Equality in Living History: Two Women Who Changed the Park Service at Antietam

Living history — a planned demonstration of a period skill, in reproduction clothing and with reproduction equipment — is one of the ways the National Park Service teaches visitors. Between 1981 and 1993, two challenges at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland pushed the whole agency to confront how it had been treating the women who took part.

What “living history” means

Terms were different then. A demonstration was a modern person showing a skill; costumed living history was often taken to mean first-person portrayal of a specific historical person, re-creating the past, and was often confused with re-enactment.

Largely because of the two cases below, Park Service policy now treats living history as an educational demonstration that does not try to re-create history. This third-person approach is standard at Antietam and many other parks; first-person portrayal is rare. The Park Service’s interpretation policy puts it this way: living history “will not attempt literally to recreate the past but will provide interpretive and educational impressions in as authentic a manner as possible.” Battle re-enactments, with opposing lines and simulated casualties, are banned in all parks.

Case 1: Pat Lammers and the cannon crew

Pat Lammers joined Antietam as a seasonal park technician in May 1980. Her favorite work was historic weapons demonstrations — firing black-powder rifles and cannon — and programs on Civil War artillery and on women soldiers and spies. Women had been firing cannon and rifles at Antietam since the mid-1970s, and in 1981 most demonstrations there were led by seasonal employees, all of them women.

That year Jerry Russell, national chairman of the Civil War Roundtable Association, complained to Park Service Director Russell Dickenson that women were performing artillery demonstrations at Antietam; in his view women could not portray soldiers in living history. Dickenson agreed, writing that “accuracy is mandatory in living history” and that “the use of women in period military uniform violates that basic tenet.” He proposed using women only in Park Service uniforms and promised policy changes. Russell urged his members to complain to Antietam’s superintendent, Virgil Leimer.

From 1982, women at Antietam were no longer assigned to the cannon crew or to black-powder rifle demonstrations. Lammers, the only woman among the park’s three seasonal interpreters that year, found it humiliating to be barred from the demonstrations while still being made to clean the weapons afterward.

The complaint

In July 1982 Lammers refused the order to demonstrate in a Park Service uniform and leather gauntlets, and filed a discrimination complaint under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her reasons were practical as well as principled. Safety rules required black-powder demonstrators to wear long-sleeved, natural-fiber, period-accurate clothing, because synthetics like those in the short-sleeved summer uniform can melt onto skin; and the gauntlets made the fine handling of the weapons almost impossible.

The complaint was accepted in February 1983. In her deposition that June, Lammers argued that she gave demonstrations, not first-person living history — she wore a historical uniform but never spoke as a character — and that on so small a seasonal staff, barring women from any duty would give hiring officials a reason to prefer men.

The day after her deposition, Dickenson drafted new guidelines endorsing third-person interpretation. Issued in 1986 as the interpretation guideline NPS-6, they said the Park Service was “interpreting the past, not recreating it,” and that the accuracy that mattered was in the information presented — “not with the authenticity of the individual’s race, ethnic background, or their sex.” Similar complaints from women, Native American and Asian American employees at other parks had fed into them too.

The complaint was settled that July, with no one admitting fault. Women could again run Antietam’s cannon demonstrations in soldiers’ uniforms, as their job descriptions required. Interpreters had to tell visitors that some women had fought in the Civil War disguised as men, including at Antietam, and that primary sources supported it — and to announce before each firing that the program was a demonstration, not living history. Nearly forty years later, Lammers still looked back on it as a victory she savored.

Case 2: Lauren Cook and the field hospital

In August 1987 Lauren Cook, an experienced re-enactor, came to Antietam as a volunteer with the 21st Georgia Volunteer Infantry for an event on the aftermath of the battle, which staged a field hospital to show Civil War medicine. The unit’s agreement called for at least ten members to play unarmed wounded soldiers and six women to play local women.

Cook came dressed as a fifer, intending to portray a woman disguised as a soldier, as she had done at least a dozen times before — seven of them at Park Service events. What happened next is disputed. One ranger said visitors had reported a woman in a poor-quality Confederate uniform, and that she was recognizable as a woman. Cook maintained, then and decades later, that neither ranger realized she was a woman until they saw her leave the women’s restroom. She recalled being told to change into a period dress or modern clothes, or leave; the ranger recalled telling her that her character — an unwounded musician carrying a rifle — was not part of the program.

The ranger took Cook, her husband and the unit’s leader, Dave Pridgeon, to Superintendent Rich Rambur. Staff said Cook refused to follow policy; Pridgeon said no reason was given beyond her sex. Told again to change or leave, Cook left, returning the next day in a civilian woman’s dress. A week later she told Chief Ranger Ed Mazzer she would complain to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Then nothing, until March 7, 1990, when Rambur wrote to Pridgeon criticizing the unit’s performance: the park had agreed to ten infantrymen and several women playing local women, he wrote, but the unit had brought children and one woman who wanted to play a fifer.

The lawsuit

On February 14, 1991, Cook sued the Secretary of the Interior in federal court, arguing that she had been denied equal protection of the laws under the Fifth Amendment. Her case was simple: more than 400 women are documented as having fought in the Civil War, so why should she be barred from portraying one? The department denied wrongdoing and said its staff had acted for historical accuracy. Cook had turned down an apology “for the miscommunication” shortly before filing. Her lawyer, Clint Bolick, a civil rights attorney, took the case without charge.

Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided Cook v. Babbitt on March 17, 1993, ruling that Antietam’s policy of “categorically barring women from portraying male soldiers” was unconstitutional discrimination. He did not apply the ruling to the whole Park Service, but encouraged it to write a new living history policy. Decisive were the written agreement and Rambur’s 1990 letter, neither of which said what sex the soldier portrayers had to be. The judge also noted that staff had approached Cook herself instead of the unit’s leaders, as was normal practice — a further sign she had been singled out because she was a woman.

An artillery demonstration team of women and men at the 2023 anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. NPS / Matt Borders.

The legacy

Because Pat Lammers and Lauren Cook stood up for their rights, the Park Service revised its policies. Employees and volunteers can now take full part in historic weapons and living history programs at Antietam and other parks, regardless of race, ethnic background or gender.

Sources

Based on "Equality in Living History," by Josh Howard, Antietam National Battlefield, National Park Service, drawing on his research toward an Antietam administrative history, produced through an agreement with the Organization of American Historians; rewritten in hubnx’s own words. The source names the director as “Russel Dickenson,” the lawyer as “Clint Bolic” and the secretary as “Bruce Babbit,” says the suit named Babbitt in 1991, and calls the 1986 guideline Director’s Order 6 (its own footnote gives NPS-6); these are corrected here.