Black History
In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked the survivors in internment camps. Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. This report lays bare new information and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood.
– Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, quoted in press release, “Justice Department Announces Results of Review and Evaluation of the Tulsa Race Massacre,” January 10, 2025.
The caption reads, “Residents listening to radio outside storefront, circa late 1940s.” There are some signs and goods visible, but they’re too small to make out. The uniforms with white smocks of two of the men suggest food.
Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division (Street Scenes, Harlem, 1940s), New York Public Library Digital Collections, image ID 1800852.
“How some Texas parents and historians say a new state curriculum glosses over slavery and racism” by Jaden Edison, The Texas Tribune, November 18, 2024.
Revisiting Image of Two Back Sailors Browsing Books
On August 27th, I posted a mid-to-late 1940s photo of two Black sailors browsing books in a library section marked “Negro Books." In response, a couple people on my socials expressed outrage or sadness over the segregation they thought they were seeing. That makes sense if one doesn’t consider the book titles I mentioned or the link to a related post here titled Reading about Black Librarians and Knowledge Formation.
Thing is, though, books could be powerful wherever librarians made them available in their collections and discoverable by their readers. That’s why I see in the image two sailors browsing books in a thematic library display that highlighted a selection of books of probable interest to Black people. The photo’s provenance also suggests as much: the U.S. Navy Department’s Office of Public Relations produced it, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture preserved it. What’s more, there is the photo’s suggestive chronological proximity to the end of the war and to Harry S. Truman’s desegregation order for the U.S military in 1948. Yes, the photo was taken in a broader context of prejudice and segregation, even atrocity, but the story does not end there.
We can’t allow our knowledge of historical and present-day racism to blind us to signs in the image of people with agency who worked toward a more just world. Someone in the navy’s PR office decided or was ordered to take and distribute such a photo, or have this done. One or more people in a navy library ordered and displayed the books that caught the photographer’s eye, perhaps owing to the cataloging innovations of Dorothy B. Porter. Moreover, someone shaped the command climate in which these things transpired.
Whatever led to these particular sailors posing for this picture, the camera recorded two young black men doing something about their present and future. We see them serving their country. We see them acquiring knowledge about it that had emancipatory potential.
Of course, nothing in this kind of framing can negate the history of racism in this country. What thinking about individual agency can do is open our eyes to the humanity and strength of the people who endured and made lives for themselves despite the oppression. The books on the shelves written by Black authors were also evidence of such spirit. And the unknown characters behind the making of this photograph? It is productive to think of them as individuals who made choices within a specific institutional, social, and cultural matrix. Human agency matters.
"Two U.S. Navy sailors browsing library shelf labeled 'Negro Books'" – U.S. Navy Department, Office of Public Relations, ca. 1944-49.
To scrutinize the titles in this image, download a high resolution scan from the NYPL Digital Collections.
W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is clearly visible. Also: Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation (1943) and Louis Adamic, The Native's Return (1934).
Repository: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/22e61340-6379-013b-2df1-0242ac110003.
Follow-up remarks: Revisiting Image of Two Back Sailors Browsing Books (Sept. 7, 2024)
Related post: Reading about Black Librarians and Knowledge Formation (June 19, 2024)
Reading about Black Librarians and Knowledge Formation
"How Black Librarians Helped Create Generations of Black Literature" by Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times, June 19, 2024.
This is a fascinating short history that references the scholars whose work the cultural reporter draws on.
Teaser: “Recent scholarship is uncovering the role of the women who ran libraries during the Harlem Renaissance where they built collections and, just as important, communities of writers and readers.”
Agents of change: The necessary activism required of librarians in oppressive contexts will sound familiar to people today in the context of bans related to race and sexuality. For example, the only significant collection in the Jim Crow South was in Roanoke, Virginia. When the librarian there, Virginia Lee, was eventually told to get rid of the books, she moved them to the basement instead and continued to discretely circulate them.
