I know nothing about birds but was of course aware of the name John James Audubon who became famous for his books containing detailed and lavish color paintings of the birds of America. His name has been adopted by various ornithological societies and one hears references to his name all the time. For some reason, I had thought that he was Black and was thus surprised when I read this news item that the Audubon Naturalist Society is dropping the name because of Audubon’s unsavory history and racist attitudes that, among other things, involved slave trading. They are making this move as part of a nationwide trend of not honoring people who have been guilty of deplorable acts.
Originally called the Audubon Society of the District of Columbia, ANS was set up in 1897 as part of a wave of such groups seeking to protect bird species then under threat from hunters.
Audubon achieved lasting fame for his detailed studies and illustrations of American birds, made in the early 19th century.
More recently, he has come under scrutiny for his buying and selling of enslaved people in the 1820s; for his objections to the abolitionist movement; and for writings that portrayed black and indigenous people as inferior to whites.
Audubon, who was born in modern-day Haiti but moved to the US before dying in New York in 1851, took five human skulls from a battlefield in Texas and sent them to Samuel Morton, a doctor who attempted to determine differences that he claimed showed varying intelligence levels between races.
So how did I come to have the belief that he was Black? It turns out that his ancestry is unclear.
It’s fair to describe John James Audubon as a genius, a pioneer, a fabulist, and a man whose actions reflected a dominant white view of the pursuit of scientific knowledge. His contributions to ornithology, art, and culture are enormous, but he was a complex and troubling character who did despicable things even by the standards of his day. He was contemporaneously and posthumously accused of—and most certainly committed—both academic fraud and plagiarism. But far worse, he enslaved Black people and wrote critically about emancipation. He stole human remains and sent the skulls to a colleague who used them to assert that whites were superior to non-whites.
Complicating this history is his ambiguous background: Some researchers have credibly argued that Audubon was born to a woman of mixed race, which would mean that the most famous American bird artist was a man of color. [My italics-MS] Others insist that Audubon’s mother was white. Audubon himself lied about the circumstances of his birth, claiming to have been born in Louisiana. Whatever his circumstances of his birth, his beliefs and actions speak for themselves.
…John James Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti) in 1785, the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and sugar plantation owner. The identity of his mother is in dispute; she could have been a French chambermaid named Jeanne Rabine, but there is compelling evidence that she was a mixed-race housekeeper named Catherine “Sanitte” Bouffard. At the age of 5—which coincided with the beginnings of the Haitian Revolution—Audubon was sent to Nantes, France and was raised by his father’s wife, Anne. There, John James Audubon took an interest in birds, nature, drawing, and music.
So it is possible that I casually read such a news item somewhere along the way about his ancestry and it stuck in my mind. But I have the nagging feeling that may not be the reason, that I am confusing Audubon with a Black naturalist whose name has slipped my mind.
Solomon G Bown, perhaps? Whilst lacking a formal education, “Brown was considered a Renaissance man, indeed, he was so widely respected for his many accomplishments that he was known as Professor Brown. While working for [the second Smithsonian Secretary, Spencer Fullerton] Baird, he educated himself in the field of natural history. He illustrated maps and specimens for many of Baird’s lectures, as well as his own talks on topics such as ‘The Social Habits of Insects,’ and delivered them to church organizations and civic groups. Not only did he excel as a naturalist, but he was an illustrator, lecturer, philosopher, and poet” (Solomon Brown: First African American Employee at the Smithsonian Institution).
blf,
Thanks for that information about Brown. While I was glad to learn of him, his name did not ring a bell and so I do not think I was confusing him with Audubon.
I dunno. I don’t have a problem with renaming the Audubon Naturalist Society or whatever. I just question what things we do/believe today that will be viewed as abhorrent 200 years from now. Will unimpeachable people today, maybe who become namesakes of new, charitable organizations, be removed as namesakes because they ate the flesh of animals, or supported global capitalism (both things that I think are seen as terrible by a small minority of people alive today, but which could quite feasibly become near-universally opposed after another century…or less)?
Also…I wonder if it really matters. People know what the Audubon Society is…but do they know anything about the person after whom it’s named? I certainly didn’t. Nobody knows who this guy is, what he believed, or whether he was good or bad or somewhere in the middle (by today’s standards…by 1820s standards, he was probably fairly progressive). Moreover, the organization bearing his name has considerable name-recognition, and if they change the name, it will take time to build that up again, time in which they will be less able to do the good things they do (current donors will probably get notice of the change and be able to keep giving, but it will be harder to attract new ones, at least initially). So this symbolic change will have real-world implications. Maybe those are outweighed by the symbolism, the idea that “we don’t condone white supremacy and slavery and we’re acting to show everyone that.”
But then, I feel that Audubon is being unfairly singled-out here. There is no realistic chance of similarly targeting countless American founding fathers, nearly all of whom gladly upheld the institution of slavery (most owning slaves themselves) AND the patriarchy, and many of whom used science to justify their bigotry -- Americans hold these historical figures up as heroes, practically deities, having been brainwashed into thinking that these men “invented freedom” or whatever. So part of me sees this kind of move as pandering, a way to say “we’re on your side” in a world where real, substantive change is practically impossible due to an extremely conservatively-designed political system (cynical me thinks that it was made this way deliberately to give the rich and powerful a chance to keep their power even as the economic, social, and political beliefs of the rest of the country shifted) and record polarization. Changing a name is easy. Changing peoples’ minds is hard. Changing the constitution is pretty much impossible.
I really do hope that some things we accept today as normal will become unthinkably horrifying in the future. It just can’t be that we got everything just right and there is no place for further moral growth for humanity.
OOps, I messed up the quote. First paragraph is from VolcanoMan (@3).
[I corrected it-MS]
The way I see it is that at the time Audobon was alive and working, most people thought the way he did. Just like with any mistake, at some point as the years went by, people realized that was not a good way to think, they changed their minds, and they are trying to correct their mistakes. It’s like if you are driving and you should have turned left at Albuquerque… but you turned right instead. To keep on going left, because you already went so far, won’t get you where you need to go. You have to turn around and go back if you want to arrive at the destination.
@VulcanoM: “I just question what things we do/believe today that will be viewed as abhorrent 200 years from now.”
1) If I’d know I’d try to change them.
2) I have no problems with people in the 23rd Century who think the things I do/believe abhorrent.
mnb0 @ # 7: I have no problems with people in the 23rd Century who think the things I do/believe abhorrent.
You implicitly assume moral progress here.
Assuming humans survive 200+ years and retain some reasonably accurate information about us and our times, I couldn’t blame them a bit for gnashing their teeth at our consumption of fossil fuels and other natural resources, etc.
Given present trends, they may just as well rage that we allowed witches/LGBTQ&cs/fornicators/atheists to survive -- in which case I will certainly curdle their milk and send black cats across their paths to the utmost of my ability.
#7 mnb0
You would??
Just to be clear, are you saying that you’d abandon a behaviour that you believe is not abhorrent, if that non-abhorrent thing fell out of favour with the majority?