Historic sites hold many different stories of the past, and it has become apparent in recent years that many stories being told at historic sites are not relevant, diverse, or engaging to contemporary visitors. Interpretation at historic sites is an endeavor historically spearheaded by interpretation coordinators and curators, who are academically trained to develop the stories that are shared. Employee and volunteer docents are often the people actually conducting tours and interpreting the sites to visitors - the boots on the ground who best understand audiences’ engagement, interests, and unanswered questions. However, docents often have little input in the creation of the tours they give. What if docents had a more active role in tour creation at historic sites and were given the opportunity to craft a tour customized for their audiences? McLeod Plantation, a National Register of Historic Places-listed historic site located outside of Charleston, South Carolina, is one such place that looks to docents and staff to provide critical insight into what stories are most engaging for their audiences.
McLeod Plantation employs what could be called “bottom-up” storytelling, and has been recognized by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience for its honest and compelling tours on the history of enslaved people at this former Southern cotton plantation. Docents, while following the overall interpretive goals laid out by interpretation coordinators, have complete liberty in crafting their own tours at McLeod Plantation and deciding what stories they want to tell about what happened there. This strategy was first implemented at the 2015 re-opening of the plantation for public tours. Prior to 2015, the tours followed the same model utilized at other historic plantations: where the dark history of the experience of enslaved people was glossed over and interpretation focused on the wealthy landowners who owned these places. In 2011, the Friends of McLeod non-profit facilitated the sale of the property from the Historic Charleston Foundation to Charleston County Parks. When Charleston County Parks and former interpretive lead Shawn Halifax took over management of the property, they decided that the main interpretive themes of the plantation would focus on African American history during slavery and the transition to freedom between 1865 and 1990. The interpretation of the property as a Gullah Geechee heritage site was also prioritized, as was the site’s role in the Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction after the Civil War.
Since 2015, interpretive tours at McLeod Plantation have been developed by docents, with final approval of themes and tour content provided by Halifax and team supervisors. Docents are supported with historical materials and tools to ensure the historical quality of the tours given. Interpretive docents are trained by curatorial staff on development of research skills as needed, although all of the docents in 2022 were noted to hold Bachelor’s degrees in history as well. Each docent is given a contextual narrative, primary site themes, primary sources, and secondary sources related to the site and asked to develop a tour based on these materials. Docents' only limitations are to utilize the skills and information they learned during their training and to have their tour fall within a specified time limit.
Giving docents the power to craft their own tours diversifies the interpretive team and the stories told at the McLeod Plantation. Halifax stated that one of the reasons McLeod gives docents this power is because the traditional power structure of an interpretive team “gatekeeps” historic information and typically gives white, middle-aged men like himself all the interpretive power. Decentralizing the gatekeeping ensures multiple perspectives are considered, demonstrates openness and transparency in the interpretive process, and checks institutional biases. Docents hired for the program on opening in 2015 included two young Black women, one young white woman, and one middle-aged white man, providing diverse perspectives on the former plantation. In 2022 researchers noted that two of the five interpreters were African American, at least one being of Gullah heritage, and four of the five were women, demonstrating an interpretive team as diverse as on opening day.
Decentralizing power during the creation of interpretive tours also creates a varied and engaging experience which may encourage people to return to hear different stories of the property. While interpreters touch on similar topics, such as the daily lives of the enslaved at McLeod, Gullah Geechee culture, and the role of the Freedmen's Bureau on the plantation, they also stop at different physical locations at the site to tell stories of different enslaved people on the plantation. Some tour guides stop at the site's cotton gin to discuss the working lives of enslaved people, while others take visitors to the enslaved peoples cabins and connect the domestic lives of the enslaved Africans and African Americans after slavery who continued to live in the small sheds on site until the 1990s. One tour guide of Gullah Geechee heritage particularly highlighted this regional heritage by telling stories from her own family. Allowing docents to share varied and personal stories ensures that all experiences and locations within the historic site are considered as important parts of the historical narrative.
One final benefit of McLeod’s style of docent-led interpretation is that it allows docents to discern firsthand through engagement, reactions, and questions asked by visitors the effectiveness of their tours. This could allow for quicker adjustment times and less red tape in the reworking of tours to suit the needs of visitors. Despite this variation in visitor experience, questionnaires given to visitors prior to and after tours show a noticeable increase in visitors' interest in African American history and the history of enslaved peoples in the South, indicating that tour variation led to the ultimate goal of inspiring visitors to care more about the African American history of McLeod and Southern plantation sites.
The decentralization of power in interpretation is not about a lack of cohesion and standards, but rather about breaking free from one dominant narrative and encouraging more stories to be told and heard at historic sites. Different meanings and interpretations can be drawn from a site’s history, and more visibility of the diversity of a site’s stories allows for the property to be viewed as a multi-layered and dynamic location where many stories unfolded from many different perspectives and time periods. McLeod’s decentralized process of tour creation highlights the site’s complexity and offers a roadmap for site interpreters and docents to convey the depth of a sites’ history beyond just what the eye can see. Docents are closest to the visitors at historic sites, and they are well equipped to determine what stories and modes of storytelling give visitors the best experiences. The potential benefits of McLeod’s interpretive team and site tour model have yet to be explored widely, and could potentially benefit everyone working at and visiting historic sites.
About the Author
Ettienne LeFebre holds a Master’s degree in Public History from Sacramento State University, with a focus in historic preservation and cultural resources management. Her research centers around the diversification of historic resources, increasing public interest and engagement at historic sites, and the preservation of intangible heritage. She specializes in California and Southwestern U.S. history, and aims to preserve historic resources related to the complex and diverse histories of these regions for the benefit of contemporary communities. In her free time she enjoys hiking along the American River, reading, creative writing, and exploring Sacramento’s incredible food scene.
References
“McLeod Plantation Historic Site and Caw Caw Interpretive Center.” International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Accessed March 8, 2024. https://www.sitesofconscience.org/membership/mcleod-plantation-historic-site-and-caw-caw-interpretive-center/.
Halifax, Shawn. “McLeod Plantation Historic Site: Sowing Truth and Change.” The Public Historian 40, no. 3 (August 2018): 252-277.
Potter, Amy E. et al. “Centering the Enslaved at Whitney and McLeod Plantations.” In Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022.
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