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How Can We Change the Future without Knowing the Past?
I grew up below the Mason Dixon line. In Baltimore, we have Frederick Douglass High School (named for the escaped slave become statesman and abolitionist) and Robert E. Lee Memorial Park (named for the Confederate General from Virginia). They were not that far away from one another… less than seven miles.
I thought of that strange proximity when I read Wednesday’s New York Times article on how little U.S. students know about the civil rights movement.
All throughout my schooling, February was devoted to memorizing interesting facts about influential and important African Americans. Matthew Henson (explorer), Benjamin Banneker (mathematician, inventor and Baltimore hometown hero who—among other things—made the first American clock), Crispus Attucks (first to die in the American Revolution), Madam C.J. Walker (entrepreneur), George Washington Carver… and of course Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. But this learning was scattershot and somewhat random—not a comprehensive look at a movement that shaped the city in which I was growing up—a city that could celebrate a former slave and a Southern army general.
The inventor of peanut butter, the inventor-ess of the scalp treatments for women and many others all squeezed into the shortest month of the year. All these years later, I find it easy to recall their names (and dozens more) but hard to sum up their accomplishments or explain the when, why and hows of their struggles. I would get an F (or at least a D) on whatever test the Southern Poverty Law Center gave to schools.
The Center documents their findings in a report entitled Teaching the Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education in the United States 2011, which was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of highlights of the Civil Rights Movement—like the freedom rides that involved thousands of young people in desegregating the trans-state bus routes.
Who is Medgar Evers? Emmett Till? Or women like Septima Poinsette Clark? Fannie Lou Hamer?
But this report is not a trivia contest or a “name that civil rights luminary” quiz. Instead it looks at how the civil rights movement is taught in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. It took on a huge and difficult task in that there are no common standards or widely accepted curricula. The SPLC examined:
all current and available state standards, frameworks, model curricula and related documents archived on the websites of the departments of education of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It focuses on standards for social studies, social science, history and related subjects like civics or geography.
It looked at how the history of the civil rights movement is taught across a variety of grade levels and through more than a dozen commonly assigned American history textbooks and tried to “set out an approachable span of core knowledge that a competent citizen needs to gain a reasonably full understanding of the civil rights movement.”
In other words, the Southern Poverty Law Center would love it if all kids graduated from high school conversant in the ups and downs of relations between the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X or a granular understanding of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People’s Campaign but that is not the curve they are grading on in their sweeping and comprehensive study. They are looking for coverage of basic historical information and opportunities for young people to get excited and inspired… And they did not find it.
Alabama, Florida and New York were the only states to receive an A (but A does not mean 100% though; it means that these three states include at least 60% of the recommended content). Georgia, Illinois and South Carolina received B grades. These states received high marks for requiring instruction, but the majority of states (35) failed with Fs for either not requiring any instruction on the civil rights movement or having only minimal coverage.
My home state—Maryland received a C grade with SPLC noting that:
Maryland’s civil rights movement requirements cover several major areas but are weak overall… [But] The state does an admirable job of covering diverse tactics, and is one of only a handful of states to include the urban uprisings of the 1960s in its required curriculum.
Whoo hoo for the C grade. Only five other states got a C.
My adopted state of Connecticut failed, with the SPLC concluding that:
Connecticut’s failure to require students to learn about the civil rights movement is disappointing, but not especially surprising given the overall lack of rigor and content in the state’s history standards. Still, it is a shame that a state whose rich history includes the Amistad case and a long tradition of abolitionism does not require students to learn about the civil rights movement at all, let alone its substantial and important history.
Hmm, The Amistad? I did not know there was a Connecticut connection (it is almost like I went through CT public schools).
I was fascinated by these assessments and remembered my own shock and excitement when I was invited to dig more deeply into the story of Rosa Parks—who I learned about in school and from the Neville Brothers song “Thank you, Sister Rosa.” Paul Loeb was the person who introduced me to the trained activist Rosa Parks, the one with a long history in the movement. His writings also opened a window on the long struggle of the Montgomery Bus Boycott—the thousands of men and women who walked to and from work for months and the tens of thousands who supported them throughout the nation.
Yep, I was well into my twenties before I learned about this (despite having activist parents and being encouraged to read books like People’s History of the United States. I was too busy trying to sneak a peek at Miami Vice and the Dukes of Hazard).
In The Impossible Will Take a Little While, which first exposed me to this fuller picture of Rosa Parks, Paul Loeb quotes an African American activist from Atlanta who commented that:
when people who work for social change are presented as saints—so much more noble than the rest of us… it does us all a disservice…We get a false sense that from the moment they were born they were called to act, never had doubts, were bathed in a circle of light.
