The Public Use of History

May/June 2006 Historically Speaking 39 as deeply rooted as many believed, showed the discontinuities of the South's history. The southern past, he argued, contained "forgotten alternatives," other ways the races had related to one another than through the segregationist framework that took shape in the 1 890s. But Woodward's analysis neglected an important aspect ofthe story. White Southerners in 1956 were not just defending white supremacy and racial segregation—they were doing so with an arsenal of arguments that drew from their historical experience. Even if legal segregation was no more than six decades old, as Woodward claimed, the ideals associated with the defense of segregation went back another halfcentury. The Southern Manifesto attacked northern hypocrisy, defended southern virtue, criticized invasive outsiders, and championed the preservation of southern heritage, just as white Southerners had done for generations. In the minds of segregationists, these ideas were inextricably linked to the notion ofwhite supremacy. After Thurmond finished defending the Manifesto on the Senate floor, Senator Wayne Morse, an Oregon Democrat, commented on what he had heard. "[Y]ou would think today Calhoun was walking and speaking on the floor of the Senate," he ventured.7 White Southerners who spoke out in Congress on March 12, 1956, did so from an entrenched set of values, a collective consciousness that helped them view the Brown decision as yet another battle between deceitful northern meddlers and virtuous defenders of southern tradition. They spoke, in other words, out of a deep, if misplaced, historical perspective. By invoking the name ofthe great political leader and symbol of the Old South, Senator Morse was more correct than he knew. Timothy S. Huebner, associate professor ofhistory at Rhodes College, is the author o/The Southern Judicial Tradition: State Judges and Sectional Distinctiveness, 1790-1890 (University of Georgia Press, 1999). He is currentlywriting a textbook on the Civil War and Reconstruction era. 1 Tony Badger, "The Southern Manifesto: White Southerners and Civil Rights, 1956," European Contributions to American Studies 15 (1988): 8186 . 2 David Daniel Potenziani, "Look to the Past: Richard B. Russell and the Defense of Southern White Supremacy," (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Georgia, 1981), 90-98. 3 Congressional Record, vol. 102—part 4, March 12, 1956,4461. 4 Congressional Record, vol. 102—part 4, March 12, 1956, 4461-62. 5 Edward Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History ofthe War ofthe Confederates (E.B. Treat and Co., 1867), 751-52. 6 Congressional Record, vol. 102—part 4, March 12, 1956, 4462. 7 Congressional Record, vol. 1 02—part 4, March 12, 1956, 4462. The Public Use of History Jeremy Black The public use of history has become more apparent in recent decades. Since 1945 over 120 new states have been created, each of which has had to define a new public history. At the same time, public histories in both old and new states have been, and are, contested. Far from there being any "death of the past" (Plumb) or "end of history" (Fukuyama), this process is active and important, albeit at very different levels. In 2005, for example, the discussion of 19th-century rural social changes created a furor in Scotland. The academic argument, advanced by Michael Fry, that these were not as harsh and disastrous as was once commonly believed was bitterly criticized by those who grounded Scottish national identity on a sense of loss and suffering , of foreign exploitation and domestic betrayal—a frequent theme around the world. Another aspect of contested public memory occurred in China, as growing academic stress on the iniquities and harshness of Mao Zedong's rule and regime clashed with the state orthodoxy that has been willing to admit The role ofpublic history in politics is significant: issues ofnational identity andpolitical legitimation are central to mistakes, but not to a very bloody and inefficient tyranny. Public history is a topic rich in intellectual and pedagogic possibilities, but our teaching and writing about history reflect a self-referencing fascination with the technical aspects of research and, even more, epistemologies of history. Academics see themselves as the drivers of historical assessments. But changes in the public use ofhistory are crucial to the general understanding of the past...