Re-membering Slavery in the Arkansas Legislature

Mike Carter of Arkansasbusiness.com reports that the Arkansas House Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs rejected a standard symbolic resolution congratulating Barack Obama on his historic victory this morning. By a vote of 11-6, the committee failed to recommend HR1003 by Rep. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff…after some Republican law makers (Rep. Dan Greenburg, R-Little Rock, and Rep. Ed Garner, R-Maumelle) took issue with language describing “the United States as a nation founded by slaveowners.”

"The Old South"--a depiction of freemen in northwest Arkansas.

The debate centered on competing historical viewpoints. Flowers argued that the language was not meant to be offensive, and that anyone who found it so didn’t have a clear understanding of the history of the nation and the role slavery played.

Greenburg and Garner countered that while slavery was a terrible part of the country’s history, to suggest that all the founding fathers were slaveowners and that the country was founded on the institution of slavery, while ignoring those who fought slavery from the beginning, was not accurate and potentially divisive.

As both a Southerner and historian I think there is no denying that most of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, slave holders and that this great nation was founded and built using a large amount of slave labor…The struggle over slavery’s memory has been almost as intense as the struggle over slavery itself. If you’d like to check out the trajectory of “re-membering slavery” check out “Slavery as Memory and History” by Ira Berlin on the Library of Congress website.

Capitol Round-up: Resolution Congratulating Obama Rejected in Committee

This would be a great example of why we need to continue to teach Arkansas history in public schools.

Race, Katrina and Public Intellectuals

Last night I attended SAU’s Kathleen Mallory Lecture. The series was named in honor of a long-time Professor of English and Foreign Languages at SAU who has been instrumental in the National Writing Project program, the Youth Writing Festival hosted by SAU among other important contributions.

The lecture series is meant to bring scholars working in the fields of African diasporic and African-American studies to Southern Arkansas University to share their scholarship with students and members of he greater community. . .sounds right up my alley, eh?

At any rate, this spring’s lecture was a breath of fresh air…Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell (Assoc. Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University) provided a thoughtful analysis of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with an emphasis on how the actual disaster was not the hurricane, but the structural inequalities that the hurricane highlighted–a long history of environmental racism, differential access to transportation, resources and political voice.

Even better is the fact that Dr. Harris-Lacewell kept a great sense of humor in her presentation that made discussions about race a bit more approachable for those who are usually uncomfortable with the topic…Dr. Harris-Lacewell is a fine example of what I think a public intellectual should look & sound like…and exactly what I needed to feel a bit more excited about SAU.

Kudos to her, kudos to the Kathleen Mallory series and kudos to SAU.

Find out (a lot) more about Dr. Harris-Lacewell at:
http://www.melissaharrislacewell.com/

Of course, I like her even more when I see that she shares my inexplicable urge to put my whole life on the web.

White/Black America, White/Black Obama

A month or so back I watched Tavis Smiley’s Black State of the Union on CSPAN…I watched Al Sharpton and (the always cool) Cornel West warn Barak Obama that he cannot count on Black America’s vote…he had to demonstrate his loyalty (or his worthiness?) through paying attention to the needs of the African-American community. In short, he was not necessarily “the” African-American candidate (Obama was not at the event in Williamsburg, VA as he was announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Il…Lincoln’s birth place…I’m sure that contributed to some of Sharpton’s tone).

Following that event, media debate about Obama’s “blackness” (or at least “African-American-ness“) ensued. I saw it on CNN, I read about it in The Nation and I heard it on Air America. Obama’s mother is white, his father in Kenyan and (according to Chris Matthews on MSNBC) he thus has “no history of Jim Crow, no history of anger, of slavery.” Top it off with the fact that (according to Senator Joseph Biden) Obama is “articulate and bright and clean” and we magically have a debate about how “white” Obama is…this is, of course, complicated by past discussions about how “black” Bill Clinton was (does this extend to Senator Clinton?)

Air America’s Rachel Maddow pointed out the contradictions on a brief CNN appearance–on one hand Obama has to prove he has broader America’s interests at heart if he is to become a mainstream candidate…on the other hand if he does not pay enough attention to black issues he may alienate African-American voters (as Sharpton warns).

