Spike Lee’s definitely got something to say: A review of BlacKkKlansman

After spotting some commercials and a trailer (see below), I was somewhat interested in seeing Spike Lee’s new “joint,” the true story of a black Colorado Springs police officer named Ron Stallworth that somehow managed to infiltrate the KKK, establishing a connection to David Duke back in the early 70s. TV commercials have played up the comedic aspects of the story (and there are plenty), but considering Spike Lee’s involvement, I knew there had to be a deeper message.

What really drew me in, however, was an interview that Spike did with CNN’s Anderson Cooper discussing the movie’s attempt to connect the past to the present. Cooper confessed that seeing the film shook and unsettled him. After that, I made sure to put the movie at the top of my weekend agenda.

I’m sure glad I did.

The opening sequence of BlacKkKlansman is borrowed from Gone With the Wind, and is perhaps the most famous use of the Confederate flag in cinema history.

Perhaps the most famous film use of the Rebel flag.

Recalling that Spike said he wanted to connect the past to the present, when this scene popped up on the screen my immediate thought was: “Oh man, Spike has definitely got something to say.”

Based on just my Twitter feed, I’m surprised that historians have apparently not paid much attention to this film, especially when they seem to be consumed right now with analyzing what Charlottesville and the Confederate monuments debates tells us about modern race relations, politics, and Civil War memory in the Trump era, and/or debunking Dinesh D’ Souza’s Death of a Nation book and film.

I don’t want to give away any big spoilers here, because everyone needs to see this film, so I will tread lightly.

From start to finish, Spike Lee offers a primer on how movies have shaped perceptions of race in the United States. Besides Gone with the Wind, he makes heavy use of Birth of a Nation (1915), but also has characters discussing the Tarzan films of the 1930s and 40s, as well as the “Blacksploitation” films of the early 70s.

Spike’s use of Birth of a Nation is particularly interesting (and satisfying) to watch because he uses one of D.W. Griffith’s pioneering film techniques, crosscutting, to make a powerful point about how that film distorted history. I won’t give the scene away, but you’ll know it when you see it (it’s a pleasure to see Harry Belafonte on screen again), so take pleasure in seeing Spike use Griffith’s own technique against him.

One of the film’s most engrossing scenes is a speech delivered by Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) to a group of African American college students, in which he focused on how blacks had allowed American culture to define how they saw themselves.

Hawkins as Ture. “Black Power!”

The role is played by Corey Hawkins, and he is mesmerizingly good, delivering a wake-up call to the film’s protagonist. It feels historically and artistically authentic, and is an unforced method of kicking the film’s narrative into motion.

As if this were not enough to get the attention of historians, Spike more directly connects the present to the past by demonstrating the way that racial politics have evolved, from the disgustingly upfront and honest language of “massive resistance” in response to school integration and desegregation, to the “dogwhistle” political tactic of speaking about traditional America values, law and order, taking back our country, and “America first.”

Spike makes clear that the latter is the more dangerous form of racial politics. In one particularly well-written scene, a character explains to the film’s protagonist Ron Stallworth (exceptionally played by John David Washington) that someday someone might get elected president using such tactics. When Stallworth then expresses disbelief that someone like David Duke could ever get elected president, he is told that he should not be so naive.

Duke is played in the film by Topher Grace (don’t be surprised if he gets a best supporting actor nomination), and he is a strong contrast to the other Klansman in the film.

Grace as Duke

The rest are the dimwitted, redneckish, gun-obsessed buffoons that most people associate with the Klan. Duke, however, is a smooth talking, well -read, and deep thinking charmer who understands that “dogwhistle” techniques are more politically powerful than terrorism. As Topher Grace discovered when researching the role, and as Spike powerfully demonstrates,  Duke predates Trump’s use of “America First” and making America “Great Again.”

The film also features another fine performance by Adam Driver as Stallworth’s partner. He’s quickly becoming one of our best and most intense actors, and his character’s evolution is also at the core of the film’s point about identity.

Driver and Washington

Driver plays a Jewish detective that never really gave much thought to being a Jew (“I was just another white kid”), until he must reckon with the Klan’s anti-Semitism. Suddenly, the white privilege he’s enjoyed most of  his life seems fake. He too is the member of a marginalized minority, and he’s just been “passing.”

All this is wrapped up in a well-paced action/comedy/buddy film. I don’t know Stallworth’s story well enough to comment on how much of it is true and how much of it is just based on truth, but from what I have read, the specifics of what the investigation accomplished is accurately told, uncovering Klansmen in the military and NORAD, and thwarting cross burnings and violence. (Although you’ll be able to tell that the film’s climactic moments and timing are most likely pure Hollywood formula).

The acting is uniformly fine, the dialogue believable, and Spike’s recreation of the 1970s is evocative. (One extended dance sequence makes great use of the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose classic soul hit “It’s Too Late to Turn Back Now,” oozing with the pride of the blossoming Black Power and “Black is Beautiful” movements.)

Ultimately, BlacKkKlansman does an excellent jump of connecting the Confederacy to current events, and demonstrating the line from David Duke to Donald Trump. By now you’re probably aware of the TV news footage that Spike uses at the end of the film to not-so-subtely tie his story to the present (if not, I won’t ruin it), and it is a powerful jolt.

Rather numbing, actually.

