Re-writing History
The first rule of history is that it is written by people who can write. While most people can write these days, for a very long time the ability was limited to a special class. That is something people forget when they study ancient history.
Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald is a little put out by people attempting to edit history: Beck, Barbour and the art of rewriting history.
I would make a small refinement to one of Mr. Pitts main points – the Civil War was really about the expansion of slavery, not merely its existence. The real conflict was the destruction of the fertility of the soil by the wasteful agricultural practices of 19th century agribusinesses, the plantation owners. They needed new land, and the small farmers who had been immigrating to the United States also needed land.
If you look at the points of major regional conflict in Congress that finally led to the Civil War, you will notice that they are all about the expansion of slavery to new territories, not over attacks on the practice in existing states. You will also notice that it is the South that intruded on “states rights” by insisting on Federal laws like the Fugitive Slave Act.
Like Mr. Pitts, I am truly offended by these people attempting to rewrite my personal history. I was there and I know what was going on in the South and it was a long, ugly struggle to get to where we are today. A lot of people died in the process, and their sacrifices need to be remembered, not distorted.
9 comments
I’m with you Bryan. I’ve lived in the South all my 61 years. I remember very clearly what is was like as a kid. I can still remember serving the blacks through the ‘colored window’ at my folks’ lunchroom. I can still hear the whispers and accusations by neighbors when our black housekeeper was allowed to eat at our table and even worse was allowed to spank us rowdy boys.
I just finished reading Jimmy Carter’s “An Hour Before Daylight” about his growing up in rural Georgia before, during and after the depression and it brought back a lot of memories of how it was in those days.
Even in Texas, which has a unique culture mixing at least Southern and Hispanic practices, I was exposed to a lot of racism.
My parents told me of an incident that happened when I was too young to speak (certainly too young to remember): I unintentionally started an incident in a grocery store with my mother when I reached out and rubbed the curly hair of an African American who worked in the store. I had no idea that that was some people’s idea of a good-luck gesture, and apparently the man I rubbed felt condescended to. My mother soothed frayed tempers in the obvious way, explaining that I was too young even to have heard of the custom, and that it was probably the first time I had been close enough to put my hands on curly hair.
Yes, we had separate public drinking fountains and restrooms. Once, in the same grocery store but a year or so after the first incident, my mother lifted me to the Colored water fountain, and the store manager almost panicked. Mom told him “Relax; it’s the same water.” In retrospect, I am really proud of her for rejecting the trappings of racism. Mom was the daughter of a farmer in central Texas; before her lifetime, her family had kept a few slaves. It would have been easy for her to take a different attitude altogether… but she didn’t.
Oh, and regarding Mr. Barbour’s claims: he is almost exactly my age. In Houston, my high school was integrated in my last year, and I never even met any of the African Americans who transferred there. College was integrated, and I met some of the Blacks who attended, but I can’t claim any real social relationship with them. To put not too fine a point on it, Barbour is almost certainly lying. I think he needs a lesson in more than motes and beams.
Mr. Duff seems to have missed the context of the pronoun in Beck’s assertion that “[W]e were the people that did it in the first place”. The “we” in this context means Mr. Beck and like minded folk. Mr. Beck holds himself and his followers in contrast to those he claims have distorted the civil rights movement from its pure form under MLK.
Unfortunately for Mr. Beck, those Americans in the Civil Rights Era (the ’50s and 60’s) with views that most closely resembled those of Mr. Beck were, in fact, among the strongest voices opposing the civil rights campaign. They also were among those engaging in acts of violence to suppress the peaceful protests.
Segregation was broken by the combination of
i) the non-violent civil disobedience program of the civil rights leaders and their (predominantly black) followers,
ii) the widespread public revulsion upon seeing (on the new nationwide TV news programs) clips showing the brutal suppression of non-violent marchers, and
iii) the intervention by the federal government.
Mr. Duff summarizes the comments of fallenmonk and Mr. Bates as “telling us it was ordinary folks like their parents who did it [broke segregation].” I have read those comments very carefully, and cannot find anywhere that either claims their parent(s) “broke segregation”. Perhaps Mr. Duff will point out precisely where he finds those claims.