Looking at the movement as a whole, learning about its successes and failures and its commitment to continue on in experiments in truth after evaluation and trial and error, means that she (and we) have a ”shot at changing things” even if we are not Rosa Parks.
Teaching the Movement makes the same point.
Parks is justly venerated for her activism in triggering the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Yet too many depictions of her portray a lone woman who was simply tired and did not want to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. In reality, she was a trained participant in a well-organized social movement.
This should be cause for alarm. The reduction of the movement into simple fables obscures both the personal sacrifices of those who engaged in the struggle and the breadth of the social and institutional changes they wrought…. Students deserve to learn that individuals, acting collectively, can move powerful institutions to change.
There is a library full of new books (or e-books) on the civil rights movement and the big personalities that labored in it fields and lunch counters and street corners. The one I am most excited to read is the late Manning Marable’s A Life of Reinvention: Malcolm X. (I know, I know, it came out months ago).
But before sitting down to the thousands of pages of prose, I should have a series of conversations with the young people in my life (and with the young person who still lives inside of me) and ask a lot of questions (and be ready for a lot of answers). Questions like: “What do you know?” “Who are your heroes and she-roes?” “What are you taught?” “What do you want to learn?” “What kind of world do you want to live in?” and “What skills do you need to hone and lessons do you need learn in order to make that world?” I invite you to do the same so that the civil rights movement of half a century ago can inform and inspire and ground the many movements for civil, social and human rights that are needed (and those that are underway) today and tomorrow.
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Show AllNext documentary I plan to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXQxyYllXnM
Revisionist history is a growth industry in the US.
Although Martin Luther King's (MLK's) legacy has most often been limited to his civil rights activism, MLK also addressed growing economic inequality caused by corporate control of government as the bigger problem of which civil rights is a subset.
The corporations that funded the new MLK Memorial have put MLK in a civil rights box, ignoring his concern about the broader economic inequality that impairs the progress on the civil rights front.
It's pretty optimistic to ask kids what kind of world they want, given the world they're about to inherit. Economics have been decoupled from any metrics of meaning thanks to Wall Street taking over the measures of worth... and wealth. And worse than that, is the state of natural economics as aquifers break down, rains fall where there is no agriculture, and fail to fall where it's been long-established. Pollution is everywhere, with our waterways laced in big pharma's run-off, while the right wing push is on to deregulate and further defang the EPA. (And this is a VERY partial list.)
And then... there are the wars. Not a war on poverty, but a war on the poor, added to an insane war on drugs running parallel to a high-priced, inane war on terror, etc. ad nauseum.
I suppose no one can live without dreams; and beyond the body's need for biological rest, during sleep, amid "the dream time" our inner lives gain the chance to replenish themselves. For there we can experience the marvel of what could be, in contrast with the battles that await too many of us once we wake up.
The reason that sleep deprivation is a key aspect of torture is that we human beings require that escape to sustain ourselves in this world where those intent upon producing nightmares tend to get the most influence and funding.
I (partially) understand your predicament as I grew up in lower New York State and most of our history was about New England. However, the time to get to know the United States is fading as the idea of nation states is fading and globalization is at hand.
It's impossible to "know" the past. History is a succession of stories often put out by kings and victors in wars of various kinds (not all of them military). I've been watching history documentaries and even reading an occasional book for a long time and, to me, history is a succession of horrific accounts of warlords triumphing with some game changing inventions scattered every few thousand years, the pace of which has increased in the past couple centuries bringing the population up with it. The history of tribes who didn't leave a written record of what they were doing -- and there were many -- remains unknown. It can be called, as Gore Vidal did in one of his essays, "the agreed upon facts."
It's still worth looking into because, even though absolute knowledge of it is impossible (it's not really a "science"; it's an intellectual discipline), much that scholars have verified in recent decades is probably as close to truth as can be approximated, and much can be learned.
"I've been watching history documentaries and even reading an occasional book for a long time and, to me..."
Hey, it would be fun, just as an experiment, to switch that around for a couple of years and read more history books and watch only an occasional documentary and see if your views change. I only say that because documentaries may lean more toward horrific events, and written history more toward analysis.
I always appreciate helpful suggestions from other Common Dreams posters as to what media I should use to take in the information I see. I shall take this under advisement and give it serious consideration.
Just think, if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today and leading his civil rights movement, the government would have already labeled him a "terrorist" and either apprehended and sent him to Guantanamo or summarily executed him with a drone in his own home while declaring all those innocent by standards also slaughtered as "collateral damage" while the sheep rejoiced and celebrated the slaughtered.
"...I should have a series of conversations with the young people in my life (and with the young person who still lives inside of me) and ask a lot of questions (and be ready for a lot of answers). Questions like: ...“What kind of world do you want to live in?” and “What skills do you need to hone and lessons do you need learn in order to make that world?” I invite you to do the same ...."
