WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.—The Twenty-Second Old Salem Museums & Gardens Landscape Conference featured scholars from across the country.

They discussed issues of race, culture, and landscape and on how those factors formed a world of color on the American south.

“It wasn't just the elite that contributed to our society but it’s the laborers, the people that made the wealth for the country,” said Matthew Reeves PhD, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration, James Madison’s Montpelier. “That has been systematically and initially forgotten over the past 100 years that story needs to be told.”

Historians and archaeologists shed light on the history of enslaved and free African Americans who shaped the American south.

“Often we didn’t have control over parts of the landscape and where we had the opportunity we often tried to take control or put our stamp on that community,” said Anthony Parent Jr., PhD Professor of History and American Ethnic Studies, Wake Forest University. “So, I think that recognizing that, understanding what our ancestors did was critically important.”

For more information visit the museum online.