Human Events and Whited Sepulchres

Abstract

Human Events and Whited Sepulchres Virginia Scharff (bio) Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth. New York: Liveright Publishing Company, 2021. 140 pp. Images, books and articles consulted. $15.95. In 1988, when my son Sam was three, Chevron Oil transferred my geologist husband from Denver, Colorado to Houston, Texas. We moved to a nice townhouse complex on the west side of the city, interim home to Oil Patch nomads from all over the world. Families from Nigeria and the Netherlands, Indonesia and the Emirates, Louisiana and Colorado gathered around the pool in the abundant hot weather, and mingled at holiday parties thrown by the remarkably hospitable women managing the complex. During the Houston rodeo, the managers turned the rental office into an Old West saloon and dressed in cowgirl gear, complete with a serve-yourself bar open throughout business hours. It was the friendliest and most diverse place I have ever lived. We had some trouble finding daycare for Sam. We eventually settled on The Memorial School of the Oaks, a nearby place with a name that sounded like a funeral parlor, but which we were assured was among the best preschools in the city. One day, when I picked Sam up and drove him home from school, he was bubbling over with joy. "We had history lessons today!" he told me, excited to share knowledge he knew I would value, aware (so early!) that I was a historian and spent my days reading and writing at my desk, surrounded by piles of files and books. "Great!" I replied. "What did you learn?" "We learned about George Washington, Mom! Did you know he wrote the Declaration of Independence?" This brought me up short; I admit, I went there. "Well actually, Sam," I lectured, "Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence." This did not faze him. "And we also learned about the heroes of the Alamo!" he enthused. Dreading the answer, I asked, "And what did you learn about them?" He stood very straight, put his hand over his heart, and spoke in a deep voice with a perfect Texas accent I had never before heard issue from his little mouth. "Brave men fought and died!" he intoned. Welcome to Texas. [End Page 110] I tell this story to suggest that Americans—Texans included—have always been a diverse and complex lot. We care about our nation's history. But in the wake of the violence perpetrated by Donald Trump and his followers on the far right, this time feels different, though not unprecedented. Battles over American history have always mattered, and occasionally (as in the era of the Civil War) grown vicious, even violent. In recent months, local school boards have been overrun by threatening White mobs, incited and organized on Facebook. Red-faced activists howl about "critical race theory," a shorthand term for teaching anything that acknowledges our systematically racist past, present, and potentially, future. Reactionary governors like Texas's Greg Abbott rail against the New York Times's 1619 Project and stoke cultural fires. State legislatures (including Texas's) are passing laws mandating social studies standards so byzantine that principals and teachers cannot be faulted for simply wanting to…give up. Why teach history when everyone is so angry, when every lesson presents a political minefield, when "parents' rights" are used to justify open season on educators? Never have historians had to be more courageous, more measured, or more deft in approaching subjects we thought were settled matters. The bravest among us would argue that this is precisely the time to step up and communicate the truth of our history to as big an audience as possible. Such interventions might stir opposition, but then again, they might just make a difference. Enter Annette Gordon-Reed, MacArthur fellow, Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Award winner, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Gordon-Reed, the most prominent Jefferson scholar in the world today, has been recognized for her deep and illuminating scholarship on the entwined histories of the Jefferson and Hemings families. That body of work, beginning with Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997) drew on her skills as an attorney and law professor to...