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Missouri Historical Society November 8, 1996/histbgam @ 1995 by Julian Bond
Heros, Hope and History
I am the grandson of a slave. That fact, which I share in common with many, many others, makes me heir to and product of American history, a history which is as contentious today as when it was first being made.
My grandfather's life began in 1863. Because he was born in Kentucky, freedom did not come to him until the 14th Amendment became law in 1865. His personal history, like mine, is not unique
His slave mother had been given away as a wedding present to a new bride, and when that bride became pregnant, her husband - my great-grandmother's owner, exercised his right to take his bride's slave as his mistress. That union produced two children, on of them my grandfather.
Now that slave's grandson teaches at the university founded by slave owner Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, teaching young Americans about the modern day struggle from human liberty. That struggle has its roots in Jerreson's words more than his deeds, and its parallels in my gradfather's membership in a transcendent geertion - that body of black women and men born in the 19th Century in servitude, freed from slavery by the civil war, determined to make their way as free women and men.
My students are modern young women and men, filled with the
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cynicism and despair of their age. For them, these are the worst of times, and my daily documentation of a harsher and more oppressive past does not always convince them that these days are better than the days they study with me.
I teach them about a more recent transcendent generation than my grandfather's. They learn about a generation born in segregation in the 20th Century, freed from racism's restraints through their own efforts, determined to make their way as free women and men.
One of my tasks is to demonstrate the democratic and optimistic nature of the movemnt. By aiming a microscope at the mass, I help my students discover unknown heroes and heroines. I hope to demonstrate the confidence and sense of possibility which was the movement's engine. By giving voice to the hopefuleness of earlier generations who faced resistance and oppression my students have never known, and will never know, I hope to make heroism more available, more attainable to a generation inclined to see through a glass darkly.
I want my students to learn history, heroes, and hope.
Preserving and interpreting the civil rights past requires acknowledgement that the movement was made, not by a few, but by many.
It requires that they have available, in texts and videos, in libraries and museums, the materials and artifacts and interpretation which will allow them freedom to make informed judgments about the past, the present, and our common future.
"History," as the Historical Society notes, "is a process
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critical for our future."
"Citizens ... have rights to impartial justice impartiality administered, equality of opportunity, freedom from threats of physical violence, and secure enjoyment of the results of their labor."
These values are precisely what the Southern civil rights movement sought.
For those of us who teach modern American history, these last several years have been filled with anniversaries which make welcome books upon which history can be hung to guide our reinterpretation of the past.
This year, 1996, is the 100th anniversary of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision which wrote the pernicious doctrine of "separate but equal" into law.
Last year, 1995, was the 30th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march which capped a long campaign for federal protection of black voting rights; in 1965, Alabama Governor George Wallace was the march's target; last year, he greeted their triumphal reactment.
The summer of 1994 marked the three-decade anniversary of Freedom Summer, '64; over 200 of the summer's volunteers, now middle aged, gathered in Jackson for a reunion.
1993 was the 30th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington, then the largest gathering ever to demand civil rights, the moment when Martin Luther King, Jr. told the nation of his dream.
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These anniversaries of events in the recent past are of special benefit to movement historians. They provide a handy platform from which retrospectives can be launched, and a proper distance from which to look back upon an event with suitable detachment.
They handily regulate the separation of yesterday from the present while providing formal opportunity for rumination and self-examination, an opportunity to ask new questions or provide fresh answers to old ones.
Yet in our glorification of the past, we often bemoan the present day reality. From the present we look backward and see the modern civil rights movement as heroic, with King in the leading role. I want to discuss King as hero, first in the larger context, and specifically in his role in Birmingham 30 years ago.
By regarding King and the civil rights movement as heroic, we miss the reality of each. Each becomes more - and less - than they actually were, robbing today's lesser mortals of any ability to duplicate history's heroism today.
So let me first examine the notion of heroes - who they were yesterday and are today, why we require them, and how we explain them to generations who did not know them as we did.
Carlyle wrote: "Hero worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among mankind."1
Closer to our own times, that wise sage Ronald Reagan told us, "Heroes may not be braver than anyone else; they're just braver five minutes longer."2
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