How philanthropy can alter our view of the past: a look at Colonial Williamsburg

Abstract

The restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, serves as an important study in the history of philanthropy in the United States. Williamsburg demonstrates how the investments of philanthropists such as the Rockefeller family can be used to subtly alter Americans' perceptions of their past. This manipulation resulted in the promotion of the Rockefellers' ideological interpretation of history at Williamsburg. This history stressed the role of Williamsburg as a monument to the ideals of Americanism: democracy, republicanism and individual achievement. Through times of domestic and international crisis, from the Red Scare of the 1920s through the Cold War of the 1950s, the Rockefeller family held up Williamsburg as a beacon to which Americans could look as a steadying force. In doing so, the Rockefellers created a past which never truly existed. They downplayed the roles of women and blacks, who were all but ignored in the early presentation of the town, in favour of the aristocrats of the age: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe. The presentation which emerged during the restoration's first half-century was one that failed to acknowledge the roles played by less prominent groups and over-accentuated the importance of a small minority of illustrious townspeople.