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If I feel so out of practice reading, I wonder sometimes if I still can properly, I'm certainly out of practice writing. But I spent the day working in the hot sun with my mind turning over. I may as well put some words down and stop carrying their tumbling tornado. I suppose this serves as the disclaimer about the quality of my miniature essay that allows me to actually write it.
Yesterday I attended a discussion of The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life and Death of a Harper's Ferry Raider by Louis A DeCaro Jr. Little is known about Green, and the book is an interesting walk through the author weighing the contexts and reliability of what sources exist. The final question put to us by the facilitators was how Green should be remembered, despite little concrete information about him. For all we can't know about him, we do know Shields Green was a man who sacrificed his own safety for others, and was murdered by the state for it.
I keep mulling over the importance of knowing that. Of knowing history, of remembering, of honoring those who came before us by learning their stories. In cultural and historical terms, I am utterly unimportant. A disabled middle aged homemaker who rarely leaves home, with no real social circle or community; what little I'd built was damaged by a stretch of absence from activism after a car crash on the way to a civil disobedience action in 2018, then obliterated by COVID's arrival and the beginning of my long hermitage. I know very few people. What I do and do not know about history makes few ripples in the world. I ran a history / social justice bookclub for a few years, until COVID (and the participants' reluctance to read non-fiction) brought that to a close. My public school teaching days are long behind me, and I was a science teacher, not one of history. Now I discuss history only with 11yo child. Which is not unimportant, but in the face of the work to be done, it feels so tiny.
But I keep learning, absorbing as much of the real story as I can. It feels important, even if it's only to hold the real stories and carry them forward a little. And unable to know what the future holds, I can't discount making it far enough to find what I know does matter. Even for just now, understanding more of the history of this country gives me a much sharper understanding of our current moment. Even though that can make this place even more terrifying, it also provides perspective: it's all the same struggle, all these years.
While making dinner this evening I listened to a conversation between professor and author Jonathan Metzl and podcaster Danielle Moodie, and I was struck by something he said in a way I would not have been had I not just read DeCaro's book. Shields Green was among the men with John Brown during the unsuccessful raid at Harper's Ferry. I learned that the main aim of the raid was not really to seize the weapons there, but those prosecuting the abolitionists played up this angle to inflame sentiment against the men, knowing that threat against slaveholding society's weapons was a trump card. I wish I could find the quote in the book now, that speaks to the intensity of concern white people held for the security of their weapons, as a salve for their fear of an uprising among the people they enslaved.
The conversation topic between Metzl and Moodie was the recent racist song and music video by a country musician I'd previously only known as the name on the song about tractors my kid loved as a toddler. The song promotes- and reflects, in the positive feedback loop that is culture- white America's obsession with guns and the conviction that some enemy is coming to take them. Metzl spoke of interviewing rural white people hundreds of miles from Ferguson MO who were carrying long guns explicitly in defense against, to strip away euphanism, an uprising of Black people.
There is so much more weight in things when you know more of the story.
The ridiculous and terrifying things being said and done by, say, the Florida governor in a competition to bring back the Confederacy as fast as possible, sink deeper into your bones when you understand not only how bad things have been here, but how bad they are now.
In the 2017ish era, many of the protests here in rural Connecticut consisted of "Love everybody!" type signs, held aloft by people with good intent. Though to me it felt like a refusal to address the heart of the matter, like a message for children.
One of mine said "PLEASE STUDY HISTORY."
I make the same plea today.
(Thank you to Mariame Kaba for putting together the book discussions of biographies of abolitionists from US history. The next will be held September 17; follow Project NIA on Eventbrite to find it when it is posted. https://www.eventbrite.com/o/project-nia-1406626943 )
Yesterday I attended a discussion of The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life and Death of a Harper's Ferry Raider by Louis A DeCaro Jr. Little is known about Green, and the book is an interesting walk through the author weighing the contexts and reliability of what sources exist. The final question put to us by the facilitators was how Green should be remembered, despite little concrete information about him. For all we can't know about him, we do know Shields Green was a man who sacrificed his own safety for others, and was murdered by the state for it.
I keep mulling over the importance of knowing that. Of knowing history, of remembering, of honoring those who came before us by learning their stories. In cultural and historical terms, I am utterly unimportant. A disabled middle aged homemaker who rarely leaves home, with no real social circle or community; what little I'd built was damaged by a stretch of absence from activism after a car crash on the way to a civil disobedience action in 2018, then obliterated by COVID's arrival and the beginning of my long hermitage. I know very few people. What I do and do not know about history makes few ripples in the world. I ran a history / social justice bookclub for a few years, until COVID (and the participants' reluctance to read non-fiction) brought that to a close. My public school teaching days are long behind me, and I was a science teacher, not one of history. Now I discuss history only with 11yo child. Which is not unimportant, but in the face of the work to be done, it feels so tiny.
But I keep learning, absorbing as much of the real story as I can. It feels important, even if it's only to hold the real stories and carry them forward a little. And unable to know what the future holds, I can't discount making it far enough to find what I know does matter. Even for just now, understanding more of the history of this country gives me a much sharper understanding of our current moment. Even though that can make this place even more terrifying, it also provides perspective: it's all the same struggle, all these years.
While making dinner this evening I listened to a conversation between professor and author Jonathan Metzl and podcaster Danielle Moodie, and I was struck by something he said in a way I would not have been had I not just read DeCaro's book. Shields Green was among the men with John Brown during the unsuccessful raid at Harper's Ferry. I learned that the main aim of the raid was not really to seize the weapons there, but those prosecuting the abolitionists played up this angle to inflame sentiment against the men, knowing that threat against slaveholding society's weapons was a trump card. I wish I could find the quote in the book now, that speaks to the intensity of concern white people held for the security of their weapons, as a salve for their fear of an uprising among the people they enslaved.
The conversation topic between Metzl and Moodie was the recent racist song and music video by a country musician I'd previously only known as the name on the song about tractors my kid loved as a toddler. The song promotes- and reflects, in the positive feedback loop that is culture- white America's obsession with guns and the conviction that some enemy is coming to take them. Metzl spoke of interviewing rural white people hundreds of miles from Ferguson MO who were carrying long guns explicitly in defense against, to strip away euphanism, an uprising of Black people.
There is so much more weight in things when you know more of the story.
The ridiculous and terrifying things being said and done by, say, the Florida governor in a competition to bring back the Confederacy as fast as possible, sink deeper into your bones when you understand not only how bad things have been here, but how bad they are now.
In the 2017ish era, many of the protests here in rural Connecticut consisted of "Love everybody!" type signs, held aloft by people with good intent. Though to me it felt like a refusal to address the heart of the matter, like a message for children.
One of mine said "PLEASE STUDY HISTORY."
I make the same plea today.
(Thank you to Mariame Kaba for putting together the book discussions of biographies of abolitionists from US history. The next will be held September 17; follow Project NIA on Eventbrite to find it when it is posted. https://www.eventbrite.com/o/project-nia-1406626943 )
