The popular and public history sites examined for this essay reflect a wide range of approaches to public history online. These sites interpret the past in many different ways using popular and scholarly approaches to telling the story. While each of the sites provide insight into the past, the Monticello Online site stands out, among those reviewed, as one that has an interpretation of the past that best reflects current scholarship, as well as challenges the audience to rethink past scholarship.

The History Channel site provides access to a wide-range of articles, resources, discussions, speeches, and videos on history which may be useful to historians; however, it intends to attract a broad general audience by simplifying the stories. While rich in its use of new media and multimedia the site does not provide an indepth analysis of topics. This site primarily presents a wide-range of information, which is light on scholarly interpretations. The Without Sanctuary site provides an extraordinary collection of postcards and photographs of the gruesome and inhumane lynching of African Americans by white citizens during the Jim Crow era in America. Without Sanctuary successfully challenges the audience to see the complicity of ordinary white citizens in these crimes. The site does not, however, incorporate scholarship to interpret or contextualize the significance of what is presented in these important and disturbing photos. The Smithsonian Institution’s History Wired: A Few of Our Favorite Things site is “an experimental program through which you can take a virtual tour of selected objects from the vast collection of the National Museum of American History.” Primarily a museum exhibition containing a wide range of unrelated items; a focused interpretation of the past is not intended here. The George Washington: A National Treasure site centers on the integrity, significance, and popularity of George Washington. While Washington’s significant influence on the formation of the nation has been overshadowed by the popular “chopping down the cherry tree” myth, his contributions have been acknowledged throughout history. This relatively short site provides a basic overview of Washington through the use of his portrait, and allows the user to better understand Washington through a virtual tour of the portrait.. While useful to their intended audiences, these sites differ from Monticello Online in the degree to which they reflect current scholarship or challenge the audience.

Owned and operated by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., Monticello Online focuses on the achievements and world of Thomas Jefferson. The site contains information, activities, and resources on the architecture of Monticello, the man and his accomplishments, the plantation, and the gardens. Missing from this site is a strong scholarly discussion about Jefferson’s patterns of contradiction between his ideologies and actions. While the site does not discuss, in detail, Jefferson’s ideas about African Americans or slavery it does contain new information (interpretations) about his paternity of Sally Hemings’ children. The over two-century debate about the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom he fathered six children, continues and is given more attention in this site. Forced by DNA results, Dr. Daniel P. Jordan, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation officially acknowledges and accepts the findings that link Jefferson to Hemings’ offspring. Despite these findings and the position of the Foundation, the site includes a recent article in the Washington Post which reveals that Thomas Jefferson’s “descendants voted overwhelmingly to bar the kin of slave Sally Hemings from joining the family organization.” Further, a Minority Report responding to the official report, insists that “the findings do not prove that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston [Hemings].” Despite this on-going debate, Monticello Online not only contains the report from the official committee and the Minority response; it also contains “Getting Word” a site which focuses on the descendants of Monticello’s African American community and opens with a quote which reflects recent scholarship and challenges about life at Monticello. Betty Anne Fitch, an African American descendant of Monticello explains, “My grandmother talked about the beauty of Monticello and the ugliness of slavery.” Thus, layered in the pages that celebrate the accomplishments of Jefferson, is a past that reflects recent scholarship leading to new interpretations of an old story. Indeed, some users will find this inclusion challenging.

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