And yet for me, the most powerful jolt coming out of the theater was in placing the film in context of even more up-to-the-minute events.

Just last week, Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham made comments about immigration policy that David Duke publicly praised. The big news today as I write this is that tapes exist of our president using racial slurs, and even the White House Press Secretary can’t guarantee that it is not true. Oh, and H.U.D. has eliminated the strongest effort in decades to combat housing segregation.

And in my local cineplex, BlacKkKlansman is now playing on the opposite end of the hallway from D’Souza’s Death of a Nation.

It doesn’t get more stark, or timely,  than that.

 

Trump, evangelical Christians, and a history of fear: A review of John Fea’s Believe Me.

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. My last blog posting was over two months ago.

I could blame vacation and general burnout, but the primary reason for my lack of blogging is that the #1 thing I would want to post about are the never-ending Trump outrages. And yet I find myself not wanting to write about Trump for one reason:

I am tired of hating him.

As my closest friends know, I have been grappling with the fact that Trump inspires so much sheer hatred in my heart. As I watch him destroy the dignity of the office, repeatedly lie about big and small things, separate families at the border, enact tariffs which will inflict wounds on our own economy, weaken the alliances that the post-WWII Western world has been built upon, describe the free press as an enemy of the state, and coddle up to murdering and tyrannical madmen, (just to name his most recent misdeeds), the anger in me swells. And every day it’s something new.

It’s exhausting, and I know that many of you feel exactly the same.

My Twitter followers and Facebook friends know I frequently vent my feelings in short diatribe postings, or by passing along news stories and the writings of others. But this has long become annoying to me, and I’m sure to others. Oh, how I long for the days when my Twitter feed and Facebook wall were filled mostly with interesting history-related stories, the good news of family and friends, sports commentary, or jokes and fun comments about pop culture.

Those are still there, of course, but are clouded and overwhelmed by the ever-frustrating and increasingly-frightening news. Living through world changing events in real time is fascinating as heck, but the fear and hatred it stirs has become oppressive.

And what good is all that fear and hate?

I’m a big believer that nothing good ever comes from hate. As MLK wrote (perhaps leaning on Romans 12:21), “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Perhaps Maya Angelo said  it best:  “Hate has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not yet solved one.”

Indeed, has it not been hatred and fear that has caused this current problem? As we know, Trump’s narrow election victory owes much to the fact that he received the support of 81% of evangelical Christians. It seems ironic that perhaps the most immoral man ever nominated for president received evangelical support.

But is it? And was it not their fear and hatred that helped make his victory possible?

That argument is at the core of historian and Messiah College Professor John Fea’s new book, Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. Purposely choosing a publisher of religious books (Eardman’s), the Christian author’s main target audience seems to be other evangelicals. Yet anyone interested in understanding the 2016 election through solid historical context and analysis should pick up Fea’s fascinating and incisive work.

(Quick shoutout to the small independent bookstore where I picked up my copy,  Ernest & Hadley’s. Shop local, y’all.)

Like Fea, I too was dismayed that a large majority of fellow Christians embraced such an immoral man like Donald Trump, especially when considering that these were the same people that excoriated Bill Clinton, insisting that beyond his perjury, his sexual improprieties and other character flaws made him unfit for office. What happened? If character mattered then (and I believe that it did), why did it not seem to matter now?

Further, I wondered, how could evangelicals be blind to the fact that embracing Trump would only widen the conception of Christians as hypocrites? Couldn’t they see that the goal of spreading the good news would be severely hampered? Who would want to convert to a religion of such blatant hypocrisy?

Instead of letting such questions bewilder and anger him, Fea went looking for answers, and has reached what I feel are convincing explanations. Simply put, Trump tapped into the long standing evangelical tradition of using fear as a tactic, embraced their political playbook for recreating a nostalgic American past that never really existed, and rallied their leaders to his cause by seemingly offering positions of political power and influence. Fea concludes that many evangelicals “decided that what Donald Trump can give them is more valuable than the damage their Christian witness will suffer because of their association” with him.

Fea builds his case by providing a “short history of evangelical fear,” touching on Puritan Massachusetts, anti-Catholicism in colonial, revolutionary, and antebellum America, the fear of deism in the early republic, southern fears about race war and/or miscegenation that drove them into secession, the Nativist response to Jewish and Catholic immigrants, and the modernist cultural forces of the 1920s that brought about the revival of the KKK and lynchings (and a war on the teaching of evolution).

Thus by the time of the Civil Rights movement, Fea demonstrates, evangelicals had a long history of revealing their fears in how they “responded to the plight of people who do not share their skin color,” as well as how they responded to anyone that “might challenge the power and privilege that evangelicals have enjoyed in a nation of Protestants . . ..” And those responses “have led to some dark moments” in the history of the United States.

Indeed.

After WWII, Fea narrates, evangelicals were dismayed by “a renewed emphasis on the separation of church and state, the removal of prayer and Bible-reading from public schools, the influx of immigrants from non-Christian Western nations, the intrusion of the federal government into their schools (desegregation), and the court’s endorsement of abortion on demand.”

As a result, the 1970s saw evangelicals turn against the forces of big government, making them a natural fit for the more than welcoming (and wooing) Republican Party. (Fea doesn’t point it out, but he reveals there was more at play here than just the infamous “southern strategy” that was based on blowing racial dog whistles).

