AMST 102 Final UNC

Invented Tradition

Set of practices, normally governed by rules and of a ritual/symbolic nature to represent certain values and norms by repetition.

Imagined Community

Nation is an imagined political community that is inherently limited in scope and sovereign in nature. Must be constructed and upheld. National identity impedes the prospect of a world community.

Synecdoche

Figure of speech in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something.

Apocryphal

A story or statement of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.

Barbie Zelizer’s six basic premises about collective remembering

Processual, Unpredictable, Partial, Usable, Both particular and universal, and Material.

Processual

Changes over time. Remembering is a process that is constantly unfolding, changing, and transforming.

Partial

Power interests behind which are remembered. No single memory contains all that we know or could know about any single event.

Usable

Serve different purposes. Evaluated for ways it helps use make connections over time and space and to ourselves.

Particular & Universal

Has an origin and becomes bigger. Can act as a particular representation of the past for certain groups while taking on universal significance for others.

Unpredictable

Don’t know why some memories become dominant. Not linear, logical, or rational.

Material

Grounded in some trace of matter. Exists in the world and is embodied in different cultural forms.

Official memory

Comes from concerns of cultural leaders at all societal levels. Relies on dogmatic formalism.

Vernacular memory

Represents an array of specialized interests that are grounded in parts of the whole.

Residual memory

Those beliefs, practices, etc. that are derived from an earlier stage of that society, often very long ago, and which may in fact reflect a very different social formation.

Emergent memory

Practices developed out of a new set of social interactions as societies change.

Dominant memory

The memories that are most often remembered.

Hegemony

The domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society.

Palimpsest

A manuscript page from which the text has been scraped off or erased and can be used again, i.e. a template that is used again for a different purpose.

Collapsing Commemoration

When an earlier celebration is replaced by a later one that "forgets" the original one or makes it residual.

Retrospective

When a name is given to a historical event after it occurs that was not used when the event was happening in the present.

Iconoclast

A person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition; a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.

Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic

In its basic form, a "master" needs a "slave" to affirm his self-consciousness as "master." This necessity of the "slave's" recognition of the "master" ironically grants the "slave" a degree of power over the "master."

Significance of American Flag

• 1893 painting depicted Betsy Ross as the creator of the US flag

• However her grandson only remembered that she said she made it like a hundred years after it would’ve happened 

• Symbol of national identity yet you have a right to burn it

• Constructed item, not an eternal symbol

• Commodified on many items for American capitalism 

Pledge of Allegiance

• created to help sell flags (American capitalism)

• Pledge changed over time

• Added “under God” in 1954 during Cold War because Russia was atheist

• Used to salute the flag but changed after the Nazi salute in WWII

Star Spangled Banner

• Written by Francis Scott Key

• Became National Anthem in 1931

11 Official US Holidays

New Years Day, MLK Day, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas

Holidays that are named after someone

MLK Day, Washington’s Birthday, Columbus Day, Christmas

Holidays that occur on the same day every year

New Years, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veteran’s Day, Christmas

Two most recently established holidays

MLK Day (1983) and Juneteenth (2021)

1983

Year MLK Day was Established

MLK Memorial Streets

• Many MLK streets across the country but a majority of them are in the south

• Often in the “black part” of town or other run down areas

• Some are at ironic places like the intersection of MLK Street with Jeff Davis Street in Selma, AL

Lorraine Motel

• Where MLK was assassinated in Memphis, TN

• His room was not touched after he was killed and preserved as the motel became the National Civil Rights Museum

Jaqueline Smith

• Protested by living in the Lorraine Motel for 34 years until she was evicted

• Wanted it to be housing for poor people because believed that’s who King cared for

MLK National Historic Site in Atlanta

• Founded around the area where King grew up

• Ebenezer Baptist Church was where King and his father preached

• Area includes his home, a visitors center, research library, and the King Center

I Have a Dream Speech

• Given at the March on Washington in 1963

• Given in front of the Lincoln Memorial 100 years after Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, freed slaves 

• Famous line: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Letter from Birmingham Jail

• Written while he was in jail for participating in a nonviolent protest

• Famous line: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Final Speech Given before Assassination

• Given to sanitation workers that are on strike in Memphis

• Essentially predicts his own death by saying that he’s going to reach the promised land

• April 3, 1968

FBI surveillance of MLK

• The FBI were not fond of King and believed he was a radical and a communist

• Wire tapped him and spied on him

• Sent him a letter trying to blackmail him and suggested that he take his own life

MLK used in advertisements/commodified

• Often used in advertisements (King family has to grant permission)

• Became the face of the Civil Rights Movement so other leaders are often forgotten

• Has become a commodity especially his holiday

• Stores have an excuse to run MLK weekend sales, etc.

