[X] My Assistant

[Fortune]

[Cadmus]

I have to agree with Fortune their, granted i'm a dirty carpet bagger so what do I know.

[Whipstitch]

Black troops, regardless of which side they fought on, made a great contribution in combating racism simply by proving their competence and bravery, so what few black reenactors there are seem quite happy to play either side, and often pick according to family history.

Two pertinent quotes:

Frederick Douglas: ""Men of Color, to Arms! For once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters 'U.S.' Let him get an eagle on his button, a musket on his shoulder, bullets in his pocket. Make him a soldier of the nation. Let him serve. Let him sacrifice. Let him shed his blood with his white brother. Do all that, and then there is no power on Earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States of America."

Colonel Howell Cobb: "You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I don't even understand why Americans re-enact the Civil War now. I mean, everyone involved messed up bad. The South was holding slaves, and the North was mainly interested in keeping the South in the Union at gunpoint, and Britain and France were being sympathetic to the slave-holding South just so their cotton could be cheaper. Everyone involved ended up being an evil prick. The outcome of the conflict may have been favorable (i.e., abolition), but the conflict itself was stupid, and fought for entirely the wrong reasons. And I'm not one for whitewashing history, but I can't understand wanting to re-enact one's mistakes.

[Mercer]

I've never been to a Civil War reenactment, but I have friends who did it for a number of years and I've seen a lot of pictures and you know what? Not a lot of black faces in those crowds. (Which is entirely understandable. Historical perspectives aside, its still hanging out in a field with a bunch of semi-armed, totally drunk rednecks dressed as Confederate soldiers. That would be a tough sell for a lot of people, whether they were black or not.)

My curiousity piqued though, I poked around on the internet to see if there were any estimates of the number of civil war reenactors there are, and how many black civil war reenactors there are. According to this page, "During the 1997 event, the two hundred black Civil War reenactors... represented about 85% of all black reenactors in the United States." Given that its an estimate, that puts the number of black Civil War reenactors at a best guess of around 235. According to Wikipedia (I know, I know, but take my word I haven't inflated these numbers), "To date the largest Civil War reenactment was the 135th Gettysburg (1998), which had over 41,000 reenactors and over 45,000 spectators attending."

My guess going into this was the number of black Civil War reenactors would top out at around 3%, but if these numbers I dug up after about a half an hour of searching are remotely accurate (hey, a big "if", I know), its closer to .6%. If a little over half a percent of the people reenacting the Civil War are black, I don't think Snow Fox's comment of "not many African-Americans" is too far off the mark.

The larger question, in the Shadowrun context anyway, is what percentage of reenactors would be orks, trolls, elves, dwarves, sasquatches or dragons. I think there is a certain element to the Awakening that will make history seem a little staid.

[hyzmarca]

Some Background

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlo...uis/blackcs.htm

http://www.forrestsescort.org/blacks.htm

http://www.stonewallbrigade.com/articles_b...ck_confeds.html

http://www.forrestsescort.org/blacks.htm

http://www.confederateamericanpride.com/bl...nfederates.html


An article about a proud black Confederate
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/07/State/In...f_his_Con.shtml


The last is written by a black Confederate reenactor.
http://www.confederateamericanpride.com/thoughts.html


So, yes, while the propaganda that currently saturates popular culture and academia tends to demonize the South, there do exist Confederates of all races who know the truth about the War of Northern Aggression and are proud of their ancestry.



Of course, the most fun about historical reenactment societies are rivalries and feuds that lead to full-scale invasions of each-others reenactments. Imagine a reenactment of the Battle of Agincourt when, suddenly, B-29s and Mitsubishi Ki-21 appear from over the horizon, dropping Napalm on French knights and British archers alike.

[Mercer]

One of Mr. Shows best sketches spoofed the Ken Burns Civil War documentary by giving a similar treatment to two reenactor brothers. The highlight of the sketch comes after they realize the reenactment is being held in the same park as the Ren Fair, and the pictures of the battle (done in the same slow pan across antique photographs while mournful music plays) take place mostly in the parking lot, with a short, fat Lincoln in raybans is chasing people with a musket. If there were more reenactments like that, I'd go.

[wind_in_the_ston...]

[CircuitBoyBlue]

[Critias]

If you think of nothing but "LOL SLAVEHOLDERS ABOUND" when you think of "the South," I don't blame you. But it's not like every Confederate private's field kit was a musket, his share of a field tent, a canteen, and his very own whipping negro.

The number of people who owned slaves in the South wasn't very high. The number of people that went to war from the South (or the North, for that matter) genuinely believing the reason for the war was slavery also wasn't very high. We've been told that, but it's simply not so. Slavery was only one of the many issues on the table, concerning state's rights, that led to the conflict.

Not every Confederate soldier suited up and went to battle over slaves, any more than every individual soldier current in the Gulf is there to get cheap oil or improve his Halliburton stock.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Oh, I'd agree. Actually, I'd go a step further and say that slaver was a marginal issue that was just cynically exploited by the North to legitimize its stance that the South should be forcibly kept in the Union. But the fact that the North was full of fault doesn't mean the South should just get a free pass on the fact that they tried to be a slave holding country. Whether every private in the field had a slave, or just one dude had a slave, it's still a system where slavery is allowed to exist, and that's wrong.

