Reinterpreting and Realigning the Past

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 This week, our group continued to comb through new boxes and folders from Special Collections and Archives in order to add to our display. In addition to a box on Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme (a Kenyon alum) and boxes with war files, we also accessed documents from Kenyon student organizations that focused on activism and politics in order to add content to our display connecting to our theme: student reactions to global politics. One document that caught my attention was a letter from Terry Robbins, former president of Kenyon's chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who ultimately dropped out of Kenyon, to faculty members. In the 1965 letter, he attempted to spread the word a March on Washington (sponsored by SDS) hosted to specifically protest the Vietnam War.

This reminded of the chapters we have been reading from Yazdiha's The Struggle for the People's King, specifically in reference to people's reuse and reinterpretation of Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights activism in an attempt to realign his legacy with their own activism. For example, we examined the use of King's legacy by homophobic family values groups who strived to apply their opposition to LGBTQ+ groups to King's fight for civil rights. Yazdiha (2023:90) explains in figure 3.2 how both groups' versions of the "perceived past" differ, with the Family Values Movement considering themselves as victims of multicultural America while the LGBTQ movement thinks back to Dr. King's vision for civil rights for every group.

With this chapter in mind while considering the items in our display, the letter further emphasizes how different groups with different agendas can so easily apply past movements to the present. It gets to a point where one can align a common movement with their own (like the letter from SDS) or reinterpret the movement to connect to their original goal in a way that some would interpret as far from Dr. King's intentions. The constant reinterpretation of collective memory from different groups makes it interesting to wonder what the correct interpretation is. If different opposing groups can use the same memory in different ways, to what extent is it applicable to every group, or is it applicable at all?

 

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