The Morality and Biases of Remembrance

By

 Rory Engel

The Morality and Biases of Remembrance


  For our final week of fine-tuning our case for Notable People, Liv, Julián, and I took two different trips to Archives and Special Collections. We used our first trip as an opportunity to curate our items for John Crowe Ransom, and our second trip was dedicated to writing our text labels and finalizing our layout. On the first day, we struggled to pick between two items for Ransom, one of these being a document that he had written and the other being a poem written by someone else for Ransom. We decided it would be nice to include an archive that might give a sense of how others viewed him, so we chose to include the poem. On our second day, we struggled with writing summaries of each of these individuals and their importance in the world in such a small amount of words. What specific information was necessary to include, and what might be irrelevant? Aside from making sure we gave context to the items we picked, we chose to highlight some of their biggest accomplishments, as this might serve as an explanation for their notability. I think this was my favorite day in the Archives because it felt like everything we had been working on up until now was finally coming together. Though enjoying the process throughout this whole project, I found myself stressed about trying to make it perfect the whole time. However, on this day I could finally envision our carefully curated items in the case telling each viewer a cohesive story about each individual. 

In our reading for Friday, chapter three of The Struggle for the People’s King, Hajar Yazdiha discusses how Martin Luther King Jr.'s words and the civil rights movement more generally have been used both in support and against the LGBTQ+ rights movements. Yazdiha explains how moral meaning can be assigned to certain people and certain movements depending on what that group's specific motives or beliefs are. She more specifically states that “Understanding the identity of the messenger–in this case, the identity of the mobilizing group that invokes civil rights memory–is critical in making sense of how their message is received,”(Yazdiha 2023:75). For instance, LGBTQ+ rights movements may interpret Dr. King’s message as one that fights for the rights of all human beings, whereas those that see LGBTQ+ rights as immoral may push the idea that the civil rights movement is strictly fighting for the rights of black people. In both of these scenarios, the civil rights movement is being used strategically to gain understanding and support for either side. In acknowledging this, we begin to understand that, though there may be a very basic understanding of what Martin Luther King Jr. did as a leader, the memory of what occurred during the civil rights movement may not be as collective as we think. Small details of history can be taken out of context as a way to push certain ideals, thus causing everyone to have a slightly different memory of what exactly happened and what was driving this powerful movement. 

Thinking about our position as students and what sort of narrative we may be pushing for each of our chosen individuals is something important to consider, and I believe it would be helpful to think about in the context of Yazdiha’s discussion. Though it may seem extreme to compare the use of certain people and items to build a narrative of Kenyon to the strategic political use of the Civil Rights movement, I do find some similarities between the two. Our group wanted to create the idea that individuals who have attended or worked at Kenyon are smart, creative, and well-loved. Furthermore, the name of the case is meant to reveal their notability or success. Archives such as the newspaper we included discussing the start of his acting career or the poem dedicated to John Crowe Ransom would help to fulfill these ideas about these people. However, if a different group of individuals was trying to prove that these people were immoral, bad people, they would pull different historical sightings of immorality to prove this. I am in no way saying these are bad people, but this hypothetical reveals the fact that when morality and certain ideals are being assigned, it is easy to pick and choose different points in a movement or an individual’s life to prove a certain narrative. While I am not quite sure how knowing this strengthens my understanding of my group’s case, I do think it is crucial to acknowledge the fact that we are not showing an audience the full range of these individuals and who they were as people, but instead a highlight reel of their best moments.

References

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

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