[Since I’ve been
on sabbatical this Fall, in place of my usual semester recaps series I’ll be
recapping some of the many
book talks I’ve gotten to deliver over the last few months. Leading up to a
special weekend post on what’s next for We the People!]
On inspiring
takeaways from two events at which I was fortunate enough to get to share my
voice and ideas.
In the last week
of October, I had the chance to take part in two compelling and important
public scholarly conversations. My friend and online
collaborator Matthew
Teutsch has recently begun work as the Director of the Lillian E. Smith
Center in Georgia, and he invited me to take part in this year’s symposium, sharing my take
on Smith and exclusion/inclusion alongside scholars Tanya
Bennett and Patricia Bell-Scott,
documentary filmmaker Hal Jacobs,
and graduate student (and inaugural Piedmont College Smith Scholar)
Emily Pierce. And four days later I was headed down to Southeastern Louisiana
University to take part in the National Women’s
History Museum’s “Determined
to Rise” program for the centennial of the 19th Amendment—my Saturday Evening Post column on
women’s suffrage led to my invitation to this event by museum Director of
Education Lori
Ann Terjesen and Education Programs Manager Liz
Eberlein, and I was honored to share my thoughts on exclusion, inclusion,
and the suffrage movement alongside fellow scholars Samantha
Cavell (our host at Southeastern), Elizabeth Hornsby, and
Alecia Long.
Those two events
and conversations were impressive and important on a number of levels, but for
this series and space I want to focus on takeaways for me related to We the People and my continued thoughts
on exclusion, inclusion, and America. For one thing, as I said at the
symposium, if I had known about Lillian Smith a couple years ago I would have
worked to find a way to include her in the book, as both her critiques of exclusionary
attitudes and her modeling of inclusive alternatives are as clear and
convincing as any I’ve encountered in American writing and thought. But more
broadly, preparing my talk on Smith in the context of those concepts helped me
think through a connection of this project to another historical and cultural
trend about which I’ve written a good deal over the years: the late 19th
century rise
to national prominence (and eventually dominance) of the white
supremacist Lost Cause narrative. As Albion
Tourgée
put it in 1888, American literature had already by that moment become “not
only Southern in type, but distinctly Confederate in sympathy.” For whatever
reason, I hadn’t quite made the link between that trend and the many ways in
which exclusionary narratives became more nationally dominant in that same era,
as with the rise
of the first immigration laws. But thanks to Lillian Smith (and Matthew),
I’ve started to develop that connection, and I think it will continue to yield
further analyses of these interconnected American myths.
Another late 19th
century American trend was the growth and amplification of the movement
for women’s suffrage. And as I argued at the “Determined to Rise” panel,
that movement toward inclusion was both subject to exclusionary backlash
(especially in the rhetorical
and physical violence directed at the suffrage activists) and featured its
own exclusionary discriminations (especially directed at women of color). Moreover,
the thoughts and perspectives of my fellow panelists helped me continue
developing links between those tensions and concurrent histories like the rise
of the Lost Cause narrative—such as in the career and perspective of Georgia
activist Rebecca Latimer Felton, the first woman to serve
in the US Senate and a champion of women’s suffrage and rights, but also a
virulent white supremacist who gave one of American history’s most
blatant speeches in support of the lynching epidemic (in August 1897,
amidst the period of the most
frequent such acts of racial terrorism). Exclusion and inclusion are not simply
contested American views, they also (if not always) coexist in the same
moments, the same histories, even the same communities. Which makes it that
much more important to remember and engage those stories, as well as the voices
of figures and writers like Lillian Smith who resisted exclusion and modeled
inclusion.
Next talk recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Ideas for
other places I could talk or write about We
the People? Lemme know,
and thanks!
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