The
final talk of this semester’s Hook Centre Seminar Series was delivered by Dr
George Lewis, Reader in American History at the University of Leicester. Lewis
gave a fascinating paper that explored how American public discourse has come to
terms with the history of segregation, encompassing a discussion of national
memory, race and racism. Lewis began by focusing on the presence of Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton at Selma during their respective presidential
campaigns, before moving into an exploration of the roles that the media cast
protesters and segregationists into (both in 2007 and during the Selma protests
themselves).
Lewis argued that national memory of race
and racism has often been shaped at symbolic locations (or in his words, sites
of “curated memory”) such as Selma. He stated that in March 2007 the
frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Clinton,
both attempted to “drape themselves in the memory of Selma”, hoping to make
their presence at this historical site appear simultaneously meaningful and
effortless. Focussing on Obama’s rhetoric in particular, Lewis discussed how the
future president tried to situate himself within this national narrative - a
narrative that tracked the progress towards racial equality and hailed the
protesters at Selma as ‘true Americans’. By implication, this narrative also
positioned opponents of civil rights as the opposite: inherently ‘un-American’
until they were ready to seek redemption for their beliefs. Lewis offered up
George Wallace as an example of a redemptive ‘un-American’. Wallace, an avowed
segregationist, paid lip service to racial equality once his long-held views on
race were deemed socially unacceptable.
Shifting focus, Lewis began to consider how
segregationists were presented during
the Selma protests. His main source material was photography used in mainstream
northern-American, liberal media to document the protests. This
material was supported by Lewis’ exploration of the later-published collections
of individual photographers, and editorial material that never made it to
print. Using these sources, he argued that the images used to represent white
segregationists portrayed them as “two-dimensional” and
“lacking agency”, thus
distorting the narrative of post-movement racial politics. While protesters
were presented visually as multi-faceted agents of
change, segregationists were often portrayed as a “single brittle line” of protesters. However, this only proved to
simplify a very complex struggle. Lewis considered the notion that this could just
be a coincidence but argued
that, since alternative photos were taken but never used, the white, liberal
press deliberately constructed and disseminated a narrative that understated
the pervasive nature of Jim Crow segregation. These images also failed to
represent other issues like voter registration and economic segregation, thus
allowing white liberal audiences to underestimate the complexities of the
broader civil rights struggle.
Lewis concluded that the simplification of
the deeply complex race issue allowed segregationists an easy route to relieve
their conscience and, more importantly, restore their public image. The ease in
which they could navigate this ‘redemptive
narrative’ (seen from 1965 onwards) shaped and misinformed
the national and international understanding of how deeply engrained racial
attitudes remained in certain localities and families. In the twenty-first
century, the simplified narrative wrongly lead observers to rule the Selma
victory as marking the beginning of the end for segregation. Those who prematurely
celebrated a ‘post-racial’ America in the wake of President Obama’s election
have quickly come to recognise the reality of the situations in the wake of
President Trump’s. Obama himself stated earlier this year that much still
remains to be achieved in the enduring civil rights struggle.
Overall, Lewis’s paper was informative and
engaging, a fitting addition to the series that maintained the high standard
achieved thus far. It engendered lively discussion during the subsequent
Q&A session, including reference to modern issues including the
#BlackLivesMatter movement and the role of historians in helping the public
grapple with modern history. Given the Hook Centre’s interest in public engagement
and knowledge exchange, these issues felt like a fitting conclusion to the
semester, and we hope to see many of you at the series in the New Year.
Sarah Thomson
PGT American Studies
University of Glasgow
