
Bob Holladay Talks History
Clip: Season 9 Episode 5 | 3m 27sVideo has Closed Captions
Bob Holladay discusses why not all history is celebrated.
Bob Holladay from the Tallahassee Historical Society explains why some history is celebrated but other types of history is commemorated. And why all history is important.
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Local Routes is a local public television program presented by WFSU

Bob Holladay Talks History
Clip: Season 9 Episode 5 | 3m 27sVideo has Closed Captions
Bob Holladay from the Tallahassee Historical Society explains why some history is celebrated but other types of history is commemorated. And why all history is important.
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipWell, not all history should be celebrated.
It should be recognized.
It should certainly be studied.
But there is a lot of the history of Florida and Tallahassee and the United States, frankly, that that is not celebratory.
And and and it's the study of history changes, as you know.
And really over about the last half century, it's become much more critically focused and much more, you know, much more questioning as to as to as to who should be who and what should be celebrated.
And, you know, you know, the whole controversy over Confederate monuments and monuments in general and so forth, I mean, and but it's not it's not just that.
I mean, I mean, Tallahassee and Leon County was founded as as a as a slave society.
I mean, it was founded as part of the cotton kingdom.
I mean, it was it was one of our.
One of our board members gave a talk yesterday, De Lange, in which he pointed out that Leon County was was one certainly one of the top ten cotton producers in the entire South before the Civil War.
And that was very labor intensive.
And it meant the introduction of of what we call chattel chattel slavery.
So that's one thing.
And then, of course, there is the whole relationship with the Native American population that was here.
The the Appalachia is in the Muscogee Indian tribes and so forth.
And of course, later, later the Seminole.
And you can't hide that.
I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a positive thing, I think, overall.
But the study of history has changed to be more inclusive and to go, you know, let's look at it from different angles and different points of view.
I mean, one of the one of the one of the big changes in the study of history over the last few decades is what we call memory history.
How do different groups of people remember certain events and certain certain situations?
And of course, you know, of course, a person whose ancestor was enslaved in Leon County is going to look at the early history of Leon County differently than than a person who was dissented, descended from a planter who came down from Virginia or Tennessee or something.
And brought a car full of enslaved people, people with them.
And so so when I say, you know, we commemorate and not necessarily celebrate, really, it's really the emphasis is more on education to discover, to discover as best we can the truth, even though there may be conflicting versions of the truth.
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