Massacre the History?

The problem with bringing history to life is that – as an individual – doing it well sometimes means not doing it.

A month from today I’ll be in Boston to participate in the reenactment of the Boston Massacre. The Massacre, which occurred in the evening of March 5th, 1770, was an incident between British soldiers stationed in Boston, and a crowd of townspeople and sailors. Initiated by an insult to the soldier standing sentry, and his retaliatory blow, mobs of apprentice lads and sailors rapidly gathered. After some serious heckling, and with no direct order to do so, the soldiers fired into the crowd. A dozen men and boys were shot, several of them mortally.

From a living history standpoint, this is a phenomenal historical event to recreate. It is historically significant, dramatic, and extremely focused. The soldiers and the mob combined add up to less than 60 people, meaning that gathering the correct number of people to act it out is very doable. From the records of the soldiers’ trial, we know the names and occupations of many of the participants. The information from the trial is also supported by an engraving done of the event by Paul Revere. The events take place quickly, in a city square which still exists, in the dark of evening, which helps to mellow the surrounding modernity. On top of this it has cachet, and will therefore draw a crowd.

This sort of well-executed and well-researched reenactment is entirely up my alley. As a living historian, I want to be there. I want to contribute. I want my talented friends to come, and I want there to be meaningful roles for us to play. And this is where I find myself disappointed. Because of course, the “exciting” [i.e. shoot’m up] part of the Boston massacre took place in city streets, in the dark, between soldiers, and sailors, and apprentice boys. Though women were in the streets before the threat of imminent violence became obvious, the mob itself was not a place for women [or hardly a place for them – two were in fact in the front of the crowd]. And so [with those exceptions, making up about 5% of the total crowd] it is not a place for women.

I want to help recreate the events faithfully, but to do that, I should really leave once violence breaks out, just as the women of Boston no doubt did when they noticed armed mobs in their city streets. I should skip the denouement, go home, and reflect on the significance of men brawling over taxes. I should skip the part of the event that actually makes it into the history books.

I come up against this problem a lot, and it bothers me. A lot. There is a part of me that thinks, “to hell with it. Would it hurt to re-write things a little to depict a slightly fairer past?” and there is another part, of equal size, that thinks the idea of falsifying history for some theoretical, ideological “good” is morally reprehensible. I do not know the solution, I just know that sitting at home, wondering “how the boys are getting along at the event” feels like crap, and so does standing around at the event explaining how “as a woman, I probably would not have actually been here”.

I crave a solution where I have a sense of ownership over the parts of my history that my culture values. However, since those parts tend to be dominated by male figures, I fear I may need to get used to disappointment…