Furthermore, Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” developed what Fea labels a “political playbook” in order to defeat the forces that seemed to be winning the cultural wars. Simply put, this playbook encouraged Christians to restore America to its Christian roots (which required historic revisionism to argue that America was founded solely by Christians, upon Christian principles) by contending for political power via the recruitment and financial support of candidates dedicated to using government to achieve the church’s religious goals.

Christians in political office would then place Christians in the courts, and these judges would limit the separation between church and state (which would allow the passage of laws enforcing Christian morality), and ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade. “While control of the presidency and the Congress is certainly important to the successful implementation of this playbook,” Fea argues, “the control of the Supreme Court is essential.”

And yet, despite forty years of following this playbook, by 2015 it had had little if any success. Abortion was still legal. The internet had made pornography more widely and easily available. Gay marriage was upheld by the Supreme Court. Crime rates seemed to have not dropped. America was becoming more ethnically and racial diverse than ever.  Some states had legalized the recreational use of pot. Christian church membership was dropping substantially. A man many Christians (ridiculously) believed was a foreign-born Muslim had been twice-elected president. Etc. etc.

And then came Trump. Despite his life-long commitment to greed, sexual infidelity and immorality, shady business practices, and outspoken crudeness, he quickly understood his best path to the White House must involve picking up the evangelical vote. Drawing to his side what Fea labels the “court evangelicals,” Trump learned from certain Christian leaders how to speak the language and embrace the playbook. These leaders saw a man that would not just give lip-service to the playbook, but would faithfully implement it and place them into positions of political power and influence.

These court evangelicals include the Christian Right (such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell Jr.), the followers of “prosperity gospel,” (such as Paula White), and the Independent Network Charismatics (some of which insist they prophesied Trump’s victory and his role in their ultimate success). Wooed by Trump’s apparent commitment to the playbook, these evangelicals have become his staunchest defenders, insisting his past does not matter, that he is a faithful Christian now (despite all evidence to the contrary), and even that he is the fulfillment of prophesy.

Fea’s work is thus powerfully enlightening, helping to explain why a man with Trump’s deficiencies would find favor with Christian evangelicals. Though he does not explore it, his work also explains why these long-time Republican faithfuls would embrace a man that campaigned on and has embraced so many anti-Republican Party policies (such as his hostile tariffs and questionable commitment to our traditional alliances and NATO responsibilities).

Further, Fea’s work helps explain why, despite Stormy Daniels and Trump’s continued deplorable behavior (such as his easily demonstrable lies and disgusting moral equivalencies), evangelicals refuse to abandon him. With Trump appointees taking judgeships, and with one on the Supreme Court and more possibly coming, why should they quit on him now when their playbook finally seems on the verge of success?

In his later chapters, Fea begins to more directly address his message to fellow evangelical Christians. Taking aim at the slogan “Make American Great Again,” the author rightfully asserts that there is no time in America’s history when things were “great” for a majority of U.S. citizens, and that our past is more often filled with dark and dangerous times for people that were not white male native-born (and heterosexual) Protestants.  Trump thus relies on nostalgia for a time that never really existed.

For most Americans, the evangelical playbook’s success would be regressive, not a restoration of greatness. (For those of you that have been watching Hulu’s brilliant The Handmaid’s Tale, how frightening does all this seem??) “For too many who have been the objects of white evangelical fear,” Fea asserts, “real American greatness is still something to be hoped for–not something to be recovered from an imagined past.”

On abortion, Fea argues that even if Roe v. Wade were overturned, the issue would go to the states, where certainly a large number would keep it legal. That impoverished red state women might not be able to afford travel to blue states would likely reduce the number of abortions, “but it will bring our culture no closer to welcoming the children who are born and supporting their mothers.” How much more could have already been done in America to end abortions, Fea ponders, had the billions of dollars given to pro-life candidates been spent on more economic, social, and cultural solutions to the problem, rather than political ones. Now there’s food for thought.

In his conclusion to Believe Me, Fea finds inspiration in the Christian leaders of the Civil Rights movement,
encouraging evangelicals to end their faith in the playbook, stop relying on the politics of fear and embrace a message of hope, be inspired by true history and not a nostalgic version of it, and seek to shape American culture through more humble and less political means (you know, like Christ).

“Too many [evangelical] leaders (and their followers) have traded their Christian witness for a mess of political pottage and a few federal judges,” Fea concludes, arguing that we should thus not be surprised by the number of people leaving the Christian church altogether.

Believe Me is powerful stuff, made all the more so by Fea’s readably jargon-free prose, confident authorial voice, and gently encouraging tone. I have some quibbles with it: I would have liked an organization that maintained a more chronological flow, racial dynamics needed a bit more emphasis, and his conclusions seemingly disregards the political agenda of the Civil Rights movement. Fox News and political tribalism needed to be in there somewhere, too.

I think his conclusion also misses the opportunity to point out that African American Christianity has almost always centered on a message of hope for future justice, helping blacks endure bleak times in America. That’s a powerful contrast to Fea’s outlining of the white evangelical history of using fear.

I’ve long awaited Fea’s book, and it did not disappoint. If you have read much of my blog, you know that I often express my belief in the view of history that embraces the idea that the “arc of the moral universe” bends toward justice. These times that we are living in however, are a great reminder that it is our responsibility to keep it bent in the right direction. American history has always shown that this involves fighting against powerful forces, so we should not be surprised by what we are up against now, as unprecedented as many of these events are.

