George,

Mr. Clancy is off-point. The issue at hand is the history of slavery in America, not examples of current oppression around the world, although I wonder how one would pull off a "tame skit" regarding South American sweat shops and prisoner abuse in Iraq. In his outrage "for any group to focus attention through art on something that happened over 150 years ago" would he ban the films "Schindler's List" and "D-Day" which had moviegoers leaving theaters en masse in tears because of the brutally realistic depictions of genocide and war? Should we close the doors of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum because we cannot stomach the exhibits of torture and death?

In The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Autumn 1993* "To Live Like A Slave" by Curtia James, Ms. James writes:

"I sat before a crackling fire, dressed in 18th-century clothes, and listened to the haunting sounds of spirituals. I watched shadows flicker across the faces of my African-American co-workers, gathered to re-enact the lives of the 24 blacks who had inhabited the Slave Quarter at Carter's Grove in 1770. We would give voice to their experience, rediscovering aspects of their day-to-day realities as much as our 20th-century sensibilities could allow. (Emphasis added)

I had often wondered about those slaves. But sitting here in spaces they once called home, I thought especially about what they would think about us being there. If they could have seen ahead to our times, would they think it foolish for us to want, rather desperately, to dress as they would have done, to walk in their erased paths sifting for glimmers of their long-gone days and times? I contemplated what they might think of what we as a free black people had accomplished. We were there because someone like them had the will to survive. Would they, surveying us, celebrate our personal successes and sympathize that racism, which held their lives so imperiled, could today still be so profoundly felt?

They are but characters--remembered daily in the interpretation at the quarter--theoretical people researchers summon from 200-year-old plantation records from the slaves' owner, Nathaniel Burwell, and Bruton Parish Church registers. Because evidence about them is so scant, any attempt to fully re-create their lives would be mere conjecture. What was more realistic, we felt, was to approach the re-creation as slave descendants." (Emphasis added)

As to Mr. Clancy's claim that young people cannot understand and become very confused by artistic images Ms. James writes:

"For juvenile performer Holly Smith, it was an opportunity to gain a first-hand appreciation of slave life. 'They weren't just going to Saturday night gatherings,' she said. 'They were working hard.'"

Give our young people some credit please.

The raising of consciousness through art is not a statement against our "decent government leaders." To the contrary, artists have traditionally involved themselves in the raising of consciousness world wide quite effectively proving the decency of leaders. I was part of an action in Washington, D.C. by "Artists Against Apartheid." It was the first day of what was intended to be a week of demonstrations. A week turned into months; Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents participated. Yes, we were arrested; yes, we were hauled off to jail; yes, we were charged; and, yes, my black arresting officer requested his picture be taken with me.

The European DADA and Surrealist movements caused riots in the streets of Paris. Hitler confiscated what he called "degenerate art" produced by many beloved artists such as Matisse, Picasso, Dali and others. The question "What Is Art?" has been a subject of discussion for time immemorial. Some people like the soft impressionism of Manet, others the harsh reality of Dali. What would life be like today without all of it?

Ironically, Anson and Scottie have engaged this community in a most wonderful dialogue. Yes, they are young and yes, they are provocative. I say I would much rather see these young men and others of their ilk performing their butts off in an effort to educate than sitting in a horrible, lonely prison cell because they chose to take another kind of action. Thomas Jefferson said "History, by appraising. ..[the students] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future."

Virginia Valentine Coles (electronic mail, December 10, 2004)

* http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/slave.cfm