Knowledge formation: The seemingly banal work of collection, classification, and organization required the creation of new knowledge. For instance, cataloging using the Dewey scheme required the addition of new subjects because that system only foresaw shelving Black-authored and Black-themed books in two limited spaces: under the headings of “slavery” and “the Negro question,” the latter a subset of “colonization and migration.” Dorothy Porter added entirely new categories, including for slave insurrections, the blues, and passing. She also reorganized American political history by situating presidents in topics important to Black readers. Andrew Johnson’s tenure was filed under “emancipation” and Rutherford B. Hayes under “Ku Klux Klan”.
Knowledge, culture, and sociability: This article has some wonderful photographs, including of the women in groups.
Addendum: The New York Public Library and, within it, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture have digitized some of their materials. That’s where I found a powerful pastel by Morris Schulman titled “The Writing Lesson”.
Intersections
After fleeing the Nazis, many Jewish refugee professors found homes at historically black colleges. And they were shocked by race relations in the South.
– Heather Gilligan on Timeline, February 10, 2017
Blogging and Myth-Busting
Kevin Levin of Civil War Memory has posted good material to his academic blog under the category, myth of black Confederates. Several recent posts include criticism of efforts by modern-day Confederate patriots and would-be historians who want to appropriate Weary Clyburn, a slave, as a defender of Southern liberty. In one he points out that writing good books to debunk myths is all well and good, but on the subject of black Confederates "the real fight must take place on the web."
In the same post he points to an earlier one he made in late March: "Should Civil War Historians Blog (academic that is)?" In it he observes how vast the public discourse about the American Civil War is, while the discourse in which professional historians participate is relatively narrow. Historians need to continue their current research and publishing mission, but they also have "a responsibility to engage a wider audience and contribute to the public discourse." Since much of the public turns to the internet for ready answers, historians need to offer these answers in an accessible format, especially for highly sensitive questions that shape American identity.
I agree with Kevin about the need for Civil War historians to blog. I have also observed a similar need with respect to Holocaust denial, since I have found that Google can get it wrong. Until now I have used this blog mainly to reflect on what I do and to communicate with other historians, but as Kevin points out, Google brings him search engine traffic for important topics such as black Confederates, so his blog posts reach a wider audience. I have written a few of my posts with that awareness, but his arguments make me think I could do much more. So could other historians.
Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and Generational Differences
Times might have changed, but it seems that some didn’t get the memo. It would be nice if Reverend Jeremiah Wright would trust the next generation, embodied by Senator Barack Obama, to do things its way, instead of clinging to his own experiences and ignoring the great changes that this society has undergone. Why is he trying so hard to wreck the Obama campaign anyway? Maybe he doesn’t believe a black man can get elected and now he is in the business of creating a self-fulfilling prophesy? I dunno.
What I do know is that someone else from his earlier generation is also out of touch with what leaders like Obama are saying. Listen to Bill Moyer’s interview with Wright, and you will see Moyers feeling very much at ease with the man. Moyers (born in 1934) is a little older than Wright (born in 1941), but both experienced the Johnson administration and the Civil Rights Movement as young men. I respect their experiences and enjoy hearing their thoughts on where America is at. I also enjoyed Moyer’s conversation with Fred Harris (born in 1930), the only surviving member of the Kerner Commission, which reported on the racism underlying the social inequality that had helped set off the race riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. The thing about Moyers’ and Harris’ conversation that stood out most for me, however, was that it appeared on the show right after Moyer’s conversation with Mayer Cory Booker of Newark. Booker (born in 1969) did not speak the language of race and anger. Like Obama (born in 1961), he is very much about members of the community doing what they can to move forward. Watch the video and you’ll understand what I mean. (You’ll also maybe want to see him on the national stage at some point.) Watch too how Moyers is almost mystified by Booker’s perspective, one Obama shares. Moyers expects to see righteous anger in Booker. He wants Booker to blame all of Newark’s woes on racism and demand assistance from the federal government, but Booker refuses to follow that path. This conversation made clear to me that a vast gulf separates my generation (I am forty-five) from Moyers’. It also made me glad that leaders such as Obama and Booker are out there.
Obama understands the differences between the experiences of his generation and those of Wright’s. Wright might too, but he seems unwilling to trust the next generation to do the right thing. Instead he is out there doing what he seems to feel is truth-telling, that is, trying to wreck the very real chances that a former member of his congregation has to become the next president. Yet if he has done his job as the pastor of his congregation, he can trust those he helped bring up in his church to do the right thing. Time to let go, Reverend Wright, and give Senator Obama a chance to do it his way.