I see much to be excited about, as perhaps the Trump backlash is helping to end political apathy in America. And yet, as I acknowledged above, the unrelentingly disturbing and frightening news has been weighing me down with hatred.

Fea’s book has thus come at just the right time for my soul, demonstrating that fear and hatred are what have given us Trump’s America. So, as he concludes, it must be resisted with humility and hopeful determination that looks forward and not back. The resistance can’t be driven by negativity and fear.

“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Damn right.

 

 

The rebel monument debate comes to my hometown (and another dear to my heart).

City workers covering up a Confederate memorial in Birmingham

UPDATE on 1/15/2019: my prediction below that Birmingham would win the court fight turned out accurate, although I am pleasantly surprised that it didn’t require a higher court than the Jefferson County Circuit Court to strike down the stupid state law.

We all know the debate over Confederate monuments has gone white-hot, especially after the events in Charlottesville.

I have weighed in on this debate several times in the last year (and have no stomach for the argument that removal is “erasing history,” as I argued here) and I am firmly on record as favoring contextualization rather than removal, either by placing them in a museum (as the University of Texas did), or leaving them where they are and putting up new signs that explain the reasons the monuments were put up in the first place (like the University of Mississippi did). I also favor counter-monuments that help diversify the history we choose to remember and memorialize.

But above all, I favor letting local communities decide for themselves what they choose or don’t choose to memorialize.

However the events of the last couple of days, and Trump’s stunning reaction to them, started pushing me closer to supporting full removal.

Last night, I emotionally felt pretty much exactly as did CNN’s Van Jones:

But because I have been asked,  I want to weigh-in again on this issue by focusing on part of what Trump said, and specifically on two cities that are very close to my heart: Richmond, Virginia, (where I got my masters degree, worked at its National Battlefield Park, and lived for eight years) and Birmingham, Alabama (my hometown).

Richmond of course, is famous for its beautiful Monument Avenue, featuring enormous and imposing statues of rebel leaders such as Jefferson Davis, JEB Stuart, and Stonewall Jackson.  This summer, city leaders formed a commission to discuss how to best contextualize, but not to remove, the statues.  They held a public hearing to discuss options, and what followed was predictable mass chaos.  The audience seemed to disregard the fact that removal was not on the table, as it turned into a fight over whether to remove the statues or not. Not surprisingly, it quickly turned into a fight over what caused the South to secede. It got ugly. 

I was not there, but I have a friend and fellow historian that was, and based on his emotional and mostly sensible Facebook posting that night, it was an unmitigated disaster that probably only hardened people’s hearts and opinions, frustrating everyone.

After the stunning events of the last few days, Richmond’s mayor has decided that removal IS now on the table, and has instructed the commission to add that option to its deliberations. He made it clear he personally now favors removal. Even more powerful, two great, great grandsons of Stonewall Jackson have called for removal in a powerful plea. 

I can’t say I blame any of them, as my emotional reaction to Charlottesville, as I said above, was also to take all these rebel monuments down.

Yet stepping back from those emotions causes me to feel that of all southern cities, Richmond is probably the one in which it is most important that they stay up.

As the Capital of the Confederacy, (sitting within easy driving distance of some of the war’s most important and preserved battlefields), the city is perhaps the only one that people actually travel to just to see the monuments. (No one is going to New Orleans, or Baltimore, or Nashville, JUST to see rebel memorials).

And from an educational and public history perspective that is a GOOD THING. The city has done an exceptional job over the last decade to create institutions, memorials, and other public education endeavors, telling the WHOLE and diverse story of the Civil War and the Confederacy, and the connection of both to the institution of slavery.

The monuments not only draw people to these educational opportunities, but they themselves are important educational tools for demonstrating how previous generations chose to interpret the Civil War in an effort to promote the “Lost Cause.”

Most rebel monuments were originally placed as means of denying that the South had seceded in order to preserve slavery.  Their purpose was to glorify and distort the causes of the Confederacy’s attempt to break from the United States, painting it as an effort to defend “States Rights.” (Just how successful that effort was has been made all the more clear lately—-that Richmond public hearing, for example).

At the same time, they are monuments to white supremacy and resistance to efforts at racial justice. This chart detailing when most of these monumnts and memorials went up, demonstrates this very effectively. Thus, the erection of the monuments has a history and purpose all their own.

If you want the perfect classroom for exploring the Lost Cause, its meanings, and its successes, there is no better one than standing at the base of the Lee monument, or especially the one of Jefferson Davis. Contextualization in those spots could be a powerful way to educate the public about the white supremacist movements that for so long successfully distorted America’s understanding of the Civil War for their own political agenda. (And which has once again reared its ugly and violent head).

So I favor contextualization in Richmond, and the addition of more monuments that tell a more inclusive story (how about one to the African American troops that played a large role in reclaiming the city for the United States, for example?). Of course the problem is that most people view the monuments as they ride quickly by in cars or tourist buses, and thus I’m not sure how much contextualization signs would be visible and/or effective. This is definitely a problem.

Still, I think this is the right solution for Richmond, and they, above probably all other cities, have the ability to set the model for how these rebel monuments can be used to educate the public about how and why so many people are misinformed about the causes of the Civil War, and how those efforts were tied to resistance to black progress and racial justice.

