Democratic Narrative, History, and Memory

Introduction

Introduction Kenneth J. Bindas One of the key questions raised by the 2009 Kent State University Symposium on Democracy concerned the nature of memory and how individuals and society choose to remember or, in some cases, not remember events of the collective past. Theconference’sfocusonrememberingsuggestedthatthereissomedisconnectnot onlyinwhatwechoosetorecall,butinhowmemoryistiedtothelargercommunity. TheshootingsatKentStateUniversityonMay4,1970,of course,constituteonesuch contestedmemoryinaneraof contestedeventsandarepartof thelargercollective memory concerning the transformation of the United States after World War II. The study of memory is a tangled web of science, law, and humanities, where scientists look at the process through the lens of cognition, lawyers through validation ,andstudentsof thehumanitiesthroughexperience.1 Inrecentyears,thisfocus on memory has not only allowed the powerful and dominant culture to speak, but also granted the disenfranchised, abused, ignored, exploited, and forgotten the space to detail their experiences, in the hope that by giving legitimacy to these remembrances ,someclarityormeaningregardingthelargersocialorpoliticalcontext mightemerge.We,asreadersorlisteners,willbetterlearnaboutourcollectivepast through the addition of these new voices. Scholars, lawyers, and documentarians have played a central role in this process, seeking to draw inaudible or once silent voices to the discourse. Telling, collecting, and retelling these stories thus become a dialogue of intention—what the historical actor using her or his memory wants to detail and the information that the expert wants to focus on in order to retell a story. Each approach the interview with specific intentions and, through a process of give-and-take,meetattheintersectionof collectivememory.But,asCormacMcCarthy ’s main character relates in The Road, “each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins . . . so be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet 137 138 democratic narrative, history, and memory a reality, known or not.”2 Each memory exists both inside and outside its origins and is made valid by the social context of its creation and dissemination. So while memory is neither history nor truth, it does inform and give life to the larger story of humanity, providing insight into the continuing dialogue that is at the root of both memory and history. Many events that have transpired since 1945, like those of May 4, 1970, at Kent, continuetobediscussedanddebated—asthisvolumesuggests.Intheweeksleading up to the 2009 symposium, for example, thirty-nine years after the events of that day,localnewspaperscarriedseveralletterstotheeditorreflectingthelong-standing division between those who want to leave the past alone and those who want more truth. Only a few days before the symposium, when confrontations between police and over-partying Kent State University students escalated, YouTube depicted some students yelling, “Remember May 4!” and singing the iconic “Four Dead in Ohio.” Tothiscohort,anypoliceactionisareplayof theabuseof powerthatwasevidentin May1970,regardlessof theirunderstandingof thecontext.Thelargerissueregarding memoryanditsplaceinthehistoricalnarrative,then,ishowthepastresonateswith thosenotpresentorinvestedinthestory.Howdoweasasocietydealwiththeevents of the past, and how do they become a part of the collective memory? This volume seeks to open and broaden this dialogue by referencing several landmark events that have taken place since 1945 and thereby placing them into the larger context of memory, its personal and social meaning, and the larger historical process.3 The authors in this section document the broadening of this dialogue, some focusing on the Kent State event and some on events from other periods and places, to discuss the meaning of memory in its personal and social contexts. All of the essays concernthedifficultconceptof assigning,accepting,andevendeflectingresponsibility .Theessaysalsounderscorethetensionsbetweenthememoryandlaw,experience andthehistoricalrecord,powerandsilence.Whiletheydiscussdifferentevents,they all illuminate the difficulty of trying to come to some closure regarding the events of May 4 and suggest that more memory work on that event remains to be done. Cathy J. Collins examines the process of collective remembering and forgetting regarding the 1957 school integration crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her analysis explores what, how, and why Little Rock chose to remember and what steps were taken to reconcile historical with social memory. She suggests that for Little Rock, the situation comes closer to dis-remembering, as the events since the creation of a commemorationcommitteeinthemid-1990sfallmoreinlinewithIonaIrwin-Zarecka andJudithMiller’smodelof neutralizingmemorybyblamingthevictim,becoming the victim, placing blame outside the community, and suggesting that Little Rock’s race relations were not as bad as those of other places. She traces the rise and developmentof thecommemorationcommitteepreparingforthefortiethanniversaryof the crisis in 1997 and the fiftieth in 2007, in order to document the tension between Memory, History, and Justice 139 those wanting to use the events to promote racial healing (claiming everything is fine now) and those wanting to portray the events with historical accuracy. Some whiteresidentswerereluctanttoparticipateinthehistoricalapproach,arguingthat the situation was not that bad in Little Rock, that in a way the victims brought...