but th ey lacked a Columbus or St . Patrick'sDay, occasions when they could perform their doubleness-a s both Afric anAmericans and Americans-publicly, without contradiction, and when others,nonblacks, marched in African American parades.
This seems to be the essence of MLK jr. Day — a holiday that celebrates both African Americans as a distinct minority and their contribution to the larger American community.
"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated for dream-ing. He was assassinated for acting and challenging the Government.
This is a striking take on why MLK Jr. was assassinated. I agree that MLK Jr. put a target on his head when he began challenging government actions in Vietnam while showing communist inclinations at the height of the Cold War.
as they choose self-indulgent leisure over historicaland political engagement.' 8
As a white American, I definitely agree with this. We seem to have a general apathy for history and tradition of any kind.
particularly the charges of plagiarism and philan-dering-which rendered him an inappropriate idol
I have never heard about these claims about MLK. Do they have merit or are they slander?
By 1990, only Ari-zona, Montana, and New Hampshire had yet to mandate the holiday in someform;
It is interesting to me that the Southern States which are largely regarded to be more conservative when it came to civil rights created MLK jr. days before New Hampshire and Montana.
"We have declared classes suspended today in honor of a great man. We havenot waited for someone else to declare this a national holiday. We must estab-lish our own heroes and holidays of our own." 8
I wonder if their was any central organization of these student strikes or if they happened spontaneously.
Martin Luther King's birthday is an African American festival, one that doesexpress something vital about the growth and development of black people inthe United States, but it is also an ecumenical, multicultural holiday, one thatuses the exemplary public life of King to teach larger truths about America toall Americans.
The view of Martin Luther King Day as both a black holiday and a multicultural holiday is a striking example of how America synthesizes the experiences of its minority communities into a cohesive national narrative.
the nature of ipower and the question of loyalty to both official and vernacular cul-tur~s.
I agree that the present is almost more important to our memories of the past than the past events themselves. As power dynamics shift and change, so to do our memories.
National Day ofMournin
The National Day of Mourning seems similar to Columbus Day being celebrated as Indigenous People's Day now.
Since it was one of the early thanksgiving celebrations, the holidaycould be seen as representing the defeat of Native Americans.
This problematic reality shows how invented traditions can mean different things to different people. For white Americans, Thanksgiving is often a day of joy, but for Native Americans, it is a day of symbolic defeat.
Buta few years later Macy’s returned to the earlier time presumably sothat the parade would not compete with afternoon football games.6
The change in the Macy's parade time illustrated the declining influence of religious life in America.
the ‘first’ group of immigrants, who werealso model citizens, imbued with religious conviction, and membersof a Chosen people.
By celebrating the pilgrims as the "first" group of immigrants, they conveniently ignored the settlers and African slaves of Jamestown who predated them. This reality shows how invented traditions are often built on willful ignorance of the past.
Writing in 1908, novelist W. D. Howells explains that, while themiddle classes recognized the holiday as a domestic occasion, ‘‘Thepoor recognized the day largely as a sort of carnival,’’ a time to getdrunk and break rules.53
Howell's quote shows how invented traditions can differ based on socioeconomic class. The poor likely viewed Thanksgiving differently than the middle and upper classes, as evidenced by their "fantastic" traditions.
mmediately following the war the major political and culturalchallenges were to find some common ground on which the Northand South might envision themselves as part of a national family.
It appears that Thanksgiving was an invented tradition to help heal sectional and racial divisions that were in need of mending during the Civil War.
‘Wheninstead of letting the past recur, we reconstruct it through an effortof reasoning, what happens is that we distort that past, because wewish to introduce greater coherence.’’1
A perfect explanation of how the desire of present "memory makers" to make events of the past cohere creates distortions of past memories.
Although the pilgrims formed neither the first Americansettlement nor were the first to have a thanksgiving celebration,they are often remembered in those terms.
This quote shows how "memory makers" have twisted the history of the pilgrims to make them foundational to Anglo-America. In reality, the southern colony of Jamestown predated the arrival of the pilgrims. I read somewhere that transferring this foundational quality from Jamestown to Plymouth was how "memory makers" during the Antebellum era attempted to replace America's deeper history of slavery and agrarian culture with the more palatable Pilgrim experience.
They were drawn, like everyone elsein all seasons, by the stone that is treasured by a great nation,its very dust shared as a relic.
Painting the Plymouth Rock as an American relic perfectly encapsulates the theme of how national narratives surrounding the nation's founding still hold a powerful grip on us today.
Faunce was keeper of the PlymouthRecords
The fact that the people of Plymouth kept records is important because it means we can more accurately base our memories of them in historic fact.
