This morning a captivating storyteller presented The Power of Frederick Douglass and the Reconstruction Era w/ David Blight - MR Live - 9/29/20. It will get your juices flowing for sure ;-)
The entire interview builds an outstanding contextual narrative in which, with history wrapped all around us, the situations with SCOTUS, the suppression of voters who have felony histories, the Post Office trials and tribulations as the most democratic institution that we have and use daily, makes a lot of sense of this political counter-revolutionary moment. I hope Kossaks will watch this interview!
Blight’s prediction of 1/3 voters in 2020 being people of color is at 1:38:00 or so and is inspiring. But really, to fully understand what Blight says, the entire interview is a must-watch.
To brief on the ideas and positions taken in the above interview, I hope you’ll consider investigating these David Blight resources:
“I can only answer the question, 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question, 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'” —Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue
"Fer no extree fee", here’s William Cronon's 2013 Presidential Address: "Storytelling" at the annual meeting of American Historical Association (AHA), the largest professional organization serving historians in all fields and all professions. Cronon, working at U. Wisconsin-Madison as an environmental historian was the out-going AHA President in 2013. Cronon tells us why, for my example, David Blight’s work whether on Douglass and Reconstruction or on some other topic is so important for us to take seriously. I hope you will be persuaded by Cronon of the importance of historians telling history in ways that are not boring and inform our present thus fulfilling a critical role in public life. David Blight does that job well.
Cronon’s speech picked up on the theme for the 2013 meeting, “Lives, Places, Stories” . Not surprisingly, the address continued several topics discussed at the president’s plenary session the night before, “The Public Practice of History in and for a Digital Age”, which was also the title of his Jan 2012 inaugural column in Perspectives on History. The presidential address also elaborated on his other columns in Perspectives, especially the much-discussed essay of Mar2012, “Professional Boredom.”
Sep 29, 2020 - On the Peaceful Transfer of Power — AHA Perspective that ends with the words apropos to The Oval Office at any time, “In his last look around the presidential office, John Adams weighed Jefferson’s challenges with unique appreciation. Then, quietly, he returned power to where it rightfully rests—with the people.”