I told Darrow my own Mississippi school district didn¡¯t integrate until the 1970s, he was shocked¡ªwhich, in turn, shocked me

[mshistorynow:] Seeking better resources for Black education, many Black parents ¨C with help from civil rights organizations such as the Delta Ministry [mississippiencyclopedia], the American Friends Service Committee, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and others ¨C did take the often difficult step of choosing a White school for their children. But the freedom-of-choice strategy for achieving school desegregation implied that people actually had the freedom to choose. In much of the South, most Black people did not. In Mississippi between 1964 and 1969, Black parents who chose White schools for their children were regularly intimidated in myriad ways, and the handful of Black students who actually entered White schools under the freedom-of-choice system often faced the wrath of generally unsympathetic White teachers and students

Anemoia. A word all Americans ought to know

make anemoia great again? [en.wiki]
posted by HearHere at 1:14 AM on September 17 [5 favorites]

The article is more interesting for its subject than for its point of view, which I found confused and confusing. Which, fair. We live in confusing times. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but so are those who remember it. History is a story told by the winners but everybody in it was just a fucked up individual trying to get by. Our nation's shame is a depth unplumbable. Our sins can never be redeemed, so how to live?

Thanks for posting.
posted by rikschell at 4:25 AM on September 17 [1 favorite]

History is a story told by the winners

The first historian of note was Thucydides, who fought for the losing Athenians. Much of the old Testament is about losing. Much of Roman history reports some pretty severe losses. Josephus fought against the Roman, surrendered, wrote the history. As writing increased in volume, so have the histories. There are any number of Napoleonic memoirs, Confederate memoirs, German WW1 and WW2 memoirs. Vietnam war books are a staple.

I've said this before, but it is one on my bugaboos.

The article is more interesting for its subject than for its point of view, which I found confused and confusing. Which, fair.

Hm. What are we to make of "But knowing nothing can sometimes enable a person to know other things, and say them."
posted by BWA at 5:26 AM on September 17 [2 favorites]

I've been meaning to read more about Hinds -- settling in to read this. Thank you for the post, chavenet!
posted by brainwane at 6:37 AM on September 17 [2 favorites]

BWA, if you get the history, you have won. Like how the Confederacy lost the Civil War, but the South won the history.
posted by rikschell at 9:11 AM on September 17 [3 favorites]

The last school to desegrate in Mississippi was in 2016.
posted by Mitheral at 9:43 AM on September 17 [2 favorites]

The failure of Reconstruction feels like the origin story for much of American life aint that the truth.

Am I correct that the Electoral College system was given to the South as a sop and to help them accept Reconstruction?

An important post chavenet - not only for Americans as the false political religion of America is infesting the planet. A religion founded on grievance, denial, racism and conspiracy produces a terrify polity.
posted by unearthed at 11:44 AM on September 17 [2 favorites]

A wonderful article, beautifully written.

We are sometimes, I believe, a little afraid of entering electric rooms. Of lacking certainty, or, worse, being seen by others as lacking certainty. Not seeming wild-eyed, but being caught moving away from certainty.

If there is a summary of the perspective of this article, it is this. And it is correct. One of the defining characteristics of our time is the almost universal, profound uncomfortableness with uncertainty. We lose something with that, though.

Sometimes, as with the story of this Reconstruction Congressman, the uncertainty is as much the story as the uncovering. Not only what we do not know, but all the reasons we cannot, ever, know, and what that says about our sense of our place in history. We would rather act as if we are certain of inherently unknowable things, because to face the ephemerality and unreliability of all of our narratives about the world in which we live is deeply unsettling to egoic self, whispering as it does of our own eventual dissolution, and the unknowability of the future when we no longer exist, and are inevitably forgotten.

But this is not the end, either. Even the present, when we examine it closely, teems with unknowables. (All of the big data and surveillance tech are overcompensations in this field, but the story of the desire for control is an old one and has been repeated its own, ironically unknowable number of times.) We must always act as if, and stories that hint at meaningfulness, but foreground the inherent limitations of knowledge of facts uncomfortably illuminate just how much we must make do with estimates and assumptions.

What is time? What is the moment of historical meaning? The exploration of history trips quickly into existential territory. It is the rare piece of writing that is willing to tread those paths, though.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 12:00 PM on September 17 [4 favorites]

Favorited so I remember to come back and read the piece when I'm not at work, but also favorited for the excellent post title! Now I'll be singing "Maps and Legends" all day!
posted by epj at 12:52 PM on September 17 [1 favorite]

> Am I correct that the Electoral College system was given to the South as a sop and to help them accept Reconstruction?

No, the electoral college was in place in the US from the adoption of the constitution in 1787. What was a sop to the South related to the EC was including 3/5 of a state's slave population when calculating the state's total population, which increased the voting power of slave states within the EC. The free state position was that slaves should be excluded from this count, because they could not vote. During Reconstruction, the 14th amendment changed this so that if male citizens over the age of 21 were disenfranchised, then that state's apportionment should be decreased accordingly. I don't think any part of that was a sop to the South.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:13 PM on September 17 [3 favorites]

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