Memorial Site on the Mall in DC

• 2011 monument

• Located between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials (power struggle)

• Had a quote on it taken out of context that King didn’t actually say so eventuall had it removed

The Embrace sculpture by Hank Willis

• Sculpture that recreates a picture of MLK wrapping his arms around Coretta Scott King

• Cylindrical memory: memory in time, anniversary

• Hands and arms wrapped around each other after MLK won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964

• Located in Boston Commons

• CSK carrying part of King’s weight for him

Beloved community

• King had a vision of a completely integrated society

• Both nonviolent and global

• Radical revolution in values

“What to the American Slave, is your Fourth of July?” (1852)

• Written by Douglass to call out the irony of celebrating freedom in a country where not everyone was truly free

• Says that Independence Day is not a day to celebrate for enslaved people

The Heroic Slave 1853

• Story written about a slave named Madison Washington

• Douglass seeks to establish him as a black founding father

• Part I: Seen praying in the woods by Mr. Listwell; lamenting for his freedom

• Part II: Madison Washington ends up sleeping at Listwell’s house in Ohio on his way to Canada

• Part III: Listwell is back in Virginia and sees that Madison is back in slavery; gets sold to New Orleans but before he leaves, Listwell gives him three files

• Part IV: a white man who was on the same ship as Madison discusses how he was able to lead an overthrow of the ship and sail it to Nassau, Bahamas where the slaves on board became free

Lincoln Memorial

Marian Anderson Performance

• Not allowed to sing at the DAR Constitution Hall because she was black so was able to perform in front of the Lincoln Memorial

“I Have A Dream” speech 

• Site of MLK’s most famous speech

Emancipation Memorial

• A gift from black people, funded by wages of freed slaves

• A slave on the ground compared to Lincoln standing up so not really celebrating black freedom

Examples of commodification

Martin Luther King, Jr in ads

• His legacy is used to make money

Virginia Dare wines and essences

• Virigina Dare is remembered as the first English child born in the new world

• Name put on a wine company

Macy’s Parade

• Occurs on Thanksgiving day

• Advertises not just for Macy’s but many other companies too

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

• Follow Thanksgiving since people have a 4 day weekend so more time to shop

Indian mascots

• Baseball teams like the Cleveland Indians

• Football teams like the Washington Redskins

names

• An invented tradition as they aren’t truly your own and has memory and history embedded in it

mnemonics

• Named from greek word for memory and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory

• Ars memoriae: art of memory, the “memory palace”

• Recitation as a residual form of circular memory

July 4th

• Independence Day

• Based on the Declaration of Indepednece (Thomas Jefferson)

• Derive power from consent of the governed

• Not a day of celebration for many black americans → countercelebration on July 5th because don’t see that as the day of their independence

three goals of emancipation celebrations

to celebrate, to educate, to agitate

countermemories

• The determination to construct an alternative African American memory, “both complementary and oppositional,” as a basis for full citizenship

Opal Lee

• 95 years old

• 1939 Juneteenth → white mob torched her family home that they just purchased in Fort Worth

• 2016 at 89 years old she walked from Fort Worth to DC (2.5 miles a day)

• Was in DC for the signing of Juneteenth as a holiday

Plimoth Patuxet

• Living history museum which attempts to reenact the Pilgrim community that lived there in 1627

• Located in Plymouth, MA

Cane River Creole

• Located in Natchitoches, LA

• Contains Magnolia Plantation which used to have slaves working on it

• Home to the creole culture

• Black tour guides explain to people the real horrors of slavery

July 5th, 1852

• Douglass was asked to speak at a fourth of July event but didn’t feel right to him

• Gave his “What to the slave in 4th of July?” speech on July 5th

July 1, 1808

• End of Legal Transatlantic Slave Trade

• Constitution made it legal for 20 years after its signing (1787 to 1808)

