The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory

by Romano, Renee Christine

• ISBN13: 9780820328140
• ISBN10: 0820328146
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-30
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

The movement for civil rights in America peaked in the 1950s and 1960s; however, a closely related struggle, this time over the movement's legacy, has been heatedly engaged over the past two decades. How the civil rights movement is currently being remembered in American politics and culture--and why it matters--is the common theme of the thirteen essays in this unprecedented collection.Memories of the movement are being created and maintained--in ways and for purposes we sometimes only vaguely perceive--through memorials, art exhibits, community celebrations, and even street names. At least fifteen civil rights movement museums have opened since 1990;Mississippi Burning,Four Little Girls, andThe Long Walk Homeonly begin to suggest the range of film and television dramatizations of pivotal events; corporations increasingly employ movement images to sell fast food, telephones, and more; and groups from Christian conservatives to gay rights activists have claimed the civil rights mantle.Contests over the movement's meaning are a crucial part of the continuing fight against racism and inequality. These writings look at how civil rights memories become established as fact through museum exhibits, street naming, and courtroom decisions; how our visual culture transmits the memory of the movement; how certain aspects of the movement have come to be ignored in its "official" narrative; and how other political struggles have appropriated the memory of the movement. Here is a book for anyone interested in how we collectively recall, claim, understand, and represent the past.

Author Biography

Renee C. Romano is an associate professor of history and African American studies at Wesleyan University and the author of Race Mixing. Leigh Raiford is an assistant professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: The Struggle over Memory	p. xi
Institutionalizing Memory	p. 1
Interpreting the Civil Rights Movement: Contradiction, Confirmation, and the Cultural Landscape	p. 5
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the New Ideology of Tolerance	p. 28
Street Names as Memorial Arenas: The Reputational Politics of Commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. in a Georgia County	p. 67
Narratives of Redemption: The Birmingham Church Bombing Trials and the Construction of Civil Rights Memory	p. 96
Visualizing Memory	p. 135
The Good, the Bad, and the Forgotten: Media Culture and Public Memory of the Civil Rights Movement	p. 137
Debating the Present through the Past: Representations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1990s	p. 167
Integration as Disintegration: Remembering the Civil Rights Movement as a Struggle for Self-Determination in John Sayles's Sunshine State	p. 197
Restaging Revolution: Black Power, Vibe Magazine, and Photographic Memory	p. 220
Diverging Memory	p. 251
Down to Now: Memory, Narrative, and Women's Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, Georgia	p. 253
Engendering Movement Memories: Remembering Race and Gender in the Mississippi Movement	p. 290
Deploying Memory	p. 313
Deaf Rights, Civil Rights: The Gallaudet "Deaf President Now" Strike and Historical Memory of the Civil Rights Movement	p. 317
Riding in the Back of the Bus: The Christian Right's Adoption of Civil Rights Movement Rhetoric	p. 346
Rosa Parks, C'est Moi	p. 363
Selected Bibliography on Civil Rights and Historical Memory	p. 367
Contributors	p. 371
Index	p. 373
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