I hope they get it right.

And then there is my hometown.  I took a lot of pride when it was announced in January that Birmingham’s Civil Rights district was being turned into a national park. The Confederate memorial near this area creates a strong contrast to the newer (and increasing) memorials and interpretive signage marking the pivotal events that occurred in Birmingham, especially those in 1963 that played a prominent role in pushing President Kennedy into proposing the Civil Rights Act. Make no mistake, the new park is preserving an American battlefield for racial justice:

The events in Charlottesville had me feeling that rebel monuments in Birmingham should come down, as they are an insult and black-eye on this historic district. Yet, a local news story may have pushed me back the other way again.

In the wake of what happened in New Orleans, the state of Alabama passed a ridiculous law making it illegal for local communities to remove rebel monuments. The hypocrisy here is amazing, considering that Republicans stand on the principle of power resting in the hands of localized government (a concept I have been mostly sympathetic to most of my life). Of course this is akin to the hypocrisy of Republicans calling for a small federal government that does not involve itself in our lives, and yet wanting one that legislates morality. If there is one thing the Republican party needs right now, it is consistency of principle.

Anyway, the city of Birmingham’s mayor and city council has decided to figure out some way to challenge this law, maybe by removing the statues and fighting it in the courts (I think they would win in the higher courts), or just paying the fine. In the meantime, they have opted for covering up the monuments, first with a tarp, and now with some plywood.

As a result, the state’s attorney general is suing Birmingham for violating “the spirit” of the law. So the battle has been joined. 

UPDATE on 1/15/2019: my prediction that Birmingham would win the court fight turned out accurate, although I am pleasantly surprised that it didn’t require a higher court than the Jefferson County Circuit Court to strike down the stupid state law.

What struck me in a local news story, however, was a reporter mentioning that the monument is in the shadow of the places dear to the Civil Rights movement. For instance, the A.G. Gaston motel where Martin Luther King stayed during “Project C” is within a rock’s throw of the rebel monument. Here he and other heroes coordinated their assault on Birmingham’s white supremacist laws and racial injustices, right near a monument to the very forces they sought to destroy. And it was here that dynamite was thrown into the building in an effort to kill these Civil Rights leaders.

Does not the presence of this Lost Cause monument make what King and the hundreds of Civil Rights footsoldiers did in Birmingham even more profound?  Would we not lose part of the story if we move the Confederate monument? Is it not a perfect symbol of everything that the Civil Rights movement fought against and brought to its knees in Birmingham?

Properly interpret that monument, in the context of its purposes and also within the Civil Rights movement, and you’ve got a powerful public education tool. Removal takes that away.

So I stand for leaving it up.

ON THE OTHER HAND, you should read this op-ed by Mississippi State University Professor Anne E. Marshall, who argues that she once stood for contextualization, but has changed her mind after seeing its failure in Louisville, Ky. I can’t say she doesn’t make a lot of sense. Yet I still  think Richmond, as well as Birmingham, are different cases than Louisville—Which only reinforces my conviction that this is best left to case-by-case decisions from within the effected communities.

And then there’s Trump. I am not going to comment on how sad I was to hear our president say that there were good people in a crowd organized by white nationalists. Honestly, I can’t add anything to the outrage that has already been expressed.

Yet I have been asked by past and present students, as well as friends, about my thoughts on one aspect of what he said. So I’ll comment briefly on that.

Trump, echoing many others, insisted that if we take down a monument to Lee and Jackson because they were slaveholders, this logically would lead us to take down monuments to other slaveholders, many of which were our founding fathers. Where would it end? There goes the Washington Memorial in DC!

Make no mistake: This is a proverbial red-herring that gets repeated over and over again by those who oppose the removal, or even the contextualization, of these monuments.

So let us be clear, despite Trump’s (and Fox News’) claim, the rationale for taking down the monuments is NOT based on the fact that the Confederate leaders were slaveholders. The logic behind taking them down (or contextualizing them) is that these were people who committed an act of treason against the United States to defend the institution of slavery and white supremacy. (In the case of Lee and Jackson, they broke sacred oaths they took when they joined the US military).

Washington and Jefferson and other founding fathers were certainly flawed men, guilty of America’s original sin of slavery (among other things), but they did not commit acts of treason in the name of white supremacy.

Oh, but they were treasonous, you say, because they rebelled against their government by breaking from the British empire.

I have LONG been sick of this argument. Washington and Jefferson rebelled against a government in which they had no representation, which, you know, was kind of the whole point. Don’t we learn in grade school, “no taxation without representation!?” They believed that taxes could only come from institutions in which they were represented (specifically, their own colonial legislatures).

Robert E Lee, on the other hand,  rebelled against a government in which he had representation.  In fact, because of the 3/5ths clause of  the Constitution, southern white men like him were OVERLY represented in that government, which was pretty much the reason the Republican Party was formed in the first place—to bring down this overly-represented and overly-politically powerful “slave power.”

So there is a big difference between Washington and Lee. HUGE difference.

Please do not listen to Trump or anyone else when they insist that taking down rebel monuments would lead to pulling down all monuments to slaveholders or otherwise morally flawed leaders. It just isn’t so.

This is about the Confederacy and its causes. Insisting otherwise, or that the Civil War was not caused by a defense of slavery and white supremacy,  is FAKE NEWS.

