On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Robert T. Handy wrote:

> Hmmm.  I wonder what will happen when we open our new interpretive
> center, which will include a working antebellum plantation with slaves?
> Will we be glorifying slavery?  That, by-the-way, will be more of a
> problem to us when we go about recruiting (hiring)the interpeters.

Wasn't it just a year or two ago this month that employees of the
Library of Congress (!!) in Washington, D.C. (where education and
learning and liberalism and open-mindedness are revered, right?)
forced the immediate closure of a traveling exhibition (curated by
either LOC or the Smithsonian Institution) about plantation house
slaves?  After the furor quited down a bit, a month or two later it
was exhibited in the D.C. main public library (Martin Luther King Jr.
Memorial Library).  We had the exhibition here in Knoxville, and it
was very well received.  Sometimes, you just can't figure -- or
anticipate the response.

--Jim Reca