Best,
Jim Bales
As they were from New York, my parents lived in fear that my brothers and I were going to say or do something that “violated the code”. I was given firm instructions after I complained that the “colored” signs were a lie, because the water wasn’t colored and rest room was the same as the one labeled “white”.
I went to a segregated high school in Texas in 1962, in Burkburnett outside of Wichita Falls. The Black kids on Base went to Wichita Falls High School. Burkburnett was closer to Sheppard AFB, but they wouldn’t accept Black students. The base was in the Burkburnett district, but they had to ship the Black kids to Wichita Falls.
The base was integrated, like the military, in 1948, but the surrounding communities would not give up segregation. It wasn’t easy constantly shifting between the two worlds on a daily basis.
The threat of violence was always just under the surface and it broke out often enough that people didn’t want to push things.
Bryan,
Another place to find the causes laid out in direct terms are the Declarations of the Causes of Secession issued by the secessionists in SC, GA, TX, and MS.
You will find such unambiguous phrases as:
“[The free states,] by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. … [T]hey have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union” (Georgia)
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.” (Mississippi)
“We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
“That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states. (Texas)”
The secessionists made no bones about the fact that seceded over slavery, and started a war over slavery. We should not do so today.
Best,
Jim
Jim, the Georgia statement corresponds to the long history of conflict over the expansion of slavery into the territories. It also points to the greatest weakness in the South – their wealth was tied to slavery. If they couldn’t find new land to grow cotton and tobacco, their primary cash crops, there would be no point in having this large labor force.
Although the conflict was portrayed as the industrial North versus the agricultural South, it was the South that had major problems feeding and clothing their troops. The South had imported food for years. One of the few ventures that was actually profitable for Abraham Lincoln in his early life was building a flat boat and taking a load of food from Illinois to New Orleans on the Mississippi.
As always, it was the people with money who made the decisions.
Duff, you idiot, you are really distorting what we said… but that’s hardly a surprise. Neither of those statements is even remotely a claim to have “broken segregation.” Both are recountings of incidents in our youth, exceptions to the widespread prevalence of segregation, which was very real.
My parents were unabashed sociopolitical liberals… too bad if that offends you, Duff; a phrase about a rolling donut comes to mind… and were willing to act in racial matters contrary to the undeniable social norms of the time. They never claimed to have changed the norms, only to have done the right thing in spite of them.
Jim Bales’s list of things that “broke” segregation is right on target. Beck’s claim might be true on some other planet, but it’s a baldfaced lie on this one.
In writing about people who distort the words of others, Mr. Duff writes:
“I am one myself”.
Of course, by quoting Mr. Duff word-for-word out of context, I distorted his meaning.
Mr. Duff quoted Steve Bates & fallenmonk word-for-word, then asserted that those words meant something (a claim that their parent(s) “broke segregation”) which cannot be found when those words are viewed in their original context.
So, in the real world (as well as any parallel universes Steve Bates may be occupying in his free time), I must reply: Yes, Mr. Duff, quoting someone word for word out of context can, in fact, distort those words. (I gave an example at the top of this comment.)
I also find it interesting that Mr. Duff opened his first comment on the topic of the civil rights movement in the US (and its portrayal today) with the statement: “I know nothing of this subject which is possibly why I am confused.”
My (unsolicited) advice to Mr. Duff, is:
When one has admitted ignorance on a historical matter, one should take great caution in correcting those who lived through that history. In particular, if the matter is important enough to dispute the remembrances of those who lived the history, then one is obligated to do one’s homework.
One should find the respected histories of the era, read them and learn what happened. From that process one will either discover that those who lived the history were, after all, correct, or one will have a factual basis for disputing those remembrances.
Should Mr. Duff do his homework on the Civil Rights movement he will find that “ordinary people making tiny gestures which were nothing in themselves but when aggregated over a whole society gradually changed the social climate” is not a full explanation of the social changes in the US (and particularly the South) during that period. In particular, I note that the model he proposes does not explain why the changes happened when they did (the 50′ & 60’s). The three factors I cited above were active in that time span and demonstrably changed race relations in the US.
Best,
Jim Bales