“As we left Crownsville, Deborah thanked Lurz for the information, saying, ‘I’ve been waiting for this a long, long time, Doc.’ When he asked if she was okay, her eyes welled with tears and she said, ‘Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different.’” [p. 276]
The journey to making peace with history and learning from it can be a long and very personal one — Deborah’s family are all at different phases of that same journey. Historians like Rebecca Skloot, as well as librarians, archivists and museum curators all find that the very documents and artifacts that can be most helpful for some people on that journey can be most offensive, disgusting or hateful to others. How can we present historical realities in a way that acknowledges and respects that difference?
Tags: HeLa, OC/OB 2010, Skloot
