I see Magill for what she is and what the rest of the nation was, a product of her time and environment. Who should write a region’s history? An individual resident, or a diverse council? I don’t know, but I think it isn’t unreasonable to believe that Magill should have had her works evaluated within relevant context of time and region.

I don’t consider the above to mitigate certain southern American policies, rather to illuminate historical truth in an otherwise convenient, dark, knee-jerk reactionary time of immediate judgement. I see no harm in expressing a fair and balanced interpretation of individuals like Magill as long as there is no non-factual elements included. We are smart enough to do that aren’t we?

There may indeed be examples of, let’s say, attacks on the South and its institutions that suffer from a lack of historical perspective, or global perspective, or both. The racism that was at the core of slavery did not exist in a vacuum. And the vast majority of Union soldiers did not march off to war to free their fellow man. I think in this we can find common ground.

But to criticize Mary Tucker Magill, as I did, or to express shock, or to wonder what sort of legacy her teaching has had on Virginia and on our common memory — this can be done without my needing to make some obligatory acknowledgment of “the larger picture and context of slavery throughout time.”

After all, in this blog post, I am not writing a history of slavery. I am writing about Mary Tucker Magill. As such, it’s fair for me to encourage you to focus your response on her.

For instance, does this larger picture you insist upon exculpate her in some way? If we are to take it into more careful consideration, does it lessen the South’s responsibility for what the South, in fact, did? Should it somehow leaven our distaste for what Magill wrote and perhaps even suggest a way for us to muster some sympathy for her?

Or, given this broader perspective, should we be judging Magill by different standards? Should we see her as a product of her time and place, a patriot even with some warts?

I don’t mean to ask these questions facetiously. And I also understand how easy, and even at times convenient, it can be to express shock and horror at the “backwardness” of the South while forgetting that there are few in this world blessed with moral purity.

But the bottom line is that we are in Virginia. And about Virginia and Virginians we are called to write. So I invite you to make a larger argument about Mary Tucker Magill. Is there some new way we should be thinking about her that was given short shrift in this post?

This blog does dabble, by the way. I fully admit that. It is the nature of the medium. Of course, the encyclopedia, by its nature, will be different. And in the meantime, I appreciate readers such as yourself who challenge us and provoke interesting discussions such as this one.

All I’m saying is that one cannot truly evaluate one slice of history for one small region without seeing the larger picture and context of slavery throughout time. One could just as easily ask why is there a disproportionate burden and blame placed upon one region’s policy or one woman’s writings without examining and admitting the complicity of colonial Euro-centric values?

Example, weren’t 20th century television depictions of black Americans which came out of NYC, Chicago, and Hollywood also considered racist (Amos and Andy, Little Rascals, etc.), and haven’t they shaped our racist ideologies more than any obscure southern writer? I fail to see the value of taking a thinly, one-sided, derogatory view of Virginia and the South, but that is what I keep seeing from many dabbling in history.

Thanks,
Jim

For my own part, let me say this: To talk about the ridiculousness of what Magill wrote is hardly to deny the existence of evil elsewhere in the world. And why would you expect there to be equal or more outrage directed at the evil of slavery in places far away than at the evil of slavery as it was perpetrated so close to home?

This blog focuses on Virginia and Virginia history. Would you like to mount a defense of southern slavery or Mary Tucker Magill’s depiction of it that doesn’t depend on you either attacking Kevin Levin or saying, “Other countries did it too”? If so, you’re welcome to use this space to do it.

Where’s his outrage regarding Africa, Portugal, Spain, and England’s part in the slave trade? How about the slave-recipient nations that dwarfed America? And northern US slavery? Oh that doesn’t matter, in Levin’s world it’s all about the evil Confederacy, led by Robert E Darth Vader Lee and Stonewall Darth Sidious Jackson. Man is this guy and his blog important.

See a pattern? That’s because Levin is severely anti-southern. A survey of his blog revealed that over 50% of his posts in a given month were anti-Confederate and irreverant to the South.

Anyway, you’re absolutely right about the way in which these histories linger. If you follow the link to Kevin Levin’s blog, you’ll find that the history textbook which first got his goat was in use as recently as the 1980s.