A more beautiful and terrible history : the uses and misuses of civil rights history

Author

Jeanne Theoharis

Call Number

• 323.1196 T391 (CEN, OSH)

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Publication Information

Boston : Beacon Press, [2018]

Physical Description

253 pages ; 24 cm

Summary

The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a "helpmate" but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband's activism in these directions. Moving from "the histories we get" to "the histories we need," Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and "polite racism" in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice--which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred.

Contents

• Introduction: the political uses and misuses of civil rights history and memorialization in the present
• The long movement outside the south: fighting for school desegregation in the "liberal" north
• Revisiting the uprisings of the 1960s and the history of injustice and struggle that preceded them
• Beyond the redneck: polite racism and "the white moderate"
• The media was often an obstacle to the struggle for racial justice
• Beyond a bus seat: the movement pressed for desegregation, criminal justice, economic justice, and global justice
• The great man theory of history part I: where are the young people?
• The great man view of history part II: where are the women?
• Extremists, troublemakers and national security threats: the public demonization of rebels, the toll it took, and government repression of the movement
• Learning to play on locked pianos: the movement was persevering, organized, disruptive, and often disparaged, and other lessons from the Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Afterword: a history for a better world.