Historical Divisions
The celebration of Martin Luther King makes it clear how difficult it is for many people in our country to look at the fullness of our history. People in power have a vested interest in turning Dr. King’s life and legacy into a shallow dream of a future where race does not matter.
Increasingly, efforts to reduce Dr. King to a few lines from a single speech are being challenged. Scholars and activists are insisting that we look at the deeper lessons and complexities of his life, including his organizing, his sermons, his speeches, writings, press conferences, books, and lectures. They are demanding we put him in the context of his times and that we acknowledge that a movement is always more than an individual. They apply his most bold and radical challenges to today.
The tendencies to distort our history, to narrow its focus and ignore the contradictions were captured by Tim Wise this week speaking at the University of Michigan King Celebration. Wise, sharing the stage with Detroit’s Julia Putnam, talked about the threads of injustice forming a “blinkered historical memory—an inherently flawed understanding of who we are as a nation and who we have always been.” He explained that “At root, much of what ails us is an acute case of misremembering, selective amnesia. He explained “What we remember, what we forget, and what we never learned as people has profound impact on how we celebrate this day and this man and this legacy of which he was such a central part, but also how we understand our current political crisis.”
If we are to become a people capable of mature, moral judgements, of evolving a culture that places people over property, sustainability over greed, and peace over violence, we are going to have to come to terms with the realities of living in a country founded on genocide, slavery, and death. We are going to have to find a way to the future that does not begin with lies.
Facing this reality is not easy, especially for most white Americans. In Where do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. King wrote of the refusal of white people to “re-educate themselves out of their racial ignorance.” He explained, “It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
“These are the deepest causes for contemporary abrasions between the races,” he wrote.
Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.”
Understanding that the present and future are distorted by mis-remembering of history, is why the work of the Black Legacy Coalition is so important. The Coalition is calling on all Detroiters to oppose the decision by the current board of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History to host the exhibit Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty. The coalition is calling on the Museum board to cancel the exhibit and to expand the board membership so that future decisions reflect a greater understanding of the complexities of history.
The Board defends its decision as an opportunity for “constructive conversation” and “seeks to emphasize the perspective of the slaves who endured Monticello rather than that of Jefferson.” One need only look at the title to see this is a lie. Jefferson controlled the lives and deaths of more than 600 human beings on his plantation. There is no paradox nor liberty there.