[Following up Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex American histories connected to the holiday’s original identity as Decoration Day.]
On three
ways to argue for remembering Decoration Day as well as Memorial Day.
If someone
(like, I dunno, an imaginary voice in my head to prompt this post…) were to ask
me why we should better remember the histories I’ve traced in this week’s
posts—were, that is, to respond with the “So what?” of today’s title—my first
answer would be simple: because they happened. There are many things about
history of which we can’t be sure, nuances or details that will always remain
uncertain or in dispute. But there are many others that are in fact quite
clear, and we just don’t remember them clearly: and the origins and initial
meanings of Decoration Day are just such clear historical facts. Indeed, so
clear were those Decoration Day starting points that most Southern states chose
not to recognize the holiday at all in its early years. I can’t quite imagine a
good-faith argument for not better remembering clear historical facts
(especially when they’re as relevant as the origins of a holiday are on that
holiday!), and I certainly don’t have any interest in engaging with such an
argument.
But there
are also other, broader arguments for better remembering these histories. For
one thing, the changes in the meanings and commemorations of Decoration Day,
and then the gradual shift to Memorial Day, offer a potent illustration of the
longstanding role and power of white supremacist perspectives (not necessarily
in the most discriminatory or violent senses of the concept, but rather as
captured by that Nation editorial’s
point about the negro “disappearing from the field of national politics”) in
shaping our national narratives, histories, and collective memories. In much of
my teaching, writing, and work over the last fifteen years I’ve argued for what
I called a more inclusive
vs. a more exclusive version of American history, one that
overtly pushes back on those kinds of narrow, exclusionary, white supremacist
historical narratives in favor of a broader and (to my mind) far more accurate
sense of all the American communities that have contributed to and been part of
our identity and story. Remembering Decoration Day as well as Memorial Day
would represent precisely such an inclusive rather than more exclusive version
of American history.
There’s also
another way to think about and frame that argument. Throughout the last couple
decades, conservatives have argued that the new Common Core and AP US
History standards portray and teach a “negative” vision of
American history, rather than the celebratory one for which these commentators
argue instead (we saw the same argument made at length in the 1776 Commission report).
As so many historians
and scholars have noted in response, these arguments are at best
oversimplified, at worst blatantly inaccurate. But it is fair to say that
better remembering painful histories such as those of slavery, segregation, and
lynching can be a difficult process, especially if we seek to make them more
central to our collective national memories. So the more we can find inspiring
moments and histories, voices and perspectives, that connect both to those
painful histories and to more ideal visions of American identity and community,
the more likely it is (I believe) that we will remember them. And I know of few
American histories more inspiring than that of Decoration Day: its origins and
purposes, its advocates like Frederick Douglass, and its strongest enduring meaning
for the African American community—and, I would argue, for all of us.
May Recap
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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