[December 9th
marks the 145th anniversary of P.B.S.
Pinchback assuming the Louisiana governorship, making him the first
African American governor in U.S. history. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy
five figures from the Reconstruction era, leading up to a special post on
Pinchback himself!]
On the impromptu
debate, between two of the most impressive Americans, that exemplifies one of
Reconstruction’s (and America’s) most complex and crucial questions.
One of my most frequently
revisited topics, at least as far back as this
2012 blog series and at length in my most
recent book, has been the challenges and yet the importance of remembering
our darkest American histories. As I wrote in that blog
series’ third post, no national histories are darker nor more important for
us to better remember than
those of slavery; that’s why, whatever its flaws
or limitations, I’m generally on board with Quentin
Tarantino’s project in his controversial revisionist historical film Django Unchained. Yet in arguing for
the importance of such memories, I can and should recognize the fact that it’s
significantly easier for me to say that than it is for African Americans, for
those whose own darkest histories and heritages are directly tied to these
national horrors. For that community, it’s fair to ask whether remembering the
histories of slavery is as important as trying to move beyond them and into a
more positive future; and indeed, in the decades after emancipation and the
Civil War many prominent African American voices argued precisely for, if not
forgetting slavery, at least not focusing on keeping its memories alive.
Perhaps the
leader of that movement was Alexander Crummell,
the priest, philosopher, professor, and political activist whose impressive 19th
century life and career spanned abolitionism, black nationalism and the
development of the Liberian state, and many other causes. In the years after
the Civil War, Crummell came to feel that only by moving beyond the memories of
slavery could African Americans achieve success and equality; he developed that
theme with particularly clarity in “The
Need for New Ideas and New Aims for a New Era,” his 1885 commencement address at Storer
College, the newly founded freedmen’s
college in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. In the audience was none other
than Frederick Douglass, a trustee of the college and one of the few men who
could equal Crummell’s longstanding prominence in the African American
community, and Douglass apparently objected vocally to Crummell’s arguments.
Unfortunately no specific transcript of Douglass’s comments exists, but
throughout this era Douglass certainly argued the opposite of Crummell’s
critique of “fanatical anxieties upon the subject of slavery”; for Douglass,
instead, that dark history “could
be traced [in American identity] like that of a wounded man through a crowd by
the blood,” and so must be followed and engaged with.
If we approach
this debate from a scholarly perspective, as I did when I used the exchange to open
a chapter of my
first book, it seems clear enough that Douglass was right, that it’s vital
to remember even—perhaps especially—our darkest histories. But for those
African American college graduates in the audience, just as for all African
Americans in and after the Reconstruction era—and, in less immediate but still
present ways, for all their descendents—the question was and remains far from
simply academic. Obviously there is value, practical as well as philosophical,
in remembering the worst parts of our pasts, for individuals, for communities,
and for the nation. But as Crummell noted, to dwell upon such memories can make
it significantly more difficult to live in the present and move into an even
stronger future. So the key, perhaps, is to remember without getting lost, to
engage without giving in to the most limiting or damaging effects. Easier said
than done, of course—but both Crummell and Douglass, and many other inspiring
and influential voices, give us models for such work.
Next figure
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Reconstruction figures or stories you’d highlight?
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