Bottom line: I am still for contextualization in Birmingham and Richmond. But if locals in those places and in other cities decide to take them down, I’ll shed no tears for the Confederacy, (unlike the real ones I shed after our so-called president’s response to Charlottesville).

 

 

Some humble musings from a professional historian: Did Trump “radicalize” me?

“Trump made you a blogger.”

My friend and fellow professional historian, Christian McWhirter, said that to me a few months back, and I am reminded of it today because of a New Republic article that has been making the rounds on the internet. It claims that Trump’s ignorance of basic US history has “radicalized” historians. It is an interesting and short piece, so I encourage everyone to read it.

I am not sure exactly what they mean by “radicalized,” but the context suggests it means that historians have become more publicly vocal about their views on current politics. And more active in the resistance to Trump. Of course many of us spoke out before he was elected, and the fact that he won has many of us wondering if people even listen to historians, or perhaps even that our railing against him only actually made people love him more. (Probably so).

I have discussed this here before, but one of my biggest goals as a college educator was to never let my political leanings become clear to students. Most of us have had the experience of sitting in a college class, as a professor has used his captive audience as a chance to spew out political diatribes. I recall, for example, taking a course on Gilded Age America, but having to endure a professor that spent well over 50% of our class time holding forth on modern politics and all the problems he had with a current governor. I didn’t always disagree with him, but I got increasingly angry because I wanted to study the Gilded Age, not his political opinions about current events.

As a result of such experiences, when I began teaching college in the late 90s I dedicated myself to never letting my politics shape my lectures in an obvious way. Not only because it would be more fair to my students, but also because it would make my lectures more objective. I am a firm believer that one of the most important things that studying history does is create open-mindedness, forcing students to look at things from different perspectives than their own. I felt (and still feel) that having clear political leanings in my lectures only hinders that goal, as students will only become defensive (and thus close-minded) about their beliefs if they feel the professor is trying to indoctrinate them with a particular party’s political agenda.

Thus my goal has always been to remain as objective as possible, with the goal that students would actually have a hard time figuring out my personal political sympathies. When asked by students if I am a Republican or a Democrat, I’ve always refused to answer. If I can create a classroom environment in which a student’s preconceived political leanings are challenged, whether they are a Republican or Democrat, I feel I have done my job. I think I have a history of being successful in that regard.

Further, when I started this “blog,” I never intended it to include long musings like this. I did not have time for it and felt no one would be interested anyway. My sole purpose was to simply post links to history related stories and blogs that I found interesting, share a comment or two, and encourage other folks to check them out. And I most certainly did not want to fill it with political diatribes. I still prefer it to be that way, and try to stick to that format.

Thus both here and in classes, I never intended to comment extensively on current political events. But yes, Trump changed that.

During the election, I felt he presented such a grave danger to our country that I had to publicly speak out, using my position in the classroom to demonstrate the danger of his ideas and his utter lack of preparation and qualifications for the job. Trump began to make regular appearances in my lectures, whenever a particular historical topic seemed to shed light on his shortcomings (which turned out to be numerous). I was uncomfortable with this, and still am, but it increasingly feels like a duty.

I have gotten some small blow-back from students, and have heard one or two grumbling about my Trump attacks. To counter such sentiments, I have increasingly argued that much of his policies are not mainstream Republican ones (especially foreign and trade polices), pointing out this is one of the big reasons that the Republican leadership tried so hard to derail his candidacy. You don’t have to be a Democrat to be concerned about this buffoon (just ask John McCain or Lindsey Graham).

And this carried over to my blog. If you have spent anytime here, you know that my friend Christian is right. Trump did indeed turn me into a more traditional blogger, as I find it near impossible not to unleash diatribes like this one whenever sharing a story involving him.

Part of me despises Trump for causing these changes to my classroom and this blog, but on the other hand, is this not exactly the role that historians should play? Again, I think that our most important work is to help encourage and develop the open-mindedness that is so sorely lacking in our world. How can an historian do that if they stay quiet when they hear Trump making asinine, untruthful, and historically ignorant comments?

Trump wants “truth” to be as he defines it, and anything that challenges that is “fake.” Isn’t that pretty much the definition of close-minded?

Thus if I were to just keep quiet about Trump in my classrooms and here on this blog, would it not in the end work against my own personal dedication to encourage and promote open-mindedness? I think so.

Sadly, however, I have to wonder how much good my efforts actually do, considering that Trump’s true believers listen intently to Fox News every night. There they are told that anyone that disagrees with Trump is a leftist radical, a “snowflake,” or a pompous self-important liberal. No, actually, that is not the case, and I am proof of it.

Disgraced political hack Bill O’Reilly took to Twitter and his podcast last night to explain to his followers how wrong American historians are about Trump’s recent comments on Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. Despite the fact that we make the study of both those things our professional career, knowing the history and the sources far more than he likely ever will,  he labeled us “morons.”

I am more than certain that his and Trump’s folks believe that to be true, despite our academic pedigree, or most likely because of it.  So why listen to a well educated professor? Bill O’Reilly says the president is right, so they have to be wrong.

Thus when I open my mouth in class to criticize Trump, even from a historical perspective, I am sure that my most ardent Trump supporting students only dismiss it as the inaccurate rantings of a liberal professor. The enemy.

In the past I would never have been someone you or anyone else would ever see as a radical (or a liberal). And in fact I would have run from such a label.