Here I am reminded of Carter Woodson’s discussion of the tensions between black folks who have been educated and “equipped for a life in White America”. . .”he must be both social and bisocial at the same time. While he is a part of the body politic he is in addition to this a member of a particular race… While serving his country he must serve within a special group (Woodson 1933:4). This dilemma seems the same for Obama as it was in 1933 for Woodson (In fact, a recent lecture at SAU by Dr. Walter Kimbrough, President of Philander Smith College, touched upon this tension as well).

First, let’s dispense with the”Obama without history” quote (with all apologies to Eric Wolf). Were Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo (both immigrants and, in the case of the Guinean Diallo, without a history of American racial prejudice) asked for their papers before they were shot and/or tortured by the police? One’s own identity is only a part of the manifestations of American racism. The problem is not with Obama, but with the cultural memories and expectations of Joe Biden Chris Mathews and, perhaps, Al Sharpton.

Patricia Williams takes this point in an unexpected direction when she points out (in The Nation of March 5th) that “at a more complex level…American identify is defined by the experience of the willing diaspora, the break by choice that is the heart of the immigrant myth” and African-Americans, by and large, have been excluded from the “essential page of the American narrative” (p.13). Obama is a black American that can be counted among the willing immigrants.

There are lots of discussions about how Obama will “transcend race”…this is usually read as “transcending blackness”…but Obama must also (as Williams alludes to) “transcend” his whiteness and the increasing narrow expectations and contradiction of what makes a leader and “a black leader.”

Class vs. Race

In a post entitled “Ethnographic study: Why the education system fails white working-class children” on :: antropologi.info ::, Lorenz blogs about class as a forgotten issue in our culture (or at least in the educational system in the UK). This post caught my eye as I’ve been writing a synthesis of how archaeologists have dealt with race and class as analytical constructs…I have found myself incorporating elements of John Hartigan’s Odd Tribes, despite that I still attempt to take an deliberate anti-racist stance (and thus attempt to keep race at the center of my work)…I’m still analyzing my theoretical position(s), but you can take a look at the post and see what you think….below is a snippet.

——-
“Our politicians are so obsessed by race that they have forgotten the importance of class”, writes Daily Telegraph journalist Andrew Gimson and points to a new book by anthropologist Gillian Evans called Educational Failure and Working-Class White Children in Britain.

Evans conducted fieldwork in families of boys who were highly disruptive at school. Among other things, she documents the importance of class and institutional class prejudices…read the rest of the post here.

Call to Home….Or Someplace Like Home

Below is a section from Carol Stack’s Call To Home (a narrative-style ethnography/novel about urban African-Americans returning to their southern hometowns)…the passage struck me this afternoon–I can’t imagine why (he said sarcastically).

I come from a small town in Western Tennessee. When I lived there I was considered an intellectual and not quite normal. When I moved to Memphis for college I was considered a rural rube (which I quickly began to identify with and wear as a badge of honor) and, thus, not quite normal…After that, I moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas and Austin Texas…all the time staying in intellectual circles and being the token rural, southern, white boy from a working-class background.

Now I’ve moved to Magnolia….a town very much like the county seat of my home county in Tennessee…I find myself confronting long abandoned feelings and roles….

Not to mention that I’m living 5 hours away from my wife for the foreseeable future.

“Hank spent two more years in Brooklyn. He got over being mad and drove down to visit Billie almost every weekend, but, of course, people still talked, and Billie herself wasn’t always certain where the marriage was heading. A man can get used to city life. Up there he could get his hands on this and that–he could hustle. Down home it was a different story.

Maybe a man could make up his mind, decide to turn his back on what he had acquired a taste for. But the question was, could he get used to the country again, to the South? Could he wait patiently enough for people in Chowan Springs to get used to him again, to be able to trust him? Billie prayed Hank would change…”

More Statues… Denmark Vesey: Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?

Check out this article that appeared yesterday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution…

Here’s a snippet….

“There’s no likeness of him, no record of a word he wrote or said directly, no marked grave. The slave rebellion he allegedly plotted —which would’ve been the largest in U.S. history — was scotched before it happened. Some historians believe there was no plot — that the insurrection said to have called for the murder of every white in Charleston was concocted by white leaders for political advantage. What isn’t disputed: Denmark Vesey, a freed slave, was hanged in 1822 with 34 co-conspirators. “

“So it’s hardly surprising that an attempt to erect a public monument to Vesey in Charleston has become one of the more enigmatic memorial ventures in the monument-happy South.”

