Is that…It? How to Make Amends With the Past and How to Find Harmony in the Present

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    This past week was the finale: the curtains closed, and the elevator doors heading to L1 in Chalmers shut. This led to the encore for SOCY 291 in the Archives and Special Collections classroom, with our cases' final display and presentation. Monday through Thursday of the week served me personally as a mourning period; looking through old photos and new gemstones hidden away in files while letting out sad, melodramatic sighs as I came to terms with the fact that certain items had to be scrapped and that our time set aside from class just to explore was coming to a close. Through this week of my hair serving as a mourning veil, I also personally grappled with how to even organize the case, with my desire for the chronological viewing of what was deemed as key events in Kenyon history clashing with the little voice on my shoulder compelled me to organize it in a visually engaging way to get viewers attention. Even having to decide what was “worth” displaying (without excluding or soiling identities history) was another session of blankly staring at my dorm ceiling, Queen’s Gambit style (without any of the substance abuse), playing mental and metaphorical chess games as I prepared myself for final showings. 

The week also contained our final reading for the unit, chapter 6 of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. This chapter discussed the process of Reckoning, Restoration, and Reconciliation (Yazdiha 167, 188-191), which to me felt like a triangular process, one that involves not only the acknowledgment that wrong-doing has occurred in a way that people can see and hear, but also recovering the past, tying movements together, and moving forward towards a shared future. All three parts of this are deeply interconnected, as Yazdiha points out.
As my group and I arranged the images in their final positions, I almost felt a sense of emptiness. The end of the project is meant to feel like you are laying your work to rest, that it is time to move on and continue. However, I am deeply sentimental, so I was tackled with the question of: "How do I move on?" and "How do I continue to honor these people's memory?" It's always difficult to grapple with these things, especially with things as fleeting as time and human life.
However, I found comfort in Yazdiha's perspective. Is there always work left to do? Yes. Is there much that connects the people and events from the past shown in our display cases to us in the present? Why not? Although I will never be part of the first class of women at Kenyon that walked the middle path, or the first person of color here, it does not change what had to happen all those years ago (not only in American history but Kenyon history) for me to be able to learn about their stories. It lets me appreciate being able to sit in a class of unique, diverse, intelligent individuals who do not always fit the cookie-cutter stereotypes and to discover, learn, have dialogue with, connect, listen to, challenge each other, merge our stories, and move forward together.

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