Thursday, May 29, 2014

Rosa Parks



Born on February 4, 1913, in Alabama, to a teacher and a carpenter, Rosa was an ordinary child, in poor health, separated parents, shy, but still an ordinary girl. Married in 1932 to a barber, working as a hospital aide or as a domestic worker, she was nothing more than an ordinary woman. Rosa was an ordinary Black woman in the middle of the White domination. Rosa was a run-of-the-mill victim of racism and segregation. Rosa was a speck of dust in a white paradise… until she said no.

Well known all around the world as one of the most influential and iconic figures of the 20th century ; holder of the Spingarn Medal, the Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, the Presidential   Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal ; the only thing she has wanted was to be considered as an ordinary woman. Actually, she was used to feeling like an ordinary woman. But she has become a heroine.

Once and for all, Rosa wanted to stand up. So she kept on sitting. Once and for all, Rosa wanted to know what rights she had as a human being. But she had none. So she said no: she said no to injustice, no to inequality, no to inhumanity, no to disrespect, no to contempt. Rosa said no to the White man who was telling her to give up the seat she had paid for, in a bus, on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery. Rosa said no to the man who was asking her to submit.

She decided to remain a human being, as she was told to feel like an animal. She decided to be brave and she was arrested. She decided to be brave and she lost her job. Against all odds, she decided to be brave on behalf of millions of suffering Black people. And it has paid off. She has become a symbol of freedom. She has become an international icon of resistance to racial discrimination. She had no children, but she has become the “mother of the freedom movement”.

Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005. She has a posthumous statue of herself in the United States Capitol’s National Sanctuary Hall, a street of Detroit bearing her name, and several songs relating her story. But the only thing she wanted was to be seen as an ordinary human being.

Article by Anne Plassart

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

How and why do we write history? Introduction by PN

Allegory of the truth, time and history by Goya (1800)

How does a society consider its past? We have seen how “cultural heritage” is not just “old buildings”; physical vestiges of the past are made use of by people today: these vestiges have symbolic value, they are used for instance to remember or even commemorate events. How we preserve and use those vestiges, how we perpetuate or reinvent traditions, says a lot about what a society is like today, its values, and the power relations between individuals and groups.

How historians, novelists, journalists, diarists write about the past also says a lot about the world view of a people today. Why do we recall certain events (often very partially) at certain times? Because it is useful for someone to do so? Why do we “forget” others? Because it is necessary?

Historic events are not set in stone but have changing meaning for society (it is a social construct). We are going to carry out an historiographic study of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA using the  articles and references contained in this blog. The idea is to show that there have been different interpretations (reinterpretations) over time of the Civil Rights Movement; we will try to understand why it has been perceived differently at different periods.

What historians choose to study, what aspects he brings out (discovers), the way he presents the research results (popular, erudite?), what use is made of the discoveries, the way historical “fact” is communicated (e.g. in graphic novel form), is underpinned by ethical and political considerations. 

Historians, for the most part, try to give objective, complete, honest accounts of past events (i.e. adopting a scientific approach). But historians do not just satisfy their intellectual curiosity; some are committed intellectuals (politically engaged). They feel they have to let others know their opinion on past events (the “truth” from their point of view). Their job is to be the “memory” of a people (“My job is to tear down the veil on facts too terrible to mention”, dixit Toni Morrison)...

Sometimes, the knowledge and opinion of historians is sought to resolve contentious legal cases (e.g. in the trials of suspected Nazi war criminals), or to contradict revisionist accounts of the Shoah, or to remind a nation of its attitude and behavior during a certain period of its history (e.g. collaboration under the Nazi occupation of France, or torture on prisoners carried out by the French army during the Algerian war).

Historians are sometimes consulted as regards commemorations; what and how should events be remembered? Also on issues of national contrition; should a country apologize for a nation’s past attitudes (as regards for example slavery or the Vel d’Hiv events).

The relation of a social group to its past is one of questioning: what were we like, what have we become? It is also one of selecting: we focus on past events that justify present preoccupations, i.e. we have a selective (collective) memory. Finally, it is one of simplification; the past is often depicted as “glorious” to prove the superior values of a people today, or it is even sometimes invented to give historic “depth” to a region’s identity (cf. the “invention” of the history of the Vendée region in France).

The past is simplified in order to make it easier to understand, so that it becomes a part of a collective identity; it needs to be spectacular, associated with particular places, key figures, decisive moments… Historians know that history is more complex than that; many people took part in or witnessed an event, commented it afterwards, in fact turned it into an “event”. Most people have a simple (simplistic) take on “the past”; for them, “history” is “great men” and a few action-movie-like heroic events that prove we were/are the best!