For the rest of the article…see George Mason University’s History News Network:
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/28013.html

Slavery & Historical Memory: Penny Lane is in my Ears and in My Eyes; and the Eyes of Texas are Upon You…

Yesterday, the AP posted a brief article that touches upon some sticky issues when it comes to history, race, representation, popular culture and cultural memory.

Associated Press
Liverpool–Penny Lane will keep its name. City officials said Saturday they would modify a proposal to rename streets linked to the slave trade when they realized the road made famous by the 1967 Beatles song was one of them.

The unassuming suburban avenue was named for James Penny, an 18th-century slave ship owner. Liverpool, the Beatles’ northern English hometown, was once a major hub for the slave trade.

“I don’t think anyone would seriously consider renaming Penny Lane,” said city council member Barbara Mace, who has been pressing to get rid of names linked to slavery.

The council plans to talk Wednesday about a plan to rename several Liverpool streets named for slave traders. Some want to honour Anthony Walker, a black teenager murdered in a July 2005 racial attack. Others suggest renaming streets for abolitionists.

How should nations like the UK (& the US) address their history as nations founded on the enslavement and trade of other, racialized human beings? Do we further suppresss our involvementt in the slave trade by “erasing” the fact that we once venerated these traders with street names? On the other hand, should we now honor abolitionist and victims of racial violence in order to show that our positions have changed? And finally, what significance can we give more recent popular culture (i.e., the Beatles song) when it is more recent and more prominent in our cultural memories.

A personal parallel comes to mind. While I was at the University of Texas they were busy attempting to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a statue–the first such statue on any campus in the US. But where to put our MLK statue?

On the prominent South Mall of the UT campus there stands what is commonly known as the “six pack”–a set of six statues that includes four statues of Confederate soldiers and politicians: Jefferson Davis, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, and John H. Reagan.

In 2001, UT’s Graduate Student Assembly formed an ad hoc committee on the South Mall statues. The committee found that many students may find the statues objectionable because of the connection between the Confederacy and the institution of slavery, while many other students may view the statues as symbols of individualism, bravery and state pride, and do not perceive the statues as promoting slavery.

The Graduate Student Assembly recommended that the University’s Office of the President take the following actions:

1. Add new plaques next to each of the South Mall statues, to include historical and biographical information regarding the individuals;

2. Create a new University Commission, consisting of faculty, students and community leaders, to study the presence of Confederate statues and symbols on University property;

3. Construct a statue of Barbara Jordan at a prominent location along the pedestrian-friendly portion of Speedway.

Meanwhile, the MLK statue, which was conceived and financed entirely by the University of Texas at Austin student body, was looking for a home…at the time I recall that some outspoken six-pack critics suggested that we place MLK in the center of the South Mall (symbolically confronting the ex-Confederates), or–even more radically–some suggested that we melt down Robert E. Lee and cast MLK out of his remains (I kinda liked the symbolism behind that one).

In the end, MLK ended up on the East Mall (near Anthropology, facing the LBJ Presidential Library) and not confronting the figures of the South Mall. Further, to my knowledge, no explanatory signs have gone up on the South Mall.

More importantly…I feel that the purpose of the MLK statue was to show that the University of Texas was a progressive institution that valued Dr. King’s vision of a diverse society (not unlike Liverpool’s intent to show that it does not value slave traders)…but Texas’ attempt at a progressive image was undermined in January of 2003, when students defaced the MLK statue by pelting it with raw eggs…and again in August of 2004 when vandals painted MLK with silver paint. Finally a guard had to be placed at the statue in order to protect against vandalism…what does this say about the University of Texas’ REAL position toward Dr. King’s beliefs? What will it say when Liverpool street signs with the name “Anthony Walker” on them go missing? Only time will tell us what Liverpool is made of…

The original AP article can be found here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060710.wxnote10-4/BNStory/Entertainment/home

April 4

As this is the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (04/04/1968), I’ll ask you to take a minute and check out the National Civil Rights Museum which was built in and around the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee–the very place where Dr. King was struck down.