August 1, 1834

• British Abolition of Slavery

• Ironic since the US was supposedly the land of freedom and often called themselves “enslaved to Britain” during their fight for independence

January 1, 1863

• Watch Night for Emancipation Proclamation

• Blacks gathered together in anticipation of the signing of the proclamation

• Some still celebrate it today in their churches and communities

February 1, 1948

• National Freedom Day

• Declared by President Harry Truman in recognition of the 13th amendment but celebration never really caught on

June 19, 1865

• Juneteenth, made official in 2021 

• Originated as a celebration in Galveston, TX 

• this was the day that Colonel Granger announced that Texas slaves were freed

• Differed in the way it was celebrated: lots of food including barbeque, collards, and mac-n-cheese (red drinks as a symbol of blood of the enslaved), some carnivals, some rented out parks and other spaces

Virginia Dare

first English child born in the new world on August 24, 1587

Lost Colony

located on Roanoke Island in NC but the inhabitants died; Virginia Dare born here

Rebecca Rolfe

• Pocahontas changed her name to an english name meaning “mother of two peoples” after she married John Rolfe and converted to Christianity

John and Thomas Rolfe

married to Pocahontas; responsible for bringing tobacco to the new world

Pocahontas’ son

John Smith

Supposedly rescued by Pocahontas by story of doubtful authenticity since Smith didn’t write about the event until 16 years after

Mayflower

• The ship that the Pilgrims took to America

• Usually was used to transport wine

Thanksgiving

• Pilgrims → Holland because of religious persecution

• Landed at Plymouth Harbor and wrote the Mayflower Compact

• Friendly Indians helped them to plant crops

• Celebrated harvest in 1621

National Day of Mourning

Many Native Americans see the holiday as representing the defeat of natives

One subsequent Thanksgiving was celebrating triumph over Wampanoag Indians

• Brought their leader, King Philip’s, head on a stick to the celebration

• Sold many Wampanoag into slavery in the West Indies

Columbus Day —> Indigenous Peoples Day

Columbus memory useful to include Italian and Catholic immigrants in national memory

Genocidal legacy of colonial settlement in 1992 (500th anniversary)

Counter holiday → Indigenous People’s Day

• Don’t want to celebrate an explorer who led the way for the destruction of much of the Native population of the Americas

Crispus Attucks

• First Black martyr of the American revolution

• Killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770

• Root of the black presence at the beginning of the revolt against England

Harriet Tubman

• Big coordinator of the Underground Railroad

• Put on the 20 dollar bill for a time

Creole Incident/Revolt

• Incident which the story the Heroic Slave is based on

• Ship carrying slaves was on its way to NOLA but slaves overtook it and steered it to Nassau, Bahamas where the slaves were freed

Amistad Mutiny

• Mutiny which Benito Cereno is based on

• Memorial statue in New Haven, CT

• Debate and trial on whether the slaves should be freed

• Were on the way to Cuba when the slaves revolted against the captains

Slave Trade and Middle Passage

Many slaves taken from the western coast of Africa

Majority of them taken to Central and South America

Middle passage was the journey across the Atlantic Ocean where slaves were stacked and chained in the bottom of ships 

• Many did not survive the horrors of this journey

1619 Project

• Long form essay written by Nikole Hannah-Jones from the NYT

• Seeks to establish 1619, the year when slaves were first brought to America by the British, as the origin of the US

• Many bills have been drafted to prohibit this from being taught in schools (mostly in Republican states)

1776 Project

• Advisory committee created by President Trump to protect “patriotic education”

• Disbanded by Biden

Critical Race Theory

• The study of the relationships between society and race and ethnicity

• Contested by many Republican states as they don’t want it to be tau

AP African American History

• A new Advanced Placement Course developed by College Board

• Rejected by the Florida government as they didn’t like it being “filled with critical race theory

distantiation

historical events lose the power to impact individual consciousness in active ways as they retreat into a past beyond personal memory

instrumentalization

made to matter in the service of present interests

• Similar to memory being usable

• What is remembered depends on the powerful interests promoting such remembrance

narrativization

complexity of the past is simplified in remembrance (distorted) by being cast as a story

