“The Only Tobacco Story Left in Town": The Interpretation of the Tobacco Industry in Durham, North Carolina
Keywords:
Durham, American Tobacco Campus, Duke Homestead, InterpretationAbstract
This paper examines two sites commemorating the tobacco industry in Durham: American Tobacco Campus and Duke Homestead. Their development into places of collective memory differed due to prevailing historic preservation trends, but both contribute to an increasingly democratic construction of tobacco’s meaning in a Southern city. The power of public space and struggles to legitimize historical interpretations are key to Durham’s public history. The authority to tell “the tobacco story†shifted from elite whites to a more diverse population, and a one-dimensional tale of a powerful family has become a story of many people’s involvement in tobacco production, evidencing appreciation for the complex histories that make Durham a “City of the New South.â€Downloads
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2014-05-28
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