Title: A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
Author: Jeanne Theoharis
Year of Publication: 2009
Thesis:
Argues that repeating tropes of accidental leadership and commemorating people and events in a one-dimensional way obscures the real work that Civil Rights Movement leaders performed and the civil rights reversals taking place in the moment. Theoharis challenges the notion that these people and events should be situated within a narrow trajectory of American progress by telling a fuller story that shows how deeply unpopular the civil rights movement was. (see: preface, page # forthcoming). Moreover, the idea of moral suasion and correcting the accidental wrongs buries the reality of social, economic, and political inequality as a matter of system policy. Focusing on the stultifying effects of "polite racism" and northern organizing, the larger aims of the movement, young people's roles, the relative unpopularity of the movement, and the role of anger and disruption, offers us valuable advice in terms of the pitfalls and possibilities for sustaining movements.
Time: 1950s-1960s
Geography: U.S., mostly LA, Boston, Detroit, NY (see preface, page # forthcoming)
Organization:
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
- Sets the stage for the myth of slow, patient Black leaders in a larger narrative of American progress, culminating in the election of President Barack Obama and the notion that we are "almost there."
- Allows us to demonize current activists who appear "impatient."
The Histories We Get
- Introduction: The Political Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History and Memorialization in the Present
- King as deeply unpopular at his death
- Reagan initially opposes, but later realizes how useful a King holiday woud be - I think I'm figuring out why much of the symbolic stuff gets done during conservative leadership
- "Reagan’s remarks zeroed in on what would soon become key elements of the national fable of the civil rights movement: that there had been an injustice, but once these courageous individuals freely pointed it out, it was corrected, and so proved the greatness of American democracy." (intro - page # forthcoming)
- Clinton as example - lauds the work of the Little Rock Nine, but signs repressive crime bills and guts welfare
- Bush promoting the idea Parks and the Founders fought together for the same dream. (intro - page # forthcoming)
- Shelby v. Holder (stripping of Voting Rights Act) being debated across from unveiling of Rosa Parks statue (June & Feb, 2013, respectively)
- "Because there is so little African American history in our schools and our public square, any bit that makes it in becomes precious." (intro - page # forthcoming)
- Cites some former CRM members casting shade at BLM protestors & some doing the reverse as well. Neither acknowledge the profundity of the CRM.
The Histories we Need
1. The Long Movement Outside the South: Fighting for School Desegregation in the "Liberal" North
2. Revisiting the Uprisings of the 1950s and the Long History of Injustice and Struggle that Preceded Them
3. Beyond the Redneck: Polite Racism and the "White Moderate"
4. The Media Was OFten an Obstacle to the Struggle for Racial Justice
5. Beyond a Bus Seat: The Movement pressed for Desegregation, Criminal Justice, Economic Justice, and Global Justice
6. The Great Man View of History, Part I: Where Are the Young People?
7. The Breat Man View of History, Part II: Where Are the Women?
8. Extremists, Troublemakers, and National Security Threats: The Public Demonization of Rebels: The Public Demonization of Rebels, the Toll It Took, and Government Repression of the Movement
9. Learning to Play on Locked Pianos: The Movement Was Persevering, Organized, Disruptive and Disparaged, and Other Lessons from the Montgomery Bus Boycott
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Quotes:
From Charles Mills, "White misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion and self deception on matters of race are among the most pervasive mental phenomena of the past few hundred years,” Mills writes. “And these phenomena are in no way accidental, but prescribed . . . which requires a certain schedule of structured blindnesses and opacities in order to establish and maintain the white polity." (preface - page # forthcoming)
On issues with these histories:
"These civil rights mis-histories befuddle us. Inspiring and powerful, they leave us in our feelings of sadness, surprise, awe, and guilt, and in doing so, help to obscure what the movement entailed, how it happened, what it stood for, and how it challenges us today. By diminishing the substance and scope of American racism and what the movement actually involved, these renderings work to maintain current injustice, at times chastising contemporary protesters in ways similar to the ways civil rights activists were demonized, and blind us to how we might do it again." (preface - page # forthcoming)
"National histories provide narratives about the past that ennoble the present." (preface - page # forthcoming)
"I use the word fable purposely, because fables are tales that provide morals on how to live or ways of understanding society." (preface - page # forthcoming)
On what is at stake:
"The scope of its vision has been narrowed in the service of those in power. The diversity of people who conceived, built, and led that struggle has been diminished, in part because their example offers such a potent challenge to where we are today. The extent of their courage has been obscured—because to see their imaginative relentlessness is to understand more fully the power of what they were up against and how they saw it could be changed." (preface - page # forthcoming)
Notes:
People to pay attention to:
- Barbara Johns
- Ruth Batson
- Ellen Jackson
- Marnesba Tackett
- Coretta Scott King
- Gloria Richardson
- Ella Baker
- Mae Mallory
- Milton Galamison
- Claudette Colvin
- Mary Louise Smith
- Albert Cleage
- Johnnie Tillmon
- Julian Bond
- Dan Aldridge
- Pauli Murray
- Anna Arnold Hedgman
- Lawrence Bible
- E.D. Nixon
- Johnnie Carr (from preface)