[I’ve written
a good deal in the last few months about the topic
of critical patriotism, a central focus of my recently completed
fourth book. So for this year’s 4th of July series I wanted to
highlight a handful of distinct examples of perspectives and visions of such
critical patriotism. Please share your own nominees for critical patriots, past
and present, for a crowd-sourced weekend post full of fireworks!]
On national
divisions and critical patriotism at America’s 100th birthday
celebration.
Birthday parties tend to bring
out both the best and the worst in those being celebrated, so perhaps it should
be no surprise that America’s 100th birthday party, the Centennial Exposition held
over the six months between May and November of 1876 in Philadelphia’s newly
designed Fairmount
Park, was nothing if not profoundly divided in all sorts of complex ways. I’ve
written at length (in the Intro
to my first book) about the most defining such division, between the
Exposition’s ostensible purpose (to celebrate the 100th anniversary
of the Declaration of Independence and thus reflect on America’s historical
origins and identity) and its central focus and tone (a thoroughly forward-looking
celebration of the nation’s material and cultural prowess and possibilities for
continued upward progress). But on any number of specific issues and themes the
Exposition displayed similarly multiple personalities: for example, it featured
the first
American statue dedicated to an African American figure (African
Methodist Episcopal Church founder Richard Allen) but also included a
restaurant known as the
Southern Restaurant where a group of “old-time darkies” continually
serenaded patrons with happy songs of the antebellum South.
Of the many such divisions and
contradictions present on and around the Exposition grounds, though, I don’t
know that any were as striking as those connected to women’s identities,
perspectives, and issues. The Exposition was the first World’s Fair to include
women’s voices in a central way, both in planning (through an all-female Women’s
Centennial Executive Committee) and on the ground (through the Women’s
Pavilion that was created as a result of that committee’s efforts and
fundraising). The Pavilion was certainly a striking success in many respects,
featuring work created and designed solely by women; yet it was equally
striking for the near-complete absence of political perspectives or issues,
including the most prominent such issue of the period, women’s suffrage. Since
the inception of the Women’s Committee organizations such as the National Woman Suffrage
Association had protested the absence of such perspectives and voices from
the committee and in the planning process, not only from a representational
standpoint but through the lens of a particularly salient irony: that women
from around the country were asked to contribute money and support to this
federal organization, but could not themselves vote in a federal (or any other
kind of) election. The NWSA in fact scheduled their national meeting for
Philadelphia in May, on the same day that the Exposition (including the Women’s
Pavilion) opened, presenting another division within that city and moment for
sure.
Yet the most overt and symbolic
(yet also very real and critically patriotic) such division would be presented
on July 4th. On that day, for obvious reasons, the Exposition
reached its fever pitch, with numerous activities and events focused around a
main stage where impressive speakers and Americans gathered to lead the
festivities. The NWSA asked if they could be a part of that stage and those
festivities and were refused, but in truly American (and Revolutionary) fashion
they created
a second stage of their own elsewhere on the grounds. From that stage they
read the full text of the “Declaration
of Rights and Sentiments of Women,” a text that had been initially composed
for the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY, and had become as
much a founding document for this organization and cause as the Declaration of
Independence was for the nation of which they were a complicated but vital
part. Those contrasting stages were only one of many July 4th, 1876
events that highlighted such complex national conversations and divisions—word
was just reaching the East on this day of Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn; a group of parading black
militiamen in Hamburg,
South Carolina refused to cede the sidewalk to a white group, leading to a
violent reprisal and the start of multiple days of anti-black violence in the
town—but their location and proximity can drive home just how multivocal America
was in this Centennial year, and in particular how much critical patriots like
these suffrage activists were adding their voices to the mix.
Next critical
patriot tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Critical patriots you’d nominate?
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