• Has protagonists and antagonists

• Made to fit into a grand narrative about the past’s relationship to the present

• Ex: thanksgiving meal in 1621 and how it became the origin of Thanksgiving

Cognitivization and Conventionalization

encounter the past in a conventional form which we can make sense of 

• Material traces take cultural forms that enable the recollection and transmission of a tradition

rectification

removing the signs of violence and tragedy and returning a site to use, implying no lasting or positive meaning

• Common to “senseless” “accidents” 

• Remedial action is a form of rectification

designation

the marking of a site that simply denotes that something happened there

• Marked but not sanctified; unveiled rather than dedicated

• Transitional and “in process”

• Can move towards sanctification

• Refusal to forget

sanctification

when events hold lasting positive meaning that people wish to remember

• Involves the construction of a durable monument

• Publicly consecrated and widely venerated

• Symbol for future generations of a virtue or sacrifice to remind them of events to be avoided

• Teaches ethical or moral lessons

• Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum commemorating the OKC bombing in the 90s

obliteration

results from particularly shameful events people would prefer to forget

• All evidence is destroyed or effaced

• Once stigmatized → stand out much as sacred places

• Can excite pathological or furtive interest

Stars and Bars

First flag of the Confederate States of America → Stars and Bars

• Didn’t work well on the battlefield because looked too similar to US flag

• Confederates saw themselves as “truer” Americans than Northerners

Saint Andrew’s Cross Flag

• Confederate battle flag → now a symbol of the South

• “Diverse symbolic meaning”

• Mourning and memory

• Youthful hijinx

• Benign regionalism

• Malignant racism

• Different meanings to different people

• VP Alexander Stephens → CSA founded on the truth that black people are not equal to white

Lost Cause

1. Secession not slavery caused civil war

2. African Americans were faithful slaves

3. Confederacy defeated militarily because Union resources

4. Confederate soldiers heroic and saintly

5. Robert E. Lee → most heroic

6. Southern women loyal to the cause

Sarah Josepha Hale

Instrumental in the establishment of Thanksgiving as a federal holiday

• Wrote essays in the Boston Ladie’s Magazine calling for Thanksgiving to become a holiday

• Petitioned congress and 5 different presidents before Lincoln established the holiday in 1863

Gutzon Borglum

• Best known for his work as the scultpor of Mount Rushmore

• Began work on it in 1927 and was completed by his son Lincoln after he passed away in 1941

Korczak Ziokowski

• Scultpor behind the Crazy Horse monument

• Of Polish-American descent

• Assisted Borglum on Mt. Rushmore in summer 1939

Dorothy Ducas

Magazine Bureau Chief for the Office of War Information during WWII

• Helped produce Magazine War Guide, fictional narratives weaving appeals

• Model of good behaviors and spirited cooperation

Jan Scruggs

• US army veteran who served in the Vietnam War

• Founded the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Fund which later built the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial on the mall in Washington, DC

Maya Lin

Yale college student who’s design for a class on funereal architecture won the VVM contest and was the basis for the memorial

Faced backlash for the design and because she was Asian-American

• Design made of black marble coming out of the Earth

• Wrote an essay to describe her design

• Focused on losses and sacrifices

• Hard for her since she was a female Asian American

• Some people also disagreed with the design b/c it is black → shame (black gash of shame)

• Some didn’t like the chronological listing of the names

Cleve Jones

American human rights activist who founded the AIDS/NAMES quilt project which became the largest piece of community art of all time

Washington’s Birthday

Holiday was originally celebrating George Washigton’s Birthday but came to encompass other Presidents

• Abortive and postmodern

• Emergent

• Feb 12: Lincoln’s Birthday

• Feb 22: Washington’s Birthday

• 1879: first federal holiday to single out a person (except Christmas)

• Western states less likely to celebrate Presidents Day because GW was never their president

• Moved to the 3rd Monday in Feb for tourism and encouraging commercial activity

• Align holiday with vacation

• Visit GW commemorative spaces

• Example of collapsing commemoration

National Mall

• Axis of power

• From Capitol to Lincoln Memorial including the Smithsonian museum

Washington Monument

• Tallest in DC → 555 feet tall

• White marble obelisk tower

• On a pinnacle

• Central synozier