The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (review)

This book builds upon the recent trend that considers the long civil rights movement not simply as something that happened during the King Years 1955–1968, but as an ongoing struggle that currently manifests itself in battles over its remembrance and representation via history books, media, public monuments, and popular culture.

The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory deserves credit for its meticulous editing, wide-ranging perspective, thought-provoking essays, and creative attempt to widen the scope through which academics traditionally view the civil rights movement. At the same time, however, the effort to challenge the boundaries of what we have come to accept as civil rights scholarship sometimes obfuscates the book's overall purpose, and leads to its sum total not quite equaling that of its parts. The essays are impressive as stand-alone pieces, but teachers who assign this book to their classes will have to carefully pick and choose which ones will suit their purposes, since it is difficult to isolate a particular theme that all of them cover.

One of the book's great ironies is that some of its very best essays—notably R.A.R. Edwards' chapter on Galludet University's "Deaf President Now" strike—are arguably the ones that least belong in a work whose cover photo shows the uncovering of a new sign renaming a road the "Rosa Parks Highway" and whose title refers to "The Civil Rights Movement." Since Edwards makes no real effort to explain the civil rights movement as a specific freedom struggle belonging to a people and a time period—other than mentioning that the phrase "civil rights" was used in representations of the strike—it seems a stretch to include it in the book, its excellent quality notwithstanding. There are several essays that could be discussed similarly.

The first part of the book, "Institutionalizing Memory," sticks to the traditional civil rights paradigm by exploring how the black freedom struggle of the King Years is represented years later in the American South. It explains that southern state governments now position themselves as officially anti-racist by acknowledging their past racism through memorials and public monuments. Glenn Eskew's essay on the founding of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute deserves special mention for its use of primary sources such as board meeting minutes to help readers understand the private battles and negotiations that go into public works.

Steve Estes' chapter on how Mississippi movement participants' remembrances of how race and gender affected their experiences is especially revealing because it captures how such recollections have changed over time as scholars have intervened and interpreted them. Movement participants often feel one way about their experience, and then as they read scholarly accounts of their own lives, transform their understanding of the past. Estes' use of interviews allows him to excavate this fascinating study of historical memory.

Overall, the editors of this book deserve to be applauded for their solicitation of high-quality essays that are meticulously edited, well written, and informative. Although I saw their challenging the traditional boundaries of the civil rights movement as something that detracted from the book's overall quality, there will undoubtedly be many readers who appreciate their effort to do so, and feel that it is to the book's benefit.