First and foremost: congratulations, Dr. McDaniel! We’re so excited about your son!
Somehow the day got away from me and it is now past midnight, so I hope you’ll all forgive the less-than-eloquent format of this recap of our meeting this morning.
Without further ado:
We all agreed that Brundage gives a comprehensive analysis of struggles for memory construction in the south. Based on this reading, we wondered if Blight wasn’t simplifying this tenuous reality for the sake of the reconciliationist narrative. We also wondered if Neff placed too much emphasis on commemoration, at the expense of other narratives, like the development (and relative autonomy of) segregated black schools, as Brundage illuminates.
We liked Brundage’s use of anecdotes, and found the way he wove the snapshots of the chapters together convincing.
The section on Hayti in particular, and the creation of bulldozer ghettos in general, perplexed us. Jocelyn began to wonder about eminent domain. Ryan and Kat were sad to see the destruction of historical black architecture, as rendered through the photographs Brundage included. I asked the group if they thought developers actually believed they were improving these neighborhoods they were bulldozing, with the intent of returning blacks to their newly rejuvenated community, or if there were malicious intents at the outset. We were divided on the issue, but all agreed what eventually happened to these once-vibrant black neighborhoods was heartbreaking and a shame.
We were all particularly interested in Negro History Week (as a precursor to Black History Month, as Kat pointed out) and especially its eventual inclusion into most integrated schools. This surprised us, even if we could imagine a lot of it being token acknowledgment rather than authentic celebration.
Brundage brings up the ever-salient question of connotations of Confederate symbols. Are all Confederate symbols necessarily racist? We struggled over how to answer this question, and ended up leaving it somewhat up in the air. Kat pointed to the difference between “The South will Rise Again” and remembering an ancestor who fought on the Confederate side. Ryan said because things like the Confederate flag are still such flashpoint issues, maybe we can’t answer the question yet.
Please feel free to add more from today’s discussion in the comments section.
Bonus: We’ve decided that if the Battle of Sabine Pass gets to be the Confederacy’s Thermopylae, then our independent study gets to be Rice’s Thermopylae, and thus, we accept Thermopylae as our collective name. Talk about constructing public memory…
It sounds like a good time was had by all–sorry I missed it! I’ll weigh in with some further thoughts before we meet after Spring Break.