Slavery and Public History : the Tough Stuff on American Memory, J.O. Horton and L. Horton

Sorry for posting late! First I am sorry if any one of you had trouble understanding me – it is easy to say little sentences, a lot harder to speak for fifteen minutes! I hope you did not have to concentrate too hard, I know it was late for all of us!

"[History] accuses us, forces us to interpret, explain and imagine (...) But we are responsible for our own recall." (D. W. Blight, p.22)

"Our tendency is to turn away from history that is unflattering and uncomfortable, but we cannot afford to ignoren the past (...). We can and must learn from it, even if doing so is painful." (J. O. Horton, p.36)

Slavery and public history: the tough stuff on American memory is a collection of essays on the theme of how slavery and the struggle for freedom are and have been represented in the American mind as well as in the national American memory, for Black people and for White people. Ironically, even though the problem of ethnicity is not explicitly mentioned by the authors, we can notice that most of the time, while stating the opinions of people, the authors detail their ethnicity – of course on such a subject, the ethnicity matters. Thus it is interesting that the editors, in their introduction and presentation of the book, did not mention at all the part that ethnicity still has in how people approach the issue of slavery.

The major themes of the book are as follow:

- Contradiction on the American mind: pride and shame. This country calls itself “the country of freedom” and still, it has lived, survived and successed thanks to slave-labor and the exploitation of millions of African-Americans. This inconsistency has been pointed out by the British first, when American settlers seeked their independence, and still exists today. It still creates an awkward incomprehension for the American people, and for centuries, it kept the story from being told as it was, instead of being told as polished as it could be. The contradiction is also present when historians talk about the Civil War; many Southerners take pride from the Civil War and the Confederate army as a symbol of their resistance to an unfair federal government; not as many are ready to accept that these soldiers took arms to defend not only their independence, but more especially a white-supremacy, slave-based society.
- Education on Slavery: lack of knowledge. The third essay of the book, written by James Horton (“Slavery in American History; an uncomfortable national dialogue”) focuses on how and why the American people know virtually nothing about what slavery really was. It retraces the story of how slavery has been taught in schools and analyses its ongoing consequences today, even though the system has changed and the last works on slavery start to make their way into high schools.
- What was slavery in America? In addition to the mere problem of education is the more complicated issue of what actually slavery was in the United States, who the slaves were (in terms of human beings and of their lives), who the masters (Thomas Jefferson, George Washington) were and what it implies for those national historic figures. The first essay of the book by Ira Berlin (as well as other one later) explores this problem and gives a basis for a solution by giving an enriching explanation of ground knowledge about slavery.

I think we have to keep this sentence in mind : "a vast majority of Americans react strongly to the topic, but few know much about it" (J. O. Horton, p.37) ; this sums up pretty much all the themes : the interest in slavery which has reappeared, the "strong reaction" which alludes to how present and painful it is in the American public memory, and of course the lack of knowledge which basically prevents a real conversation about slavery to happen out of the academic circle.

As a conclusion, I will say that this book is a real gold mine for our course because it totally focuses on memory, history, modified history, sites, how to represent history, what to represent… basically, all that we have studied. I strongly advise any of you interested in slavery (or who wants to learn more, now that you know how ignorant we all are!) to read at least the first three essays which give a very complete explanation of the state of the memory of slavery today. And if you can only read one, read the first one which, as I said yesterday, is an excellent presentation for the rest of the book.

Corinne