Seeing is not Meaning: History, and the Space without Context

By Anonymous

Our most relevant findings with our latest trip to the archives were two photos of figures who had appeared in our research before, namely Allan Ballard '52 and Stanley L. Jackson '52, the first two Black Kenyon College Students who are credited with "integrating the college," notably before the Civil Rights Act in 1964. What struck me about this was that we actually had to go back to one of our other artifacts related to the Black Student Union which mentioned them to regain the lost context. A lot of the circumstances around their joining the college at this time, for us remain murky. When it ways they "integrated the college," it feels especially vague. Omitted are the preconditions for their inclusion, such as the removal of barriers administrative and otherwise, among other things. If these photos alone had been placed in a bottle and washed up on some distant shore, it would be hard to say what they meant besides themselves.


To draw a connection to the readings, I found it appropriate to contextualize this information in relation to other de-contextualized information. Hajar Yazidha's discussion of the various different versions of MLK--memories of him, specifically--are used to mobilizing different sections of the U.S. political sphere. Everyone from Anti-War activists, to non-Black minorities, to Christian Nationalists--all of these groups and more more have offered wildly different interpretations based on MLK's own words (Yazidha 2023: 48-57). That said, often times these words were selectively deployed, hence the conflicting interpretations. Essentially, MLK's mixture of religious, racial, political, and generally humanitarian rhetoric, when not contextualized as a that of a whole, consistent body of texts can be altered and redeployed under new circumstances for explicitly political purposes.


From previous classes, what archival research does is essentially returns what was inert or stored collective memories back into active, living collective memory. However, one might make the analogy that as the context of the original memories is forgotten or is no longer similar to lived experience, it will fade. Similarly, the vagueness of "they were responsible for integrating the college" appears also itself ripe for misuse, in some ways. One could credit them for "being heroic and integrating Kenyon" which omits institutional actions for changing things, or if one were to frame it differently, they could use it as a rhetorical maneuver against inclusion by drawing a comparison between a fantasy version of Ballard and Jackson against contemporary Black students. In other words, nothing about the existence of these narratives on their own determines whether or not the truth of the situation is well-captured. It takes a certain commitment to fidelity and a certain kind of willingness to try to avoid altering the past for cynical power plays to avoid the distortion of memory. To explain it using the title, the quotes of MLK and the visual evidence of Kenyon's past must be contextualized with the actual events which surrounded them, or else it risks devolving into nothing but cynical power games which can only be settled dishonestly.


References

Yazdiha, Hajar. (2023). The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Cvil Rights Movement. Princeton University Press.


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