Also Wolfgang Schivelbusch wrote a book on the Depression? That’s quite a switch from cultural histories of railroads and lighting and mourning (I’ve read the railroad book).

I really should try to keep up with this blog on a daily basis.

Was that irony intentional?

I have one singular nitpick – as a long-time resident of Arizona, I would like to point out that Arizona did NOT vote to have the MLK holiday because of the 1993 Super Bowl, which was actually held in Pasadena, California instead. In fact, the measure was defeated (by 1%) in 1991 because Arizona voters were pissed off that the Super Bowl Committee was trying to strongarm them into something that they were already planning to do. There were TWO measures on the ballot to create an MLK holiday in 1991, and both failed because voters in Arizona aren’t interested in being bullied. The measure passed resoundingly, the next year, with 61% of the vote (and we had two versions to vote on again, which doubtlessly split the vote some) once “outsiders” shut up and left us alone.

But if you do, and if you’re interested in what I’m assuming is shooting a fish in a barrel, there’s a jagoff here going on about Schivelbusch and liberal fascism and demanding a smackdown from an actual expert.

Actually, it looks like you have to read Jonah Goldberg’s “book” to meet the jagoff’s stringent standards, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I’m curious if you have some thoughts about Schivelbusch, who I just found out about. (I’m bugging you about this because of you this.)

Taking that to mean “sins,” I think I agree. It’s just that “we” truncate the story so that some of “us” can say “all our sins” but not really have to think about “our” sins; just those Others’.

“We” can be big about things that way.

Nice post, ari! Sorry for my absence for the last week or so (not that I have to answer to this…or any…blog). I’ve been kind of bogged down with work of various sorts.

Finally, Urbino, I think you’re right. But I also think the King story is broader than particular constituencies (or at least broader than narrow or even regional constituencies). I think the sanitized (does deracinated work here?) King narrative is a way of telling ourselves feel-good stories about the nation, a way of making the argument that thoseproblems have been solved, that we’ve moved beyond all that. So, yes, this is particularly true of the King we hear about in large parts of the North, Midwest, and the West, places where it’s convenient to cast racism as a Southern problem. But, as Levi intimates above, in the dominant King narrative, MLK died for all of our sins. So that we may live. And shop on his birthday.

That’s too strong (drama!), obviously, but I think you know what I’m driving at. Or at least I hope so.

I wonder, though, if our forgetfulness about the later career of Dr. King has more to do with the old saw about history being written by the victors, than with King’s radicalism.

Clearly, all of King’s career would be happily forgotten in large sections of the South, as it is a story of the [institutional white] South’s failure. That hasn’t been possible, however, because of cultural, media, and legal pressure from the rest of the country. However, there hasn’t been anyone positioned to pressure the rest of the country to remember the later King, who took his campaign into northern and western cities and was [violently] rebuffed.

So King’s campaign in the South, in which many people from the rest of the country participated, is remembered because it is a story of those people’s victory. King’s efforts in their own regions are forgotten, because it is a story of the victors’ failure.