The Most Important Story to Tell
In an extraordinary collaboration with San Diego State University, on March 18 the San Diego History Center is set to open virtually a new exhibit celebrating the life of Palomar Mountain’s first Black resident, Nathan Harrison. The exhibit, “Nathan Harrison: Born Enslaved, Died a San Diego Legend,” features almost two decades’ worth of artifacts unearthed by teams of SDSU students led by anthropology professor and SDSU History Curator Seth Mallios.
Harrison stood at his spring in this undated photograph; county supervisors furnished him with the pump and trough. Courtesy Nathan “Nate” Harrison Historical Archaeology Project (Kirby Collection).
The exhibit was originally scheduled to open in the spring of 2020 following the release of “Born a Slave, Died a Pioneer: Nathan Harrison and the Historical Archaeology of Legend,” a book written by Mallios. Both the book and the exhibit had been timed to coincide with the observance of the 100th anniversary of Harrison’s death October 10, 1920.
Born into slavery in Kentucky during the 1830s, Harrison migrated to California during the Gold Rush years of 1848 – 52 and worked as a miner before securing his independence and migrating to the San Diego area in the 1870s. He became a homesteader on Palomar Mountain at a time when African Americans faced barriers to property ownership, but Harrison’s survival skills included an astute and gregarious nature that enabled him to thrive.
Mallios had planned to hold a centennial ceremony honoring Harrison in the fall, but plans for that, along with the exhibit, were placed on hold amid COVID-19 restrictions. As the ongoing pandemic forced a redesign of the exhibit, the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police and the ensuing protests along with the reinvigoration of the Black Lives Matter movement prompted a national reexamining of racial inequities.
These events also demanded, for Mallios, his students, and the San Diego History Center, a reimagining of the Harrison exhibit. How could it – and should it – reflect and adapt to the social, cultural and historical developments of 2020?
Mallios recently answered questions from SDSU Alumni about how events of the past year affected the exhibit and influenced the thinking about its content and presentation. His responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Professor Mallios, you personally have been interested in or involved at the Nathan Harrison homestead site on Palomar Mountain for the better part of 20 years. This exhibit in Balboa Park represents the crowning achievement of those two decades of work by you and your students. Having it delayed by a year because of the pandemic and redesigning it first to meet health and safety restrictions, then to better reflect changes in the national social and cultural environment, how satisfying is it for you to be opening the exhibit this month?
“It’s thrilling that all the work we put in on this project is finally coming to fruition in a way that we can engage the public fully. I don’t know if I would have appreciated it as much if we hadn’t been through so much over the past year. There was the first version we had, then there was the second version when we thought COVID was just a momentary delay. And then there was this complete redesign. At times it was exhausting. I liken it to that sensation you used to have if you didn’t save a file and your computer crashed and you thought, ‘Oh, no. I need to start over again.’ We had to tell our story in a new way, but it is so rewarding.”
SDSU archaeology students look for artifacts during a dig at the Harrison
Everything associated with this project had been timed – your book, the History Center exhibit, the planned centennial observance of Harrison’s death – to fall in that 2020 time frame. Was it disappointing when things didn’t work out that way?
“It was, but then my whole mindset changed. This may sound strange, but 2020 made 2020 irrelevant. What I mean by that is the combination of everything that happened with COVID and George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement made the hundred-year anniversary observance of Harrison‘s passing irrelevant. That is to say initially we wanted people to read the story and come into the exhibit under the guise that it was important because of the anniversary. Then, once they were in the building, we would show them all about the racism of the 19th and 20th centuries. The structural inequities. The fact that California wasn’t a free state. The impacts of this racial inequity on today’s society. So the anniversary would lead to that in a nuanced way. But with everything that happened in 2020, nuance died.”
How did the death of nuance change the exhibit?
“Now the exhibit starts with racial inequality. It starts with structural inequity. That is the story we’re telling and we’re not apologizing about it being 101 years since Harrison passed. Now we are starting with the fact that this is not the quintessential African-American story, this is the quintessential American story. This is the most important story to tell now and that has freed us from all the expectations of an anniversary celebration. An anniversary can be an excuse to celebrate something, but what’s even better is the importance of that thing. We are now leading with an exhibit that starts with importance - subject, thematic importance - as opposed to timely importance based on an anniversary.“
A recreation of Harrison's cabin is part of the new exhibit “Nathan Harrison: Born a Slave, Died a San Diego Legend” set to open virtually March 18 at the San Diego History Center.