As an ex-Memphian, I do have mixed feelings about the National Civil Rights Museum. First, when I worked at Garrow and Assoc. (an archaeological contract firm in Memphis that was then located across the street from the Lorraine), I witnessed first hand the displacement of many working poor from the premises prior to the creation of the museum…That’s right, leave it to Memphis to kick out poor folks (many of whom were people of color) in order to build a shrine to Dr. King. Click here to check out the 14 year protest of Jacqueline Smith–the last tenant of the Lorraine Motel–and find out why she urges folks to boycott the NCRM.

My second reservation is that the exhibits at the NCRM might lead an uninformed visitor to believe that the Civil Rights Movement stopped when MLK was assassinated (the exhibits end with the room where he spent his last hours and continue across the street in the building from which he was shot). Although, on the other hand, I’ll give them points for their recent inclusion of interpretations of the black power movement (i.e. the Black Panthers and Malcolm X).

These caveats aside, I really do believe in the museum’s general message and mission… so, check them out on the web…or better yet, visit the museum in person…But put your “critical reading” glasses on.

www.negroartist.com

I received an unsolicited e-mail the other day from someone who would rather “keep [his] name and contact information private.” The author of this e-mail explained that he authored and hosted a site– http://www.negroartist.com/

The author went on to explain that:

“This site was developed for everyone to use freely at no charge… in other words I will place an artist, dealer, writer etc. on here at no charge. I directly link to their site or provide their direct contact information.”

As this is the philosophy of our own Project Past web site (although we are a platform for anthropologists, archaeologists & historians), it caught my attention…

Take a look at the site….it is rather busy, but has a good amount of content. For my interest, it not only includes hundreds of links to African-American artists (such as Blue Lady by Kelvin Curry pictured to the right), but it also has quite a lot of content relating to African-American history….including galleries of 19th & 20th century images of African-Americans (including negative popular-culture stereotypes) and hunks of slave narratives.

The site is quite eclectic in its attempts at being comprehensive, but it is a worthwhile endeavor….check it out.

Differing Development in Huston, Dallas & Northwest Arkansas

Tommy Head, a friend and colleague of my wife (and a native of Huston, Texas), sent me a link to a fascinating publication that I would have never found on my own….In the March 2006 issue of Governing Online (a magazine for state and local governments) there is an article entitled “Land Rush: Inner cities are becoming hot places to live. Does government have any business telling developers to keep out?” by By John Buntin (it also contains a GREAT photo essay by the same author, see example below). This article outlines the current situation in Houston’s Third Ward, a traditional African-American enclave that is currently being invaded by artists, young professionals and their “gleaming new urban lofts.”

What fascinated me about this article was 1) the historical similarities between Houston and Dallas and 2) the differing tone about development in these urban areas vs. the tone typically used when covering development in historically rural Northwest Arkansas. In the Governing article, one of its principle figures (Garnet Coleman) takes an entirely negative view of the process….he, in fact, turns class and racial discourse on its head with statements like: “You can tell a neighborhood’s turning, when you see them out at night walking their dogs.”

…Gotta love that

The article, however, does a good job of covering the different understandings and the basic conflict presented by gentrification….Houston’s case is eerily similar to Dallas, where James Davidson, Maria Franklin & I have documented a similar history of space, class, race and urbanization through the historical and archaeological records. Check out a paper we gave to the SHA in 2004, or James Davidson’s chapter in our Household Chores and Household Choices volume.

In a different gear, these two cases present us with a discursive disjuncture when compared against the case of “rural” Northwest Arkansas. Benton County is the fastest growing county in Arkansas and is the 3rd fastest growing county in the United States. The Rogers/ Bentonville/ Springdale/ Fayetteville metropolitan area growth is creating higher demand for residential amenities. Wal-Mart, Tyson, J.B. Hunt and vendors are bringing in upper level management to facilitate their expanding Corporations. These transformations change the structure and feeling of the community in ways not dissimilar to urban transformations, but the public tone is radically different.

But compare for a moment the tone in this Governing article with the overwhelmingly positive tone normally present in articles describing development in Northwest Arkansas.

Building Boom, State economic officials tour Siloam Springs, Deserving of better treatment, Most lifestyle centers aim for urban entertainment, and many many more….