Yet Wright seems trapped in the experiences of his own generation. He seems unable to acknowledge that Obama’s generation has undergone a different set of experiences. He also thinks in unhistorical terms. As a historian I grew dizzy listening to him jump back and forth across the centuries and millennia, as if injustices here and there were all part of the same unchanging story. Thus I cringed when he called himself a historian of religion at one point in his conversation with Moyers. He knows more than I ever will about the subject, but he was not thinking historically. He could not move across different times and imagine that each period involved different mentalities and experiences. For him it was all one story with one set of values. Thus, he seems to differ from Obama not just in generational terms, but also in terms of the philosophy of history that underlies his worldview. Obama’s major speech on race was keenly aware of the passage of time and its impact on people living in it. Wright, on the other hand, is almost oblivious to it—unless he is just getting carried away by his own intemperate and impolitic rBarack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and Generational Differences
Times might have changed, but it seems that some didn’t get the memo. It would be nice if Reverend Jeremiah Wright would trust the next generation, embodied by Senator Barack Obama, to do things its way, instead of clinging to his own experiences and ignoring the great changes that this society has undergone. Why is he trying so hard to wreck the Obama campaign anyway? Maybe he doesn’t believe a black man can get elected and now he is in the business of creating a self-fulfilling prophesy? I dunno.
What I do know is that someone else from his earlier generation is also out of touch with what leaders like Obama are saying. Listen to Bill Moyer’s interview with Wright, and you will see Moyers feeling very much at ease with the man. Moyers (born in 1934) is a little older than Wright (born in 1941), but both experienced the Johnson administration and the Civil Rights Movement as young men. I respect their experiences and enjoy hearing their thoughts on where America is at. I also enjoyed Moyer’s conversation with Fred Harris (born in 1930), the only surviving member of the Kerner Commission, which reported on the racism underlying the social inequality that had helped set off the race riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. The thing about Moyers’ and Harris’ conversation that stood out most for me, however, was that it appeared on the show right after Moyer’s conversation with Mayer Cory Booker of Newark. Booker (born in 1969) did not speak the language of race and anger. Like Obama (born in 1961), he is very much about members of the community doing what they can to move forward. Watch the video and you’ll understand what I mean. (You’ll also maybe want to see him on the national stage at some point.) Watch too how Moyers is almost mystified by Booker’s perspective, one Obama shares. Moyers expects to see righteous anger in Booker. He wants Booker to blame all of Newark’s woes on racism and demand assistance from the federal government, but Booker refuses to follow that path. This conversation made clear to me that a vast gulf separates my generation (I am forty-five) from Moyers’. It also made me glad that leaders such as Obama and Booker are out there.
Obama understands the differences between the experiences of his generation and those of Wright’s. Wright might too, but he seems unwilling to trust the next generation to do the right thing. Instead he is out there doing what he seems to feel is truth-telling, that is, trying to wreck the very real chances that a former member of his congregation has to become the next president. Yet if he has done his job as the pastor of his congregation, he can trust those he helped bring up in his church to do the right thing. Time to let go, Reverend Wright, and give Senator Obama a chance to do it his way.
Yet Wright seems trapped in the experiences of his own generation. He seems unable to acknowledge that Obama’s generation has undergone a different set of experiences. He also thinks in unhistorical terms. As a historian I grew dizzy listening to him jump back and forth across the centuries and millennia, as if injustices here and there were all part of the same unchanging story. Thus I cringed when he called himself a historian of religion at one point in his conversation with Moyers. He knows more than I ever will about the subject, but he was not thinking historically. He could not move across different times and imagine that each period involved different mentalities and experiences. For him it was all one story with one set of values. Thus, he seems to differ from Obama not just in generational terms, but also in terms of the philosophy of history that underlies his worldview. Obama’s major speech on race was keenly aware of the passage of time and its impact on people living in it. Wright, on the other hand, is almost oblivious to it—unless he is just getting carried away by his own intemperate and impolitic rhetoric.hetoric.