Reconstructing Memory: The Attempt to Designate Beaufort, South Carolina, the National Park Service's First Reconstruction Unit

The group, which represented a diverse coalition of county organizations, ate lunch and discussed possible next steps at Penn Center Historic District, one of the first places in the country to teach formerly enslaved people and an institution important to the local black community that provided industrial education and support for civil rights activists.6 Babbitt spoke of available staff resources to assist in interpreting the "national treasure" but pointed out that he had only a short time left as secretary of interior. [...]he challenged the group assembled to pursue the goal of making available to the public this remarkable landscape and numerous structures that tell the story of Reconstruction.7 The path for establishing a new unit of the NPS is long and laborious. [...]historians can disseminate modern scholarship into the public sphere with the same effectiveness as Mary Simms Oliphant or the UDC, however, outdated interpretations of Reconstruction embraced by groups like the SCV will continue to impede the preservation and commemoration of Reconstruction.