So does that mean that Trump has turned me into a “radical?” Sadly, in the era of Trump and Fox News, adherence to basic facts, objectivity, and open-mindedness have come to be seen as just that.  In a world of closed minds, objectivity is now radical.

So be it.  I’m a radical.

And as radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison proclaimed during the presidency of slaveholder Andrew Jackson, “I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard.”

If only historians had warned us . . .

I wish I could stay away from Trump, but he makes it so difficult. I’m going to post this, and then honestly try to stay away from him for the rest of the week. We have much else to talk about, like the return of Mercy Street, so I’d really like for this to be my only Trump tirade for the week. (Work with me on this, Donald).

As many people expected, the Women’s March on Saturday was enormous and a smashing success that overshadowed the comparatively paltry turnout for the inauguration. I do not need to repeat all the things that have been said about the historical event, but I saw a story today that some of you might have missed. The signs that were left behind in Boston have been saved by some history profs that saw the need to preserve and digitize them for future researchers. Awesome idea! Hopefully similar efforts will be made with the signs from DC and all the other “sister marches.”

Meanwhile, Comrade Trump again seems intent on proving all us historians correct when we asserted that he has authoritarian tendencies that echo those of history’s autocrats, dictators, oligarchs, and various other like-minded and nefarious thugs. As we know, Trump followed up the “most dreadful inaugural address ever” (as conservative Republican commentator George Will memorably labeled it) by basically announcing on day one of his presidency that he was engaged in a war with the media (his words), tried to tell us that the media was lying about something we all saw clearly with our own eyes, and sent his folks out to spread “alternative facts.” He also declared that his riff with the intelligence community was a product of the lying media, yet we all saw him mock and compare them to Nazi Germany.  This is all a clear sign that, as we have known all along, the man is a compulsive liar and that we can’t trust ANYTHING he says.

Oh, and speaking of lies, you guys recall how the Great Deceiver  whipped up his crowds with chants of “lock her up!” and promised in a debate that he would prosecute Hillary once in office? We all knew that was crap, but did you notice that just after being sworn in, he publicly praised Hillary and said he had great respect for her and Bill? Doesn’t sound like someone that is about to investigate and lock her up, does it? Hey, Trump supporters, HE LIED TO YOU, the very people that trust him the most. This is provable. Why do you keep trusting him??

Anyway, now today, we learn that several agencies have been instructed that they can not communicate with the public. This is all scary stuff that is all too much like what history’s bad, bad, men have done in their first steps to form tyrannical autocracies. Listen, we all know that presidents have not always been honest with the press and have endeavored to deceive them (and that’s almost all of them, if we are fair and objective). So this is not as unprecedented as the press is making it out to be.  But when we have one that is openly declaring “war” on the press, calling them “the most dishonest people on earth,” trying to tell us that what we saw with our own eyes is not true,  and is issuing orders to keep his departments from communicating with us, that is altogether different and dangerous.

Politico has a fine piece on how Trump’s lies have to be taken seriously, because they could actually endanger lives. An excerpt: “This weekend, it was crowd size. By next week, it could be how many troops were killed, and who was responsible for the attack. Or how successful the American response was. Or whether there is an actual threat to homeland security that requires government action. Or even a dispute with a foreign government over a sensitive detail in negotiations.” The article goes on to quote an esteemed historian: “There are narcissists who think anything they do is right and anything they say [is right and they are] not persuaded by evidence — that is what is frightening,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian who met with Trump during the transition. “When you’re saying something that is brazenly false and expecting your followers to adhere to it, that’s a dictator. That is not an American president.”

We all know that “those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” right? If ONLY there had been people that make it their living to study history so that they could have warned us before he got elected! Oh wait, there are such people and they did warn. What was remarkable about those warnings is that they came from an overwhelming number of historians and a broad range of them all across the political spectrum. As one of my good friends and colleagues said the other day, it is not like Howard Zinn was the only one saying this stuff!” Pay attention folks, this man is already taking a dark path in just the first few days of his presidency, and seems intent on telling us exactly what we should think. If we start hearing about him forming his own organization to pass along information to us so that he can bypass the press, start packing your bags.

Oh but wait!, he says he wants to kick the press out of the White House so that he can put them in a bigger room where more reporters can have access (and in the meantime, is adding “Skype seats” to the room). Don’t be fooled, my friends, if that happens it will be so that he can limit access to his administration, get “alternative” news groups into press conferences to cheer him and laugh at his outrageous statements, ask what he wants them to, and toss him softballs. Count on it.

I have been wondering what event will be the first one in which we see the Putin Puppet use troops against American citizens, and now with today’s news I think we might be setting the stage for that event. His executive order (where are all those people that were so upset about Obama’s use of executive orders?) in regards to the Dakota Pipeline is sure to trigger a new round of protests. What happens if the Army Corps of Engineers then decides to reverse its decision about finding an alternative route for the pipeline, and it starts again encroaching on Native American lands? You can bet the protestors will be there to stop it, and then what? Stay tuned.

Now, please, Donald, don’t do anything for the rest of the week that provokes another one of my completely useless tirades. I really want to talk about Mercy Street (the Journal of the Civil War Era has asked me to write a review for their blog, so stay tuned) and almost ANYTHING else.

Michelle Obama, the arc of American history, and a speech that will scour.

