Class Reading

I finished a textbook on African-American history. I won’t bother to review it, as it is a textbook. But I will say this: a lot of people are skeptical of the history of specialized groups, claiming that it should be included in a larger narrative if warranted but not studied if it’s not as important as other history. Perhaps if you’ll only read one history book in your life, the basics would serve you well. But that doesn’t make them any more important than other history. Other lives are just as valuable as the so-called great lives. You simply don’t get the full picture by not including the less glamorous parts of history. By focusing on the revolution, for example, you neglect that the nation was built on slavery and a lower class that struggled in the new nation. To focus on the rise of America as an empire is to neglect that the masses were oppressed in the process. Besides, the rest of America has contributed much more to the country’s history than most people realize. It would be ideal if we could have one historical narrative. But we don’t and to include all parts of our history would produce textbooks the size of encyclopedia sets. So specialized history has a deserved place. All history must not be forgotten, and all history is remarkable in its own way.

Class Reading

Cynthia Griggs Fleming’s In the Shadow of Selma is a look at the other side of the Civil Rights Movement, as seen away from the hotspots that have dominated historical studies. She focuses on Wilcox County, Alabama, located near the famed town of Selma. She concludes that the county is still mired in the past, despite its role in the struggle.

Fleming begins with a brief overview of the antebellum history of the county before moving to the era of Reconstruction where, despite initial progress, social roles remained the same as slaves became sharecroppers. She then chronicles a growing education movement until the Great Depression, which ushered in a new relationship between the government and its citizens which set the stage for increased intervention. Fleming then covers the changes brought about by World War II, where returning black soldiers demanded the same rights for which they fought. This combination of events led to the Civil Rights Movement, where Fleming focuses on voter rights and the struggle for equality in education. The last two chapters cover the county since the movement, where change has come slowly, if at all. She concludes that lingering poverty, the result of slavery, is largely to blame for the lack of change. Rural counties like Wilcox are still mired in the past while progress in Southern cities perpetuates the “myth” of a successful Civil Rights Movement.

Fleming largely uses oral sources for her book, which give it the feel of a sociological or anthropological study in addition to history. Certainly, the rural South is often lost to the historical record and In the Shadow of Selma goes along way to correct the oversight. It might not challenge assumptions on the chronology of the Civil Rights Movement, but it does challenge the sometimes accepted notion that the movement successfully occurred in a finite place and time.

Class Reading

Aldon Morris’s The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement is a history of the movement that focuses on its organization, maintaining that the complex organization that developed was the key to the successful momentum of the movement. The book begins well before the accepted beginning of the movement, when the NAACP was the force for slow change but he church was the institutional center of the black community. With the early bus boycotts, most notably in Montgomery, new protest organizations arose, as did the need for an organization of organizations, which became the SCLC. Christianity was further refocused as a social movement.

Morris then traces the growth of the non-violence movement with CORE and so-called halfway houses such as the Highlander Folk School. The sit-in movement began to take shape and a new organization of organizations took shape, SNCC. This form of protest was gradually molded into mass movements culminating with Birmingham.

Morris argues that the movement was successful because of the pre-existing social structure. Certainly, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a central figure, but not the key to understanding the movement. His thesis holds up to scrutiny though it might be generally accepted by now. The writing is a bit stiff and scholarly but The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement is a book worth reading to those who want a deeper look into the movement.

Class Reading

Howell Raines’ My Soul is Rested is the story of the Civil Rights Movement as told by those who participated in it. The book consists strictly of interviews from major and minor figures of the era. Unlike typical collections of primary sources, however, the book is more of a fluid narrative than a collection of remotely related oral histories. This is because Raines arranged the interviews into specific themes that tell the story of the expanding movement as it unfolded. That and the fact that the interviews are superbly engaging make the book an excellent source for understanding the movement. The interviews are at times humorous but mostly both powerfully tragic and inspiring. Perhaps the best way to understand an era is to seek out the primary sources. Most of the time, these are difficult to weave into something both enlightening and accessible. Raines has managed to do just that primarily by knowing when to stand aside and let the story tell itself.

Oops

I saw something on the Today show this morning that would have made me laugh if I wasn’t cringing. Matt Lauer interviewed RFK Jr. At the beginning of the interview he asked Kennedy how his father was doing, then quickly corrected himself and asked how Kennedy’s uncle was doing. You’d expect that from Meredith but not Matt. Kennedy handled it gracefully and said his uncle Ted was doing well. I might have been tempted to answer something like, “He’s been dead for forty years; he was assassinated, but thanks for asking.”