My dad does a lot of genealogy research on ancestry.com, tracing our lineage as far back as he can. As a white person, I am able to learn about my history much farther back than many black people can learn. This brings up the fact that stories are so important, as well as the documentation of those stories, to individual and national memory. Many black people today cannot trace back to where there ancestors were originally from because this memory was erased from history.

This puts things into perspective. Her family celebrated natural death as their form of loss because they did not have to grieve over loved ones lost to the slave trade. The loss was theirs, not their master's.

He was a minister who created the African Methodist Episcopal church, which also aided with education for black children.

Societal truths seem to be interconnected with national memory. Both are based on perspective, influence one another, and are fragile and susceptible to change.

This reminds me of how numerous whites reacted to the push for MLK day to become a national holiday.

In class last week, we learned about how Martin Luther King's historical prowess overshadowed other important civil rights leaders that are largely forgotten about by the public. This relates to the fact that it is largely unknown that the Confederate Army did not stop fighting when General Lee surrendered, just as slaves were not freed in the South for a long time after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The big symbolic surrender overshadows these facts, making the end of slavery seem much simpler than it was.

It is so interesting to me how a song can produce such an intense memory for people. This demonstrates how music is a form of history. I learned about this in HIST 125 last semester. Just as our memories are shaped by stories, they are also shaped by music.

Even though the mayor starts off by acknowledging the fact that the Confederate flag is a symbol for segregation, he turns to a more condescending tone, describing black peoples' fight for the flag to be taken down as "feelings" as if black people didn't know any better. It demonstrates that even though blatant racism has dissipated, underlying institutional racism pervades.

This connection is kind of a stretch, but recently I learned that Bruce Springsteen's song "Born in the USA" is not a patriotic song, but rather a criticism of the United States (specifically the Vietnam War). Ironically, Ronald Reagan used this song in his campaign, which Springsteen shut down. I was reminded of this because of Reagan's attempts to compare himself to MLK as well as conservatives' attempts to warp King's speech to appeal to their own motives. And now, we are seeing direct effects as affirmative action is no longer allowed at UNC.

This refers to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel that drew more whites to the abolition movement but portrayed blacks as passive or subservient.

This is pretty accurate. I remember in middle and high school American History, MLK was heavily emphasized while leaders such as Malcolm X, W.E.B Dubois, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, etc were only briefly mentioned.

This kind of apathy is almost as dangerous as out right bigotry when it comes to combating racism. This book (https://www.ibramxkendi.com/stampedbook) explains why it is so important to be antiracist instead of just not racist.

A collective memory that is ignored by many Americans is the complete economic and social disenfranchisement experienced by African-Americans. One of the ways whites are trying to erase this memory is by getting rid of teaching critical race theory in schools. They are trying to wipe the black collective memory from history.

This connects to what GarrettKane said earlier about the fragility of collective memory. It is true that the few people in power have the ability to change, create, and deny laws that can potentially affect the creation of a collective memory. However, this case proves that with strength in numbers, a collective memory can persist through pushback.

The invented tradition that we learned about in class on Wednesday seems to refer more to traditions that appear to happen automatically and are widely accepted by society. It is interesting that because the MLK holiday was made "conspicuously," it is seemingly different from other invented traditions like Christmas. I wonder if this has caused many of the American public to view MLK day as less important than other traditions that have been socially accepted for hundreds of years.

It is interesting to me how many minority groups have oppressed other minority groups. Irish Americans have a history of being heavily discriminated against, and yet in this circumstance they saw nothing wrong with stoning black buses.