Memory – Popular Politics in Early America

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In “For Something Beyond the Battlefield,” David W. Blight writes about Frederick Douglass’ efforts to preserve the memory of the ideological background of the Civil War. More specifically, Douglass wanted to make sure that the Civil War would be remembered in the American consciousness as a moral struggle between Northern abolition as an absolute good and Southern slavery as an absolute evil. Blight confirms Douglass’ perpetuation of that idea by quoting a speech in which Douglass urges Americans not to remember the Southern cause with any of the admiration afforded to the Northern one. (1160) A big part of Blight’s thesis has to do with the practical reasons for Douglass’ desire for this ideological narrative to persist—in other words, Douglass did not want to perpetuate these ideas simply because he believed them to be true. Blight posits that Douglass believed that those who shaped historical interpretations of the Civil War would be the ones to shape the fate of African-Americans in the post-war period. That is why, according to Blight, Douglass looked at the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1875 Civil Rights Acts as a result of Americans forgetting that the Civil War was at its core a war fought to free people of color from bondage. AJ’s post does a good job of further delving into the specific factors which, according to Blight, drove Douglass to take this view.

I definitely see the merits of Blight and Douglass’ view of the effect of what kind of history the nation generally accepts on its policies going forward. I think a good example of this idea in effect is in the reception of the 1915 film Birth of a Nation. It is one of the most well known films of all times, due in equal parts to both its innovations in filmmaking as an art and, unfortunately, its racist message. The story of Birth of a Nation takes an extremely biased look at Reconstruction in the South, indignantly claiming that white Southerners were stripped of their voting rights and made to live under governments made up entirely of unqualified, lazy African-Americans. In the film, the main character fights back against Reconstruction by establishing the Ku Klux Klan as a force for good that puts whites back in power (where the filmmaker would say they belong). Birth of a Nation was the highest grossing film of its time. Its popularity suggests that many Americans accepted the idea that Reconstruction was fundamentally unfair to whites and upset a power balance that it should not have. That is confirmed by the fact that by 1915 Southern Democrats had long before managed to stop Reconstruction and establish Jim Crow laws. Furthermore, many scholars believe that the film directly contributed to the 20th century revival of the KKK as an institution to harass African-Americans. Thus, we see that the film was a powerful enough influence on American collective consciousness to impact the future of race relations. In this way, Birth of a Nation’s reception and aftermath reflects Douglass’ and Blights’ argument.

Historical memory continues to be one of my favorite things to study and learn about in history, and Jenson’s work on the myth of victimization in the Irish community showed how a group’s historical memory does not necessarily correlate to actual historical events. Moreover, I found it interesting that Jenson sought to disprove the existence of Irish economic victimization, and offer possible explanations as to why the social mobility of the Irish was lower than other immigrant groups and proves an interesting contrast to the more traditional historical studies. As AJ and David have already mentioned, Jenson does a superb job of pointing out the fact that the actual existence of documentation suggesting an organized effort of discrimination against the Irish is non-existent.
What I think is missing in this piece was a more detailed observation on how other forms of discrimination, such as dehumanizing images that are plentiful in Kenny’s descriptions in Race, Violence, and Anti-Irish Sentiment in the Nineteenth Century, helped facilitate the perpetuation or creation of this myth of economic discrimination. Jenson alludes to this by saying, “The question is not whether or not the Irish were admired. (They were not)” (9). He continues by offering a quick dismissal of the pervasiveness of all forms of discrimination against the Irish, there is no evidence that more than one in a thousand Americans considered the Irish as racially inferior.” However, Jenson also acknowledges what Kelly’s work shows, namely that the contemporary literature at the time contained and promoted a negative portrayal of the Irish (9). I think an effort to better connect how the discrimination in other aspects of the Irish experience contributed to the myth of economic discrimination would have added to Jenson’s work.

Tag: Memory

An Example of Blight's and Douglass' Thinking

Historical Memory and Reality