Dr George Lewis, “Framed to Forget: Rethinking Segregationists in American Public Memory”, 8th November 2017

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