Some of you have already played around with Wordle. Today I decided to give it a shot by using the text from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. For those of you not familiar with this program, Wordle generates “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
My wife and I are making our way through the HBO film, John Adams, and we are thoroughly enjoying it. I am particularly impressed with episode 2 which covers the push towards independence. The writers did an excellent job of laying out the controversy and emotion of the decision, as well as the political maneuvering behind the scenes. They did such a good job with the argument against independence that it was easy to not only identify with it, but to perhaps acknowledge it as the stronger position. It really highlights the role of luck in our historical identification. We can easily imagine the revolution failing; in that case Dickinson and Rutledge emerge as the heroes while Adams and the rest of his gang come off as irresponsible radicals. I also thought they did an excellent job with the Boston Massacre as well as the tar and feathering scene. I can easily see using parts of this series in class.
Finally, I think I have a little crush on Laura Linney--or is it Abigail Adams? I'm not quite sure what it is. I hope my wife doesn't read this. :)
A few months back I was contacted by George Rable to take part in the yearly luncheon/dinner panel of the Society of Civil War Historians which meets as part of the Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association. This year the meeting will be in New Orleans and needless to say I am very excited and honored to be taking part. The panel includes the following:
Presiding, George Rable, University of Alabama
Kevin M. Levin, St. Anne's - Belfield School, "Blogging the American Civil War"
Anne Sara Rubin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, "Mapping Memory: Digitizing Sherman's March"
Mark Grimsley, Ohio State University, "The Virtual Archive Rat: Exploiting the Online Availability of Traditional Sources"
I asked both Anne and Mark to forward their presentation abstracts, which will be published in the next issue of the society's newsletter. They can be found below.
Continue reading "The Civil War in a New Age: Blogs, Technology, and the Internet" »
How about a rappin' Nat Turner, John Calhoun, Harriet Tubman or Abraham Lincoln for your history classroom?
John C. Calhoun
I’m John C. Calhoun, and I love the South,
the Senator from South Cakalak, reppin’ the South.
They don’t know me in the North, but they try to play me,
states’ rights best thing since grits n’ gravy.
I believe firmly in the goodness of slavery.
Northerners who hate it, I think they have rabies.
Never before have Africans been so civilized,
never before have they found the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Northerners don’t pay workers enough to eat,
we don’t pay slaves, at least they have a place to sleep.
We must maintain the status quo for whites and blacks
‘cause if we ever let them free, they’re going to attack!
Dred Scott decision was right, what belongs to me,
whether slave or mule, is my property.
We’re chivalrous but don’t mess with us, abolitionists,
we’ll cane you on the Senate floor.
We won’t take no or maybe,
We’re gonna end this slavery…
I'm not sure I agree with Howard Zinn that, "This is an extraordinary teaching tool for the next generation", but it sure is hilarious.
Yesterday I shared an illustration from a popular history book used here in Virginia titled, Virginia: History, Government, Geography by Francis B. Simkins, Spotswood H. Jones, and Sidman P. Poole. The illustration speaks for itself, but today I found some text on slavery and race relations from the book, which serves to remind us of just how important it is that our history textbooks be based on first-rate scholarship and not fantasy.
A feeling of strong affection existed between masters and slaves in a majority of Virginia homes. . . The house servants became almost as much a part of the planter’s family circle as its white members. . . The Negroes were always present at family weddings. They were allowed to look on at dances and other entertainments . . . A strong tie existed between slave and master because each was dependent on the other. . . The slave system demanded that the master care for the slave in childhood, in sickness, and in old age. The regard that master and slaves had for each other made plantation life happy and prosperous. Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those for whom they worked. . . But they were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. In fact, they paid little attention to these arguments.
One of my readers commented on the previous post that he was assigned this book in 1980. Now that is incredibly disturbing.
This is a perfect follow-up to my earlier post on Rickey Pittman's childrens book about Jim Limber.
I've suggested numerous times that the proposed statue commemorating Jefferson Davis and Jim Limber fits into a broader push on the part of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other heritage groups to minimize the place of slavery within the antebellum South as well as the history of the Confederacy specifically. Of course, the view that slaveholding was benign and best understood as paternalistic has a long and disturbing history in this country.
This morning a friend emailed an image taken from a textbook titled Virginia: History, Government, Geography (Scribners, 1966) and written by Francis Butler Simkins. Simkins was a well-known Southern Historian who taught at Longwood College and who authored a well-received biography of Ben Tillman, which was published in 1944 by the University of South Carolina Press. The individual who emailed the image noted that Simkins's narrative betrays a strong pro-slavery bias, but speculates that, given his scholarship, revisions were made by the Virginia Textbook Commission and that Simkins allowed his name to continue to be used for the publication. As for the image used for the chapter on slavery, I don't think I need to explain what is problematic about it. There is a rich history behind the Davis-Limber statue and it fits neatly into our broader assumptions concerning race relations in the South and throughout the United States at different times. In the same way that the illustration misrepresents the realities of slaveholding, can't we also suggest that a statue depicting Davis holding hands with Limber misrepresents how blacks lived under the various Davis rooftops?
We must be very critical when it comes to the messages that our public spaces convey about our history. We no longer live at a time when one racial group has a monopoly on the shape of public spaces as a way to maintain control of both history and government. Let's take advantage of that fact.
There is nothing more disturbing for an educator than to come across children's books whose authors have little qualification as historians or who have an implicit agenda to get across. Such is the case with Rickey Pittman's book, Jim Limber Davis: A Black Orphan in the Confederate White House. Here is the jacket description:
The true story of the adopted black child of Jefferson Davis. Jim Limber Davis was rescued from an abusive guardian by Varina Davis when he was only five years old. Jefferson and Varina Davis welcomed him into their home, the Confederate White House, as one of the family, and Jim lived with them until the fall of the Confederacy. When Union soldiers invaded Richmond, Virginia, they captured Jefferson Davis. Later, they kidnapped Jim Limber in Georgia and spread cruel rumors that he was Jefferson Davis's slave. This true story provides a glimpse of how Jim was accepted as one of the Davis's children and reveals their family's love and compassion for him.