That is quite a game-changing revelation.
“It blew me away. We can have an exhibit that doesn’t need to dance around these powerful issues that are so polarizing in terms of racial identity. That’s the big silver lining: how liberating that feels right now. For me personally, it makes up for the fact that everything I had lined up for the past year did not go in the way I anticipated.”
How does that liberated feeling show up in the exhibit?
“In the book, you’ve got to read a few hundred pages before you get to the key issue that Harrison had to have a double identity to survive in an era of sundown towns and racial hatred. He was so convincing in the act that he put on for visitors that all the white audiences believed it was the truth. That’s addressed more immediately in the exhibit. It took so long to develop the argument in the book this notion that ethnic minorities and people who are discriminated against have to act a certain way to gain acceptance. That is front and center right now. That is at the epicenter of so much frustration, anger, and demand for retribution right now. People are saying we shouldn’t have to act a certain way to gain equality in a country where we are promised equality.”
Things have changed so much in the past year, including the language we use to discuss racial issues. For example, the term “slave” as applied to identity has been replaced by “enslaved person.” Do you wince now at the title of the book?
“I do. I wish I had called it ‘Born Into Slavery.’ The reason I called it ‘Born a Slave, Died a Pioneer’ is because that is what is written on Nathan Harrison’s gravestone. That phrase was created by Ed Diaz, an African American scholar who located Harrison’s grave. The Reverend George Walker Smith and Ed Diaz presided over the placement of the gravestone and those are two of my heroes, so I wanted to honor that, but they were doing that in the 1970s. The truth is ‘slave’ is problematic as a word because there is far more to Harrison than just being enslaved. ‘Pioneer’ is another sensitive word for many Native American groups. Pioneering represents oppression. It represents colonialism. It represents imperialism, so both of those words are difficult for me.”
The project was recently written up in Archaeology Magazine, considered by many as THE magazine in the field. What does that say about this project?
“It’s very rewarding having a big article done on our project in Archaeology Magazine. I would like to emphasize that this is in a magazine that is showcasing Egyptian mummies and King Henry VIII and there’s Nathan Harrison. We are being spotlighted not because it is a Black History Month profile, but because this project is as important as any archaeology project that is going on worldwide. That, for me, makes it worth the 20 years we have put into this project.”
An SDSU archaeology student examines an artifact unearthed during a dig at the Harrison homestead site March 31, 2017.
When visitors can actually enter the History Center, what will they experience that is different than if this exhibit had opened a year ago?
“There are fewer stations to visit before you get to Harrison’s reconstructed cabin. Just beyond it you see the whole grid of dirt squares that are so typical of an archaeology site. Whatever square you stand in, that’s where your phone gets activated by a little image on the floor and up pops all sorts of cool stuff about the archaeology. That is totally different. Before, it was just going to be here’s an artifact and here’s the story. Now you get to walk the landscape of the dig itself.”
This exhibit is in Balboa Park, which is a major tourist destination. How significant is that for this project and for SDSU?
“San Diego State plays such a huge role in the community. That this is a central public park for the city, I think, is a very powerful statement in terms of bringing us all together. It’s worth pointing out that this is a major exhibit in a major city just focused on the African American experience. In addition to the Harrison exhibit, we also have the “Celebrate San Diego: Black History and Heritage” display, which includes a triple timeline that looks at African Americans nationwide, statewide and locally. There’s a neat interactive part where visitors can add nominations for important African Americans from the local community as well. One of the big goals here is to get folks involved from different communities and involve different perspectives in the museum. San Diego State is so dedicated with our new strategic plan to diversity and to public engagement that we can do that with the folks at Balboa Park as well.”
What is your hope for this exhibit?
“I hope the different communities in San Diego who haven’t always made the History Center their home will realize they have a place to tell their story, a place to read stories similar to their own, and to really have a multigenerational experience.”
Learn more about “Nathan Harrison: Born Enslaved, Died a San Diego Legend,” by visiting sandiegohistory.org/exhibition/nathan-harrison.