Systems of Power in the Creation of Kenyon's Collective Memory

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 When my group walked into the archives and special collections room, we whispered to each other about how we were unsure about what to expect. I imagined we would be looking through a few grainy images and newspapers, but upon first glance at the boxes of artifacts, I was pleasantly surprised that we would have so much material to work with. The first box that I looked at was full of information on the addition of the women's coordinate college to Kenyon in 1967. The news releases, building plans, images, and financial statements provided an inside look into how Kenyon developed to account for a new population of students on campus; however, the most striking things that I looked at were the opinion pieces in the Collegian and the Reveille that showcased how members of the Kenyon community felt about the introduction of women on campus. While the official statements released by the college were all positive and optimistic about the community welcoming new female students, it seems that this was all a guise to mask the pushback from the male students. In the Reveille, there is documentation of one male student saying, "had I known there'd be women here, I never would've come." Based on this comment, it is clear that the collective memory the college has tried to create wherein the women were completely welcomed is not accurate. It would be interesting to shed light on this in our exhibit.

    In Chapter 1 of The Struggle for the People's King, Hajar Yazdiha argues that collective memories are reflections of systems of power and that those in power manipulate the rhetoric of collective memory to advance their political agendas. Individuals with institutional and political power manipulate how history is reflected to the public and use this warped interpretation of history to control the dispersion of power in the present. Yazdiha states that "Collective memories have significant power in society because they teach individuals which groups they belong to, who they are relative to one another, and what status they hold in society" (21). When a collective memory displaces specific groups, individuals from those groups are given marginalized identities that have stuck with them throughout history. The whitewashing of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s memory is one example of how powerful individuals in society have manipulated collective memory for political gain. When Ronald Reagan was president, there was heavy deliberation over the introduction of MLK Day as a federal holiday. Initially, Reagan strongly opposed this idea, for he believed that MLK represented an image of America as a racist country, which he argued was untrue. He fought against Dr. King's supporters, claiming that their fight for equality was baseless since racism was no longer an issue in society. After years of opposition to MLK Day, Reagan changed his tune and agreed to the recognition of the holiday; however, King's memory, image, and values had been heavily distorted by a "rosy rhetoric of color-blindness and individualism that Reagan would return to throughout his presidency to justify assaults on Black Americans' civil rights" (31). Because of the power that white political leaders have over racially charged rhetoric, the collective memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. is now whitewashed in a way that enables colorblind racism. 

    While the introduction of women into Kenyon College is much smaller-scale than the nationwide civil rights movement of the 1960s, there are parallels in how their collective memories have been interpreted. Just as the United States government faced backlash in their discussions around MLK Day, the Kenyon administration faced opposition from the community when they announced the integration of women into the college. As we attempt to create a display that showcases women at Kenyon, we must be conscious of who is in control of the narrative of each source that we investigate so that we can ensure that we are not participating in the manipulation of collective memory. In a sense, we are what Yazdiha refers to as "mnemonic gatekeepers" (22), for we are attempting to encapsulate history without allowing our own biases or opinions to influence what we show to the public. 


Citation:

Yazdiha, Hajar. 2023. The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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