As John Coski noted in his short essay there is a great deal that we do not know about this story. Pittman seems comfortable giving Limber the Davis name, though there are no records to demonstrate that Limber was officially adopted. With any other publisher I would be disappointed, but in this case we are dealing with Pelican, which is one of the most unreliable and agenda-driven publishers out there. The author's personal website can be found here. He is an active member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Camp Thomas McGuire in West Monroe, Louisiana.
Pittman also provides an online study guide to accompany this book. Students can play games that Limber would have played or inquire into his whereabouts as did Jefferson Davis after the war. Students can draw a picture of the Confederate White House where Limber lived, though I wonder if the family's slaves are expected to be included in such a drawing. Even better are the statistics on free blacks that Pittman compiled from James and Walter Kennedy's books, The South Was Right and Myths of American Slavery.
This is a disturbing book that is based on an overly simplistic view of slavery, free blacks, and Jefferson Davis's own personal history as a slaveowner and leader of a nation whose stated goal was the preservation of slavery. The current push to commemorate this story in marble is based on little more than the outline of this story and it should concern all of us who hope to continue to expand and deepen our understanding of this crucial moment in America's past.
This talk was presented today in Philadelphia at the 2008 Meeting of the Society of Civil War Historians. The panel was titled, "Gearing Up For the Civil War Sesquicentennial in the High School Classroom" and included, James Percoco, Ronald Maggiano, and Andy Slap.
When it aired in 1989 Ken Burns’s epic documentary about America’s Civil War garnered the largest audience in PBS history. Viewers who had little interest or knowledge of the Civil War were attracted to the powerful images and sounds as well as the narration by David McCullough and commentary by Shelby Foote - the combination of which served to introduce a heroic and tragic story to a national audience. While historians have spent considerable time analyzing Burns’s documentary as historical interpretation, little attention has been given to the ways in which the film can be utilized in history courses on the high school level.1 All too often the film is used as a launching pad to other classroom activities or simply shown with little student preparation; such an approach renders students as passive observers rather than engaging them in trying to better understand the choices that went into the film’s script along with how the various elements come together to tell a coherent story.2 More importantly, students fail to see the film itself as a product of long-standing assumptions about the war that are embedded in our popular imagination and often guarded as sacred. The beginning of the Civil War Sesquicentennial in 2011 will provide a unique opportunity to introduce questions of memory and interpretation in our high school history classes. In the time that I have today I would like to talk briefly about how I engage my students with questions of memory and interpretation through a careful viewing of Burns’s The Civil War.
Continue reading "Using Ken Burns's "The Civil War" in the Classroom" »
Today I had a wonderful discussion with Andy Mink who is the Director of Outreach and Education at the University of Virginia's Center for Digital History. Andy asked me to help out with a workshop for public school teachers in Southside Virginia on the legacy of the Civil War, which I was happy to agree to do. We touched on the difficulties surrounding the teaching of controversial events and issues, and at one point Andy asked if this is the first time that a crucial moment in American history (meaning the November election) could be predicted. What a great question. It is true that much of our analysis of what constitutes a momentous event in history is premised or made possible by hindsight. So, this may be the first time where we can objectively state that this coming November will be one of the most important elections (events) in American history, regardless of whether Barack Obama emerges victorious. Of course, if he wins the moment will be elevated to a different level altogether.
I've written a bit about how an Obama presidency might transform our understanding of Civil War history, but I have not given much thought to the question of how we as teachers need to begin to think about how to prepare our students to understand the importance of this event. On the face of it, this seems like a unique opportunity. A few weeks ago I made the decision to begin the new year with the Civil Rights Movement and Harvard Sitkoff's The Struggle For Black Equality as a way to integrate or bridge the gap between history and current events. I also hope to take advantage of the opportunity to emphasize the 50th anniversary of the closing of Lane High School and Venable Elementary School here in Charlottesville. The closing of schools as a component of "Massive Resistance" represents one of the low points in recent American history while this election highlights the noticeable progress made in race relations. Perhaps Obama's candidacy and potential election will help to frame classroom discussions around a more progressive narrative that does not lose sight of the complexity and tragic quality of the subject. I don't claim to have any hard answers as to how to achieve this balance. Before we can do so a number of questions must be addressed about how Obama specifically fits into our history of race. Of course, it is just these types of questions that make for excellent classroom discussions.
Those of you who work with Essential Questions can easily organize the year around a question which forces students to think about why a black presidential candidate is possible now as opposed to ten years ago or even earlier. I like the idea of beginning with the Civil Rights Movement and then jumping back to colonization and moving forward. The book that we are using begins with Jim Crow, but it is easy to imagine classes accumulating questions that emerge, which will serve to guide us throughout the remainder of the year as we explore earlier moments in American history. Questions will no doubt cover a wide swath from straight-forward historical questions to the deciphering of political cartoons. Consider the recent controversy surrounding the cover of the German publication Der Spiegel, which featured the White House and above it the phrase, "Onkel Barack's Hutta". It would have been nice if Spiegel had waited until the start of the new school year to publish such a cover, but I suspect that there will be no shortage of such references as the general election heats up. The point is that such moments will serve to inform our consideration of other moments in American history, in this case, the 1850s and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I haven't even finished with our end-of-the-year faculty meetings and I am already thinking about September. It's why I love this profession.
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