Creating a More Inclusive Boston Freedom Trail and Black Heritage Trail: An Intersectional Approach to Empowering Social
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Creating a More Inclusive Boston Freedom Trail and Black Heritage Trail: An Intersectional Approach to Empowering Social Justice And Equality Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This article is a form of activist archaeology in taking a feminist intersectional approach to suggest additional information and sites to increase the inclusiveness of Boston’s Freedom Trail and Black Heritage Trail. First a critical feminist approach is taken to analyze the biases of these trails. Critique of the dominance of elite white heterosexual men in Freedom Trail sites is needed to open the space for more inclusive intersectional information. The inclusion of more information about Native American men and women is suggested for existing sites on the Freedom Trail, and a statue commemorating their settlements in the area. Inclusion of more information about women of various intersectionalities is suggested for existing sites on the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail, as well as some additional women’s sites from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trails and survey of over 120 women’s public institutions in Boston. Inclusion of greater ethnic diversity is suggested with the addition of information from the Irish Heritage Trail and the addition of sites from Jewish heritage trails. Inclusion at existing Freedom Trail sites of information about non-heterosexuals is suggested from Boston’s Equality Trail. Keywords Boston heritage trails . Intersectionality . Social justice . Power dynamics
Activist archaeology is concerned with the present and future significance of archaeology and heritage, a topic of increasing concern to archaeologists who want to increase awareness of the value of the past for improving society’s present and future. Activist archaeology needs to involve a wide range of activities and interactions with the public, beyond including the public in excavations, which is one important form of activist archaeology that many have conducted (e.g., Jameson and Baugher 2007).
* Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood [email protected]
1
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309, USA
International Journal of Historical Archaeology
Fundamentally, my position is that activist archaeology is about making people aware of the importance of historic sites and material culture in movements for creating social justice in the past, present, and future. This consciousness of the future of archaeology and heritage is about the power of the past to promote social justice in the present. This research on heritage trails is congruent with Chilton’s (2018) argument that archaeology is heritage, which she defines as “traditions, monuments, objects, and living environments, and most importantly, the range of contemporary activities, meanings, and behaviors that are drawn from them.” Chilton (2018) also has recently argued with regard to how we decide which sites to preserve that, “There is an urgent need for an
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