The historian’s job is to try and understand and to explain what happened in the past; he is not a moralist, but the knowledge he elaborated can be used by intellectuals, politicians, people, to think about attitudes, opinions and moral positions, not just in the past, but today. The way history is studied and presented is never neutral; school textbooks in particular are often subject to controversy because they are instrumental in shaping national attitudes.

Memory (individual, family, or a social group’s memory) is not history (though an historian can make use of memory in his studies) because memory is selective (things are “forgotten”) and more to do with feelings than fact. Collective memory (i.e. a shared - but partial - knowledge of the past) is contradictory (individuals do not always agree on “what happened”) and, as said, selective. A good example of this is depicted in the 1969 documentary “Le chagrin et lapitié” by Marcel Ophuls. It is about how the French suffered after the Second World war from a sort of collective amnesia (described by the author Henri Rousso as the “syndrome de Vichy”) as regards the four years of German occupation; most people described themselves as victims or resistance fighters rather than collaborators…

Collective as well as individual memory is a sort of dialogue with ourselves, a reflection on who we think we are and on how we have changed. The historian can contribute through his “objective” reconstruction of the past to this introspection. He sometimes reminds us of unpleasant truths about who we were. In France, political leaders (Presidents) have since the 1990s made it their duty to remind the French of the darker side of their past: colonization, slavery, collaboration, torture during the Indo-Chinese and Algerian wars, etc. Special days and places have been designated (“lieux de mémoire”) as means of commemorating those past somber events and to maintain a collective conscience (based on honesty and transparency).

Most historians seek the truth, but they know it can never be the whole picture; it is very difficult to know "what happened" exactly, to understand and explain it. Sources are incomplete, partial. The historian is not always able to give a complete picture, because he tries to show or prove something in particular. He has a particular way of looking at things; he might be a feminist, a Marxist, a specialist in one type of historical analysis or other, etc. A past event will be interpreted according to prevalent research objectives and methods. These are conditioned by the preoccupations and values of the society in which the historian works. Howard Zinn, describing his work as an historian in writing “A People’s History of the USA” said: “I knew that a historian… was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian”.

Writing history: Booker Wright, rediscovered hero of the Civil Rights Movement

Friday, November 30, 2012

Memorial to MLK

Misquote... Read the Christian Science Monitor article!
Meaning of the memorial according to Clayborne Carson
Has the dream come true with Obama?
MLK memorial in Washington DC (Wikipedia article)

Vincent & Hugues imagined the speech given at the inauguration in 2011 of MLK’s memorial…

“Thank you for being here to celebrate the great man that was Martin Luther King. He was many times criticized for being indecisive, but, in the end, we owe him so much. Today, thanks to his determination, the lives of Afro-Americans have changed for the better, forever.

How can we describe this legend in just a few words? Perhaps, just by saying his name? It reminds us of those dark days when the Black community was oppressed and excluded from society, shunned despite its contribution to the building of this great nation… His name reminds us of the fight against that oppression and of the fight for recognition; we will never forget how MLK showed us the way!
We have built this memorial to symbolize three aspects of his fight: justice, democracy and hope.

He never hesitated to claim Justice even though the risks were high; not even the bars of his prison in Birmingham could silence his call for justice. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and this led to the first important victory for the Civil Rights Movement: the desegregation of the bus company in Montgomery in December 1956 after many weeks of boycott by Blacks. After this event, MLK never stopped protecting and helping those who fought for equality. We have chosen to represent the balance of justice by placing this stone statue near to another element: water.

Democracy is a beautiful flower that blooms throughout most of the world. Democracy gives a voice to the people. MLK spoke for the people; “I have a dream” he said in Washington in 1963. This was the dream of all those present. He united the voices of the people so that those in the Government would hear. The Kennedys heard, LBJ heard, and the Civil Rights Movement gained in importance. Democracy is symbolized on this monument with a pure and solid stone; it is a signal to the generations to come that only democracy can be the foundation of a just society.

MLK also embodied hope. He first gave hope as a father and as a preacher; he told his own children that despite what they were told, their skin color wouldn’t prevent them from going to heaven. Then he gave hope through his speeches and his actions to all African-Americans eager for justice and equality. The trees around this memorial symbolize this aspect of MLK’s fight. A tree is strong; it can survive harsh weather, needing only water and light. A tree symbolizes life. MLK was strong as a tree; he gave us hope of a better life. That hope has lived on after him.”

Feel the shame...

Listen to an interview of Toni Morrison!

You don’t lie about the history, the story of slavery in America... The story of the Civil Rights Movement in America has been mangled, cleaned up, polished and made sanitary, it’s as though people looked away... so I thought it was time not to blink, to look at it the way it really it was…

Historiography?


Kids have a dream too!