[Fortune]

[Mercer]

The Civil War was 140+ years ago, WWII was 60+ years ago. Since you don't hear much about Vietnam reenactors, I'm going to assume the line for reenacting things to be around 50 years. Given that, it seems like in SR, people may very well be reenacting either of the Gulf Wars (unless you just want to go ahead and assume Desert Wars are really big reenactments with bigger budgets and live ammo).

In the NAN, particularly the Sioux, I can see reenactments. Maybe the Great Ghost Dance, maybe the (not so great) Ghost Dance, Little Big Horn, maybe a few of the more obscure battles that US History glossed over. (What's the point of retaking your ancestral home if you can't lump a little revisionist history in with it all?) Perhaps the Cherokee go on Trail of Tear pilgrimages for a week or two to remind themselves of the sacrifices their ancestors made.

Civil War reenactments might have an unconsidered political element now that the South actually did secede. NAGNA seemed to portray the CAS as very much in the "good-ole-boy" tradition, so some might see the secession as the righting of a long overdue wrong, while others might be embarrassed by the connotation. (New Slogan for the CAS: We're Not That Confederacy!" Given how much hoopla from both sides goes on in Georgia every time the state flag changes, its not entirely without precedent.)

In Aztlan, perhaps some of the Mexican-American War battles might be big, though the big corp and gov sponsored events are probably going to be older. (I'm guessing reenacting battles where the Aztecs are getting wiped out by the Spanish is frowned upon.) I can't remember if the Aztlan book made mention of this, but I do remember their big about the old-style Aztec games, so its a logical step. Or, Aztlan might be too busy fighting actual wars to worry about the playacting (unless the playacting is a viable recruitment tool). Aztlan is probably staffing the reenactments with convicts and making them fight for real. (In fact, I'm pretty sure that was mentioned in the Aztlan book.)

Then, with all the weirdness the Awakening brings, why bother restricting yourself to the stuff that actually happened? Given that the stuff of fairy tales is as real as real-world history, I can see the line between historical reenactments and live action rpg's blurring a bit. Alternate Historical Reenactments. Discover the 4th (or the 2nd, or the 0th) World.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Daddy's Litt...]

Yes my husband is a 'red coat' and our house has, locked away from the baby, a Brown Bess musket, Lee-Enfield rifle and a Webley revolver.

I think Snow Fox was not disputing that blacks fought for the south. I think she was saying how many modern black men would want to join the ranks of an army popularly perceived as being the slavers?

Pop culture can set a lot of the perceived image that might get someone involved. Through popular literature and the movie "Glory," it is thought that blacks first fought in the US army in the Civil war in blue. you need a passion to do this sort of thing. a friend of ours who was involved in the movie "Glory" said they did not have enough black re-enactors, so they got college students and when that was not enough, they let non-violent criminals work on the film as 'work release programs.

I know that as a Japanese-Americans, for my brothers, "Go For Broke" about Japanese-americans fighting in WW2 it was gospel and we didn't know that there were Japanese-americans in all sorts of places in the US military.

I've heard him speak to crowds when dressed up in his full regalia and it is amazing the misconceptions people have. A woman claiming to be a school teacher once told him that the American Revolution was over July 4, 1776.

But to get back on topic, he said some people at WW1 have SMG's. German ones and BAR's and the grenades do explode-spraying baking powder. What made me think of this is that at a recent event he said someone had a mock up of Snow Fox' favorite bitch about weapon-the Chauchat. I was made by building onto a soviet assault rifle.It would seem a great way to hide/experiment with modern gear.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, as Moon-hawk said, never forget the simple fact that it's a lot easier to learn about and reenact the Civil War than it is more modern wars. It took place on American soil so you can easily visit the battlefields and you don't need any understanding of foreign languages to learn from newspaper accounts and correspondence from the era. By the same token it is a helluva lot easier to get some reasonably snazzy looking uniforms, march out to a field, pitch some canvas tents and drink some coffee before the morning of the scripted "battle" without feeling like an idiot than it is to find a patch of "jungle" to slog through so you can get to the scripted ambush and/or wait for imaginary helicopters.

And of course, it's heavily romanticized and enough time has passed for people to feel comfortable with all this to begin with.

[DireRadiant]

Bah... Re enact! NO!

They will LIVE it! 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with their Reality Filter Software and Hot Sim mods!

Whatever reality you want, the battle before the walls of Troy, Hannibal, Alexander, Ramses, Darius, etc etc all the way to the latest Desert Wars release you can live it now, all the time.

In groups, alone, in groups where one persons world view is Ancient Greece, another is EVO Mars Doom mod scenario, they'll all live it all the time.

[Whipstitch]

My poor character is living the Evo Mars Doom mod scenario right now :(

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Mine's living the 2007-era lonely government bureaucrat mod. Thank god THAT's almost over...

[kzt]

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, however long that is. :dead:

[DireRadiant]

You get new lives till you run out of clones.

[Kyoto Kid]

:ic:...Violet....uhhh Violet...? Drek she's hooked on that ftragging Miracle Shooter again. Where's the troll? He can just bash the door in....

(#73)

[Sir_Psycho]

[Kyoto Kid]

<=...ack! I'm one of them now...

I have met the enemy and it is me... :grinbig: