Title: Race, Memory, and Fredericksburg’s Changing Heritage Tourism
Landscape
Author: Stephen P. Hanna
Affiliation: University of Mary Washington
Abstract: As a heritage tourism destination, Fredericksburg, Virginia, is best
known for the Civil War battles that raged in and around the city and for its
connections to George Washington’s family during the colonial and Revolutionary
eras. The dominant narratives used to construct and preserve Fredericksburg’s
heritage tourism landscape – and the brochures and websites used to sell the
city to tourists – represent Fredericksburg’s past as white, middle class, and
entrepreneurial. Douglas Wilder’s selection of Fredericksburg as the site of the
planned United States Slavery Museum and other recent changes to
Fredericksburg’s heritage tourism landscape are challenging these dominant
narratives and, perhaps, creating public spaces for alternatives. Many residents’
responses to these challenges to the “traditional” and dominant versions of the
town’s heritage are best summarized by the local newspaper’s initial editorial
written when Governor Wilder’s first proposed to locate the slavery museum
within city limits. “A slavery museum?” the editors wrote in 2001, “Ok, but slavery
was not the main history that happened here.” This paper uses a textual analysis
of five years of letters-to-the-editor, editorials, and opinion pieces appearing in
the Free Lance Star – Fredericksburg’s paper of record – to explore local
reactions to the inclusion of slavery and African-American narratives in
Fredericksburg’s heritage tourism landscape. These, augmented by key
informant interviews, reveal the multiple and changing ways residents and
visitors of different races and classes both identify with this place and deploy that
identification in the arena of local politics.