Immediately after delivering the Gettysburg address, Lincoln reportedly (though he probably didn’t) said, “that speech won’t scour.” (Meaning he didn’t think it could be cleaned up to be memorable and stand the test of time.)

Michelle Obama’s speech last night will scour.

Listen, if you are objective, and even subtract away the things she said specifically about Clinton, focusing on what she said about leadership, I think she made a pretty good case for why Trump is not qualified for the presidency (and did so without even mentioning his name). If your concerns about Hillary hinder you from being opposed to Trump, I beg you to go back and listen to her speech again, focusing not on her Hillary comments, but her comments on leadership.

But the moment that her speech elevated itself into something that really blew people away was when she put her life and moment on the stage into historical context. I have always preached that one of the most important things about history is that it connects us to something bigger than ourselves, tying us to the story of all mankind. President Obama has consistently delivered speeches during his presidency that resonate and carry emotional power because he has a keen understanding and appreciation for American history, embracing MLK’s  insistence that the arc of history bends towards justice. I immediately felt that the speech he gave at the Pettus Bridge in Selma would stand as his best, because he connected our founding and its principles to the Civil Rights movement and then to the present, in a hopeful narrative of American history (which is why I loved seeing this article the other day from the Washington Post pondering which of his speeches “is the one for the history books.”) His interpretation of history is what often gives his speeches their power. I do not know  who wrote Michelle’s speech last night, but she too included an optimistic appraisal of America’s historical trajectory, and it was when she did so that audiences became the most emotionally connected to her words. Commentator after commentator pointed out that her historical allusions were the moment that her rhetoric soared, moved people to tears, and, as The Atlantic put it, became “a speech for the ages.” Both Republican and Democrats agree that she nailed it. To quote:

“That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters –- two beautiful, intelligent, black young women –- playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters –- and all our sons and daughters -– now take for granted that a woman can be President of the United States. So don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Because this, right now, is the greatest country on earth.”

That, my friends, is the power and importance of history. It is how I feel the American story should be told: emphasizing our failures and the obstacles that we’ve had to overcome as individuals and as a nation in our fight to keep the arc of our history bent toward greater justice. Acknowledging that it can and often does goes backwards makes it all the more imperative to inspire us to keep it in the right direction. The optimistic emotions the speech invoked in audiences is the very reason why I think our history should be taught this way. Further, the speech is the type of language and vision of our nation that all of our greatest American leaders have harkened to in their finest moments (the Founders, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, TR, Alice Paul, FDR, JFK, MLK, Reagan, etc). It is those kinds of words that have inspired and helped us lift ourselves out of our darkest times.

With everything going on in our country and the world right now, the contrast between what we heard last Thursday night and last night couldn’t be stronger, or more profound.

Heavy-weight historians take a stand against Trump

Famed historians David McCullough has seen enough of Trump

My name is Glenn David Brasher, and I approve this message:

When I started teaching close to 20 years ago, I was determined that I would keep my own personal politics out of the classroom. We’ve all had classes in which the professor used their time in front of the class as a platform for political diatribes, especially in history or political science classes. That always angered me, and thus I decided that I would never do it. I think I have been very successful at that over the years, and take pride in the fact that most students can not figure out if I am a Republican or a Democrat. It isn’t very hard to accomplish this political ambiguity when you commit yourself to being as objective as possible.

But this past year is different, as I have found it near impossible to not lash out at Donald Trump’s candidacy. Any student that has had me in the last year knows where I stand on him, and why. In fact, it seems that pretty much every class (no matter the lecture topic) offers a lesson that seems appropriate when considering Trump. I make no apologies for it, and feel it is in some ways a duty. I do hate that it caused me to break my commitment, but I blame him and his popularity for that. I’ll go back to objectivity when he is defeated. To quote Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing: “make no mistake, he must be stopped.”

Anyway, I say all this because I am very proud to see that some seriously big-time historians have decided that they can not stand idly by and do nothing to stop a Trump presidency. Led by David Mccullough and Ken Burns, they have created a Facebook page called Historians on Donald Trump where they have posted short video diatribes against the presumptive Republican nominee (and will continually be adding new ones). I do not like that so far there is not a lot of diversity in the line-up (its largely older, white male historians), but perhaps that is exactly the demographic that we need to reach the most, because the bulk of his support comes from white males.

I have many Republican friends and family that confess that they too loathe Trump, but that Hillary Clinton would be worse. Trust me, I  REALLY understand their reluctance to support her, (if she were not such a weak/problematic candidate, we would not even be facing a possible Trump presidency) but I simply can not agree that she (or perhaps anyone!) would be worse or more dangerous. DANGER is the operative word I think we all need to consider.

All those that proclaim to rever historians,  history,  and history’s lessons, I implore you to check out the videos posted on this Facebook page. To throw my support in, I will start posting one of the videos with each of my postings, starting with the highly revered David McCullough:

(David McCullough has twice received the Pulitzer Prize — for “Truman” (1992) and “John Adams” (2001) — and twice received the National Book Award — for “The Path Between the Seas” (1977) and “Mornings on Horseback” (1982). His other acclaimed books include “The Greater Journey” (2011), “1776” (2005), “Brave Companions” (1991), “The Johnstown Flood” (1968), “The Great Bridge” (1972) and “The Wright Brothers” (2015). He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award).