||| FROM DOUG MARSHALL |||
As we conclude this year’s Black History Month, we find ourselves in an era in which some people are arguing that the painful parts of black history should not be taught in public schools, because that history might be “divisive” or make some students feel bad about themselves — while also grumbling about removing statues of Confederate heroes, arguing that they are “part of our history and our heritage”.
The other side of that debate argues that the Confederate statues are, themselves, teaching a divisive aspect of history, which can make some people feel bad because of the history they represent. The painful parts of black history should not be “whitewashed,” they say, but it should be taught without statues which could help illustrate that part of our history.
At least this debate, with all its contradictions, challenges our values and forces us to think about the really hard issues that black history so often presents. Perhaps we need to learn more painful history, and see more painful statues, rather than less of both. History ain’t just about feel-good!
It’s important to distinguish history from myths that help us understand our cultural values. The myths of history have their place. I feel good about the story that the Father of Our Country could not tell a lie, and ‘fessed up to chopping down the cherry tree. To historians who would rain on my parade, I say it’s wonderful when that myth is retold, because it honors truth telling.
It is NOT truth telling to hide painful history! During grade school, I had a book for kids about George Washington. While visiting my mom a few years ago, I reread that old biography and noticed that Mr. Washington had “servants.” “Slaves” were never mentioned. Recalling my earlier tour of the slave quarters at Mt. Vernon, I realized I had grown up with “history” that excluded a lot of black history.
Now, in my advanced years, I find black history fascinating. The activities of the KKK in Washington and Oregon were eye-openers. And did you know that at one time, it was illegal for a “negro or mulatto” to live here in the San Juans? From 1846-1853, these islands were part of Oregon Territory, which had enacted “whites only” laws.
Painful as that history is, it doesn’t need to be divisive. It sure doesn’t make me feel bad about myself. Instead, it has given me empathy and understanding, and new heroes – like the 65 year old George Bush who guided five families across the Oregon Trail in 1844. He had worked in this region years earlier for the Hudson’s Bay Company, but arrived to discover newly adopted race laws in the Willamette Valley.
So this prosperous free black man led his party north to Puget Sound, where they founded the first permanent American settlement north of the Columbia, at Tumwater. Bush became so highly respected that in 1853, the new Washington Territorial Legislature petitioned Congress to confirm his ownership of his 640 acre farm, ownership which had been illegal when his farm was still part of Oregon Territory.
And Congress did just that. Wow!
There are many sad-but-uplifting stories like that, and many which are simply sad. All of them deserve to be told. Black History Month motivates us to tell those stories.
Right on Doug! Thanks for a thoughtful and nondivisive look at the issue.
Well said, Doug!
“History ain’t just about feel-good!” is a critical but all-too-often missing piece of the study of history. Acknowledging that terrible things happened in the past (and continue to happen in the present) is essential to making sure more terrible things don’t happen in the future. As is often quoted, “Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Let’s endeavor to tell a more honest, wholistic story about history and leave out the myths like the chopping down of cherry trees, no matter how “edifying” the myth may be. At my advanced age, I am much more interested in hearing and passing on a clear overview of history, from many perspectives, than I am in furthering a “story” that deifies a few “founding fathers” at the expense of historical reality/accuracy.
Were there remarkable men that pledged their lives, honor and fortunes to the cause of liberty? Absolutely. Were they plaster saints? No way. Were there other voices and points of view that ‘history’ has forgotten or ignored? You bet. The old cliche that, “History is written by the victors.” is not wrong. Some attempts to rebalance the scales might appear to be going too far to some of us, but consider the point of view of those who were written out of history by the ‘victors’. Let the pendulum swing. Eventually it always settles in the middle.
Beautiful Messaging – well written. WORDS of WISDOM (indeed).
Thanks Doug! I always get a little mad when Black History Month comes up, and you named why. So much of black history needs to be revealed and made common knowledge. One of my fave classes in my M. Div. program was an HIV/AIDS Ministry class where the instructor clearly chronicled the intentional, slowly scaffolded plans to dismantle healthy black communities, piece by piece-close the fire stations, disrupt economy, basically burn the villages down and put the residents in the Projects, allowing the continued dismantling of any semblance of physical and mental health to dissolve. (Think parallels with the Indigenous peoples of this continent-and other places in the world-this has been going on in Tibet for decades) In my prison work, as we talked and learned the real black history from the personal stories of all ages of black men, it was so very clear that the dominant culture’s spin on history has excluded the intentionality of oppression. One of the unseen sides of ‘Law Enforcement’ is their involvement in “Outlaw Reinforcement” such as the war on crack and selling guns to street gangs. Maybe not everyone can handle books like “Caste” but IMO vids like “Crips and Bloods-Made in America” should be mandated viewing by everyone because it is a myth-busting expose into the power of media perspective. I better stop there for, but thanks a bunch.
One of the truths about history is that there is often more than one version of events that happened. Different people can view the same event differently. That’s why it’s important to be able to understand and appreciate different perspectives than our own.