FEATURE
For Me It Was Never Nostalgia:
Resisting the Idea of an Apolitical Past
Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The Ackley Covered Bridge, built near West Finley, Pennsylvania, in 1832, is in the background, while the garden surrounding the Luther Burbank Garden Office is in the foreground. The Rocks Village Toll House, built in Rocks Village, Massachusetts, in 1828, is slightly visible behind a tree at left. Photo by Andrew Balet, shared courtesy of CC BY-SA 3.0.
Henry Ford founded Greenfield Village in 1929 with nostalgia in mind, preserving and recreating buildings that had ties to his childhood and his personal heroes, like inventor Thomas Edison, or President Abraham Lincoln. Greenfield Village guests can experience a wide range of what a history museum can offer. Down one street, a Living History Interpreter will demonstrate how to card wool and spin it using a walking wheel in a home from the 1760s. Down another, one of the Village’s modern Presenters will be stationed in Orville and Wilbur Wright’s Cycle Shop, explaining the engineering of the airplane. These seemingly disparate histories are connected by the museum’s mission—to use stories of American ingenuity, resourcefulness, and innovation to inspire our guests to help shape a better future. As an institution, our own future is fast approaching. In just four short years, Greenfield Village will be turning one hundred years old. That’s nearly one hundred years of family vacations, casual Sunday outings, school field trips, and loyal members. Decades of our annual antique car festivals, of watching the crops come in at our agricultural sites, and countless phonograph demonstrations. Nearly one hundred years of memories have been made by visitors coming to the museum year after year.
A group of Greenfield Village actors and presenters gathering for Emancipation Day. Photo by the LHIH Leadership Team.
Greenfield Village has grown and changed, offering new points of view on history as the collection has expanded beyond Henry Ford’s initial focus, but the history visitors are sometimes most interested in preserving is that of the museum itself. Those kids on family vacations and school field trips grow into adults, returning with family and friends, hoping for the same experience they had in years gone by. Those loyal members value the rhythm of Greenfield Village, the consistency of the schedule and the programs. They are visiting not for the history we currently share, but the history they remember presented exactly as they remember it.
Visitors’ perception of the museum has shaped their perception of history, with the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia lending itself to the “simpler time” look at the past. My role, as Manager of African American and Inspiring History at Greenfield Village, is to introduce the concept of “a simpler time for who?” Who does and does not feel nostalgia for this “simpler time?” Who does and does not feel nostalgia for this museum?
When I began working at Greenfield Village in 2018 as a presenter, the answer to this question was complicated. As a younger millennial Black woman, I did not see myself in the museum. My childhood memories of visits to Greenfield Village inspired my interest in the three main African American history sites—Susquehanna Plantation set in the 1860s, Hermitage slave dwellings set in the 1850s, and the Mattox Family Home, a house owned by an African American family in the 1930s—but the history and the way it was told did not inspire a sense of sentimental longing for the good old days in me. Instead, I felt frustration. For me, a plantation home could never be nostalgia, but for so many visitors, it was a place where they like to come see a live musical performance, talk about a pretty wedding dress being sewn in the parlor, or occasionally ask about a dog with ties to the home. All of the rough edges of history smoothed away until it’s easy enough for anyone to hold without fear of leaving a deep impression.
Greenfield Village Actress Madelyn Porter presenting for Emancipation Day. Photo by the LHIH Leadership Team.
Sage Sampson presenting a cooking demonstration for Emancipation Day at Greenfield Village. Photo by the LHIH Leadership Team.
In an effort to tell the stories of historically disenfranchised people, the focus of our homes has shifted, even when the focus of the guests has not. We’re currently undergoing a process of uplifting African American History at Greenfield Village—taking a second look at past programming, reframing where possible, and removing when necessary.
Susquehanna Plantation Home is one of the Village locations that has undergone some of the biggest changes. The last decade has seen it transition from a Living History site where presenters in period dress did cooking demonstrations, a venue where African American actors portraying enslaved people sang for guests and told folktales, and a wedding venue for Greenfield Village’s annual Holiday Nights event.
Each iteration posed challenges: lack of diversity among presenter staff meant the space was inhabited by white Living History interpreters, who were often assumed to be the plantation owners, working in a kitchen our records show an enslaved African American woman would have labored in. Guest reactions to being told the history by presenters they believed to be the enslavers hindered efforts to focus on the lives of enslaved people at the site. The performances that did feature African American actors were deeply outdated and generalized portrayals, and they created a disconnect between the entertainment of a fun family attraction, and the sensitive history presented inside the home.
Holiday Nights is one of the museum’s most beloved programs, with visitors primed to hear stories of celebration and joviality. Guests loved seeing Susquehanna decorated to host a winter wedding, but the focus on the finery distracted them from the enslaved labor that went into producing such an event for the plantation owners, with a domino effect on how guests returning throughout the year viewed the house.
