert, former president of the West Virginia and WACP. He said that he and other members of the NAACP are upset that the plaque doesn't adequately debunk

the faithful slave narrative, or as he puts it. That is clearly a lie. And I'll just keep on calling it a lie. It's a lie. And while the NAACP thought the plaque said too little, the sons of Confederate veterans were unhappy. It was there at all. We're not happy that they felt the need to put an interpretive plaque next to it.

We feel that the Starko monument stands on their own. That is our job. Our job is not to tell you to come here, and this is what we want you to think about this particular part of history. We don't do that. Our job is to present the history, to show balanced perspectives and allow you as an individual to based on that unbiased information, to walk away with your own with your own conclusions. Today, the NAACP is still pretty upset about the whole situation but there's only so much they can do

the Confederate heritage groups would get rid of the plaque in a heartbeat but they've more or less moved on the park service maintains that the memorial is an historical artifact entrusted to the US government and will continue to maintain it as such. The Hayward Shepherd Memorial may have just been a monument to a particular vision of this south, but it does point to something else. Over the past 150 years, there has been little effort to memorialize slavery in a way that reflects the true scale of the experience and its reverberations. What's clear is that slavery can't be stored in a maintenance yard or covered up with a plywood box. And one has to wonder if there will ever be an interpretive plaque big enough to make sense of it all.

Eric Mittle and Nail Besson Stein are producers for backstory. For pictures of the Haywood Shepherd Memorial and more about its origins, visit backstoryradio.org. That's a story from the Monuments episode of backstory with the American History Guys. I'll have a link on our website to their show and you should subscribe because you're really going to like it. 99% invisible is me Roman Mars and Sam Greenspan. We are a project of KAA, HLW, 91.7, the local public radio in San Francisco, and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. I tweet at Roman Mars.

And if you live in the Bay Area and enjoy pizza and repetitive tasks, they have no real need to get paid. Well, then maybe you should get in touch. RomanatPRX.org. Radio Tapio from PRX.