Black History Month 2015

I keep thinking that in conjunction with last week there are some current events that I should address, but those posts would be really long. I did just finish my reading this weekend, so let's go there.

I have mentioned already how the writing has thrown off my reading schedules, so I just finished my Native American Heritage 2014 media in August, start this reading shortly after that, am starting Native American Heritage 2015 reading this week, and I should start the 2016 Black History reading about a month after that. Squishing everything so close together may give me some added perspective. Mainly, it's been kind of heavy.

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, by Danielle L McGuire

This is a really important reminder of a few things. One is the way that women so frequently do the work, and then the men become the stars. Rosa Parks was working for equality and Civil Rights for years before her arrest, and women were on the front lines of the organizing all along, but we remember the men's names. Even as the boycott was being organized, Parks was already being converted into a symbol, not a breathing, living, and also smart, committed, determined human being.

The other thing that becomes clear is that even though white men sexually assaulting black women was all too common, the arguments against integration and equality kept coming back to the danger to pure white women from black men. It's always been a lie, and it's a lie that degrades everyone.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

This is fiction, but it's fiction by an anthropologist, and based on some real events, so it captures some things. It can be jarring when it switches between the lush poetry of Janey's awakening as a young woman to the dialect captured in the towns and camps, but there is a lot to be learned about life and about being a woman here.

Black Panther: The Complete Collection, by Christopher Priest and others

T'Challa is an important character historically, and there is a movie in the works, so it seemed like a good time to read it. I wanted to like it, but it felt like a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. It seemed like things were starting to get interesting toward the end, like maybe I would have been happier finding volume 2, but ultimately it felt like they were too self-conscious about doing an important black hero to let him really be human and live. I couldn't relate. To be fair, superhero comics seem to be my least favorite comics.

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, by Lucille Clifton

I tend to have low expectations for free verse, but I found hers really engaging and moving. I felt like I wanted to know more about her, to know if the things it felt like she was saying were really part of her life. What I could find about her does play out. I appreciate the way she can fluidly move between classical references and things very earthy and modern.

Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory, by Gregory R Nokes

I found the writing style off-putting at times - especially the foreword  - but as a lifelong Oregon resident, and a University of Oregon graduate, information on the local history made a lawsuit that would have been interesting on its own even more fascinating. As much of Oregon's racist past is not well-known, and this is a book of relatively easy length and reading level, I think it fills an important spot.

Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (2007 edition), by Lerone Bennett Jr

Everyone should read this book. It gives important information and context to all of US history, therefore an understanding of where we are now, and is often beautifully written.

Perhaps the most important lesson, and it fits in well with At the Dark End of the Street, is that there is so much that history forgets. Yes, there was a Civil Rights movement in the 1960s that drew popular attention, but there was activism before that, from anti-slavery activism from before the United States even existed to Rosa Parks' work before she stepped on the bus. There have always been people who try to abolish rights - rights that were once accepted as no big deal - and there have always been people fighting back, often at great personal cost.

It's not over.