"How did he get all those animals on that boat?"
Are they confusing Noah's arc with the Mayflower???
"So where was Atlantica during the Acadian events?"
The article stressing geological time scales really shows how trivial and small human memories are in the grand scheme of things.
The converse was true as well. Stuck to North America,fragments of Europe stayed behind. Baltimore, for example.Nova Scotia. A piece of Staten Island
This is mind-blowing. Every time I go to Baltimore or Staten Island I can say that I've been to Europe!
Mayflower from Holland
I had forgotten that the Mayflower was from Holland and not from England, despite it carrying English settlers.
She was meant to landon New York rock, but she missed.
The earlier settler boats missing their original destination and landing somewhere else seems to be a recurring theme in American history. I believe the Jamestown settlers also originally planned to arrive at a different shore.
nt. However, she doesnot mention in the acknowledgments or cite in her notes any conversa-tions with surviving members of Virginia's Indian community. The bookmay be more of an illuminating exercise in modern pan-Indian spiritual-ity than a distinctly Powhatan produc
Allen's work as a Pueblo women in writing about native Virginians' history shows how memories can be used to foster a modern ethnogenesis. For example, the idea of a pan native American society would have been unthinkable to the 17th century Powhatans who likely felt the Europeans were just as alien to them as some of the other tribes across the continent.
stown. The English began to strikeconfederacy, negotiating with subordinasent or approval and
This reminds me of how the Spanish took over the Aztec Empire by allying with the Empire's native subjects. These natives then helped the Spanish capture the Aztec capital.
nia is
I never knew what Virginia's native name was! I wonder if other states with European names have recorded native names? I couldn't find anything for North Carolina.
t until 1624, some sixteen yeevent supposedly occurred and long after Pocahontas (andpeople who had been in Virginia at the time and could havor denied the story)
The passing of people who actually experienced the events that future memories are based on seems to be a major theme of this course. Without living people, past events can often lose their context and take on a life of their own.
hose hours seemed endless to me asa child, but they were actually fleeting.
I love how the Author seamlessly connected the story of Juneteenth with the history of her family. It made the entire piece feel much more personal than a simple retelling of the holiday's origins.
It has been suggested that this was because, unlike other Southern states, Texashad not been defeated militarily. They had won the last battle of the Civil War. That the state had been itsown Republic, within the living memory of many Texans, also set them apart from the other Confederates.
This is most definitely the case. In other parts of the South, the whites were in state of abject poverty and military defeat that prevented them from aggressively counteracting the freedman's bureau like the whites in Texas.
eople have long quibbled about what thosewords meant to Jefferson personally, as if that actually matters to whether the words are true or not.
In my American history class, I learned that Jefferson was an avowed racist. It is unlikely that meant to include them in "all men are created equal" yet the phrase later served as a rallying cry for abolitionists given its universalizing message.
In one town, dozens of newly freed enslaved people were whipped forcelebrating.
To what degree did white suppression of Juneteenth lead to changes in how the holiday was celebrated across time?
Because my paternal grandmother died when my father was eleven, and his father died the year before Iwas born, I had no contact with an older generation from that line to even overhear their talk about timespast, let alone ask them about those days.
The author's experiences highlights the importance of elders in building community and passing on memories about the past.
After his success in Texas, Edwards established Juneteenth Inc., in order to expand Juneteenthcommemoration outside of Texas. He was highly successful in getting national recognition for andparticipation in the holida
It so amazing that Juneteenth, a holiday virtually forgotten in its cultural hearth in Texas, was so rapidly resurrected and spread across the entire country.
white participants were more frequent, both as observers and as participants,
What were the reactions of the African Americans to whites joining in on Juneteenth? In comparison to MLK Jr. day, I would assume that Juneteenth was more focused on the Black experience of slavery and emancipation than a universalizing holiday message.
althoughenslaved people held by Native American masters had a wide range of emancipation dates that stretchedbeyond the 13th Amendment.12
I had no idea that Native Americans (1) were allowed to own slaves and (2) did own slaves past the ratification of the 13th amendment.
Not surprisingly, Juneteenth eventually became known as Black Independence Day,
I wonder why the name Black Independence Day was not used as the official name of the holiday given that it more accurately describes what the Holiday is about.
But Lincoln’s Proclamation only freed enslaved Africans in Confederateterritories that the Union did not control, so different communities throughout the South noted andcommemorated the day that the Union army occupied and emancipated their people.
It is striking to me that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed enslaved peoples in Confederate lands not even owned by the Union. Legally, Union territories could still have slavery but Confederate territories could not.