The Living History demonstration method was retired with no protest from the presenter staff, who often felt uncomfortable being referred to by guests as the “masters” of the home. The decision was made to stop doing the performances at Susquehanna, moving the actors into new roles in other areas of the Village, where they could do first-person portrayals of specific figures from African American history, or participate in a new Greenfield Village tradition: a 1930 Emancipation Day celebration at the Mattox Family Home, introduced during the 2023 season. The plantation house remained open to visitors, but the programming shifted to modern uniform presentation. This year, we have increased the diversity among our presenter staff by hiring a team as Presenters of African American History.
Holiday Nights had more pushback. While we could not deviate from the festive visuals, we worked to center the experience of enslaved people during the holidays, with their struggles and fears placed in the context of the celebratory season, while leaving room for speaking to their personal joys as well. Elevated signage helped guests engage with the contrasting lives of the enslaved and the enslaver, leaving guests with a deeper understanding of the history behind the “plantation wedding” and corresponding aesthetic.
We’ve had successes with the new programs. Frontline staff feel more confident in their presentations, and their ability to carry out the responsibility that comes with telling history with sensitivity. They’ve had positive feedback from returning guests who appreciate the changes and new visitors who didn’t expect The Henry Ford Museum to be a place for African American history, and were impressed by the level of accuracy and care.
Still, some guests still want the old activities, and they are not shy about asking for them. Their frustrations with vignettes and events they miss can cause frustrations in the presenters being asked about them, facing inquiries about programs that were retired five, ten, even twenty years ago. The best way to break through their resistance to change is to answer for the sentimental connection they’ve formed to the experiences they’ve had at our museum over the years. Our efforts here rely on being honest, not just about the ongoing process of curating history with new research and discoveries, but with being truthful about the history of our institution and how our mission has changed since the era of Henry Ford’s longing for days gone by.
In 2026, Greenfield Village will be growing and changing once again with the introduction of the Dr. Sullivan and Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson Home, a house with ties to Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights Marches of 1965, bringing a story of activism, resistance, and Civil Rights to a museum more known for Model T rides, car shows, and working farms than for African American history. Now more than ever it is important for museums to not be a place of nostalgia but to tell of the diversity of thought that existed throughout our shared history. The choice to tell certain stories, to preserve certain places, and to silence certain voices is inherently a political one.
A closeup of the table setting for the Emancipation Day celebration. Photo by the LHIH Leadership Team.
Greenfield Village Actor Tony Lucas reads the Emancipation Proclamation for guests. Photo by the LHIH Leadership Team.
With our presentation era set just sixty years in the past, the Jackson house is within living memory of both our museum guests and the presenters themselves, which complicates the idea of nostalgia for a simpler time. When we unpack the myths and legends of this era, for some, we'll be shaking the foundations on which their childhood memories were built. For others, the continued relevance of a story of resistance and civil rights activism has led to feelings of fear rather than inspiration: why are we fighting for the same things we fought for sixty years ago? A story they believed to be in the past has caught up to us in the present, making us all confront the idea of the museum as a place of tidy stories with a beginning, middle, and end, all tied up with a bow.
Trusting in museums as an institution to tell the truth must lead the way. It’s our goal to bring our guests along with us, and the role of presenter at our sites is to guide guests along this journey. We have the potential to meet our guests where they are, no matter where they align themselves. It will no doubt be a challenge—telling the history of Civil Rights in America is a history of politics and power—but facts are not partisan. They’re just facts.
And these facts lend themselves to stories museum visitors are already primed to expect from our museum. An activist can be just as innovative a thinker as an engineer. A protest can be just as daring as the first flight. Resistance, like invention, is choosing to see the world not for what it is, but for what it could be. And just like planes, trains, and automobiles have evolved over time, so has our society. What our institution values in the histories they have chosen to collect—resourcefulness, collaboration, hard work, determination—are just as important in the stories of the Civil Rights movement as they are in a research laboratory. The concepts are familiar and transferable.
As we inch closer to the Jackson Home’s opening in 2026, and Greenfield Village’s 100th anniversary in 2029, I hope that by embracing the challenge of openly and honestly portraying what some may call “a simpler time” with all the complexity and nuance it deserves, Greenfield Village presenters will be able to resist the idea of an apolitical past, and do right by our museum visitors who need to hear those stories the most, to serve a new generation of family vacations, summer camps, and school field trips. We serve an audience of long-time members, but also parents and guardians of small children, who come to hear African American history as told by our skilled presenters. These audiences tell us that they’re only just beginning to have those conversations at home, and they express how helpful the presentations are as a first step in their introduction to these sensitive topics of discussion. It's a weighty reminder of our responsibility to our youngest guests whose memories are being formed right now, in the present, to give them tools to reconcile with the full expanse of history rather than the narrow comfort of nostalgia.
A group of Greenfield Village actors and presenters gathering for Emancipation Day. Photo by the LHIH Leadership Team.
