A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Introduction

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapter 8-Afterword

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Preface-IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “The Histories We Get”

Preface Summary: “A Dream Diluted and Distorted”

Theoharis explains that by the year 2000, “the civil rights movement had come to embody American grit, courage, and resolve” (ix), most often represented by Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. American commentators have routinely delivered neatly packaged and sanitized narratives of the movement that celebrate American democracy and these central figures who envisioned and worked for a more equal society. The many invocations of Dr. King, the memorials, and the narratives, however, misrepresent the movement. King and Parks among others, for example, were thoroughly demonized by white Americans and were far more radical than they have since been given credit for. Popular perceptions of the struggle for civil rights shifted from fear and backlash to “a powerful tale of courageous Americans defeating a long-ago evil” (x).

Theoharis explains that this process of history revision has presented systemic racism as something both outdated and limited to the individual level. Additionally, it helps Americans sidestep ongoing racism and inequality, instead embracing a false but flattering narrative of America as a land of total equality. Despite the many challenges to the status quo that continue into the 21st century, many Americans—particularly white influential ones—uphold the myth of full American freedom; this myth silences Black suffering (xii). With the election of Barack Obama, many political commentators suggested that the full dream of civil rights activists had been realized, and the country was officially a “postracial” society (xii). Obama himself insisted that the country wasn’t quite there but was close. The mainstream narratives of civil rights and American racism continued to simplify and soften.

The recent impact of these patterns (as of the book’s 2018 publication) has taken the shape of discrediting ongoing activism and freedom struggles among Black people and non-Black people of color including Latinx immigrants and Native Americans (xv). In a postracial (or almost postracial) society, largescale demonstrations and calls for radical change to racist societal structures would be dramatic and disruptive to a country already ostensibly past such objectives. The sanitized narrative of the civil rights movement became the standard (“the ‘right’ way” [xv]) against which modern activism is measured, and it always comes up short in the comparison. This false standard distorts both historical activism and modern activism.

The book to follow “takes up the political uses and radical possibilities of civil rights history in twenty-first century America” (xvi). Correctives to popular notions are crucial to addressing the insidious influence of fundamental American racism. The author insists that not only is such work necessary but that it is in high demand among a young generation of readers.

Introduction Summary: “The Political Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History and Memorialization in the Present”

The Introduction opens with a recollection of the process of getting legal recognition for MLK Day. The push to create a holiday in King’s honor began immediately after his death, but the effort took decades and only came to fruition when white politicians saw cooperation as a way to demonstrate “how open-minded they were” through symbolism rather than action (4). Until then, criticism was widespread and reflected Americans’ animosity for King (4). Ronald Reagan signed the bill for the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983, 15 years after King’s assassination. Theoharis cites the story of creating MLK Day as the origin of a distorted national fable: Increasing recognition of the holiday and the man who it honored solidified a “domesticated […] harmless, [and] gentle man” stripped of his still-controversial goals and the radical challenge to the American status quo that he truly represented. The author elaborates some of King’s obscured history (a history “we need”):

A man who risked his life and went to jail thirty times to challenge the scourge of American racism; who was quick to point out the racism of the North along with that of the South; who wrote from jail in 1963 that the biggest problem was not the KKK but the ‘white moderate’ who ‘preferred order to justice’; who criticized the ‘giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism’; whose sermon the Sunday after he was assassinated was going to be ‘Why America Is Going to Hell’—that man of God and courage is now honored with a memorial that refuses to speak the problem of racism (9-10).

Similarly, Black History Month took shape in schools “in a celebratory, commercialized fashion” that lauded individual heroes but glossed over ongoing racism (6). Memorials of civil rights history presented a narrative that the problems had all been solved through the acts of courageous individuals.

The election of the United States’ first Black president, Barack Obama, solidified a national narrative that American freedom and equality had finally been achieved. Obama’s campaign utilized civil rights narratives in their rhetoric, often framing the struggle as largely bygone, while Obama himself represented an entirely new age in America. In the public imagination, Obama became a descendant of King who was able to realize the great “dream” the civil rights leader articulated (10).

Preface-Introduction Analysis

These early chapters establish the essential details of a prevalent American “fable”; civil rights history has been flattened and sanitized—reduced to images of courageous individuals who moved a nation to continue its traditions of progress and democracy and do away with the tragedy of racism. These revisions took shape in the political sphere to serve various aims on both sides of the political spectrum, but they have circulated widely in popular culture and educational curriculum. Commentators have increasingly divorced the legacies of figures like Martin Luther King Jr. (the main example in these chapters, though the author also mentions Rosa Parks) from difficult and controversial topics related to racial inequality. The best representation of this distortion is the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, DC. The author explains that among the scattered and decontextualized quotations that adorn the monument, “Not one of them uses the words ‘racism’ or ‘segregation’ or ‘racial inequality.’ Not one” (9). King dedicated his adult life to transforming these social ills, and yet the high-profile memorial crafted in his honor and presented by the first African American president does not mention them.

These early chapters provide essential examples of figures, physical memorials, and popular narratives that will continue to be examined and corrected through the book. The Introduction alone is its own section, “The Histories We Get”; the remaining chapters provide “The Histories We Need.” King takes center stage in this early presentation of the civil rights narrative. The memorialization of the man and his powerful words reveals how divorced his enduring image has become from his activism and written work. Theoharis mentions Rosa Parks in a similar vein: She now symbolizes the spark that ignited the movement, but, as for King, narratives have simplified her into an uncontroversial character—a woman who acted with bravery in a single moment. The book will revisit Parks in much more detail and explain the role of these and other figures in the enduring memory and the accompanying erasure of civil rights history.

While the book contains anecdotes, the stories serve as evidence. This is an analytical study of public memory as well as a source-based study of history. The first section lays bare the mythology associated with an iconic era of American history, and it offers a basic understanding of how that era is routinely misrepresented. The reader gets hints of the fuller story, like when the author recounts that King went to jail over two dozen times for confronting racism, was widely hated and feared, and labeled “white moderates” a bigger problem than the KKK. The details of a “more beautiful and terrible history,” however, are yet to come.