I should invite you to ask the same questions of the older people in your life, as well. In fact, I would have everyone answer these two in particular--regardless of age or gender or ethnicity or religion--and their answers be made public for all to ponder.
Ms. Berrigan shares an interesting perspective on history and education. The problem that teachers in the classroom face today (and have historically, if we're being honest) is that the "powers that be" really have no interest in educating our students to think for themselves. Further, what is in the "standards" is one thing, what kids actually get exposed to is another, and what the students actually learn is something else. With the vast number of social studies standards in most state frameworks, it would be a heroic teacher indeed who was able to engage in a significant way with a majority, let alone all, of the standards. Most teachers are lucky to get to the modern era at all. Heaven knows what teachers in the South are able or willing to impart to their students about the civil rights movement.
We all must remember that when considering these discussions about standards that listing the standards is the easy part. Deciding what constitutes meeting the standards is harder, and providing resources to teachers and schools to actually meet the standards is harder still. No wonder that over the years we have been "blessed" with Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top, but very little has changed, except for the worse. The press conference announcing the initiative may be well attended, but the implementation is long, difficult, and expensive.
Until we have a truly pro-people president, the watchword for concerned educators will continue to be, "Question authority." Our syllabus must include A Modest Proposal, Candide, 1984, Alice in Wonderland, and Catch-22, and authors such as Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Luther King. Stay strong!
Someone on a recent CD thread observed that the average USA MBA grad took only one course in "history."
They probably take several courses in "economics," but these would be mostly econometrics. Double bookkeeping. Lots of computer courses, almost no philosophy. "Arts & Science" are dying, except where corporations are underwriting the "science."
I'm an old white guy, but I grew up living very close to black people who early on taught me to see through the veil. Merely being white by accident of birth confers a tiny bit of privilege, but most white people are also victims of a System intent on maintaining the power of the few over the many, ultimately regardless of race---as shown by the likes of certain African dictators. They still need "middle managers." But fewer and fewer as computers grow more "intelligent" and store more "data."
The importance of the Civil Rights Movement for young white guys like me in the 1960s was less the issue of race than what I came to see as the larger issues of injustice and poverty and police brutality and workplace exploitation and, later, the poisoning of the planet as most notably outlined by Rachel Carson in "Silent Spring." (She never got a Nobel Peace Prize!)
I know the Past because I have lived it, sometimes with incredible intensity so that adrenalin-infused events of decades ago are recalled in far more detail than my memory of last week! This probably goes to Chris Hedges' "War is a force that gives us meaning." It is physiological. In youth we are tested by confrontation. In old age we recall our adrenalin times.
Both MLK and Malcolm knew of the greater cause, and died for it. Ironically, Barry Goldwater perhaps put it most succinctly in 1964: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."
A perhaps relevant aside: I doubt that a President McCain would have authorized the targeted assassination of an American citizen in Yemen who was merely speaking his mind.
Allen Ginsberg had it right circa 1955 with his poem, "Howl": "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for ..."
WHAT? WHO? WHY?
Poetry on Wall Street? I used to walk the Brooklyn bridge from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights, where I lived briefly. I was facing a "successful" career on Wall Street as a journalist but then one sunny day I was sitting in Battery Park during my lunch hour looking out at the Statue of Liberty and I asked myself, "Why am I doing this?" I quit and walked away and have been paying for it ever since. No regrets! First, do no harm.
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This Author's observations relative to the general failure to teach schools kids the importance of the civil-rights movement relative to modern US history [in the context of general US history], must be understood relative the myth of a so-called 'Post-racial' [Obama era] America. Furthermore NCLB / RTTT over-emphasis on so-called 'standardized' testing [the 3 Rs] will exacerbate this problem - even amongst Black & Brown school kids. Then in several states ethnic studies programs which focuses specifically at the histories of Black & Browns [& others] relative to US history, have been targeted & attacked [IE: in TX & AZ, etc].
These factors are not likely to be rolled-back or even checked any time soon - in fact they are current national & many states' policy. This maintains the standardization of the Euro-Centric view of history even as it relates to US History. Thus it will / has become necessary for parents & their school children [Black, Brown & others] to do needed research to teach & learn the important histories of the Black Freedom struggle [IE; civil rights movement] in the larger context of Black / African history [past & modern] Themselves! This is why I don't necessarily oppose the concept of home-schooling & or Truly Independent Community Controlled Schools - IF taken seriously & properly structured.
PS: If you are going to read any book on Malcolm X - you should first read the 'Autobiography of Malcolm X [in conjunction w Alex Haley] - as a prerequisite!