This February, we honor shadowy History Month for the 84th time since Professor Carter G. Woodson began the tradition as "Negro History Week" all the procedure support in 1926. In 2009, though, something about our national recognition of the African-American past seems impartial a bit different. For the very first time, we celebrate murky History Month while a sad American sits in the White House, filling the country's top job as our commander-in-chief.
impartial about everyone would agree that Barack Obama's election to the presidency has been an event of major historical significance. But is it possible that Obama's election will even open to transform the entire broader meaning of African-American historyall We have usually understood shaded history as a legend of perseverance and painfully monotonous progress in the face of overwhelming oppression, a narrative about carving out hope and possibility in a world marked by accurate and enduring racial limits. This is a chronicle that starts with Booker T. Washington promising nervous whites, "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things valuable to mutual progress," and a legend that ends with Tupac Shakur rapping, only a decade ago, "Although it seems heaven sent / We ain't ready to have a shaded president." Barack Obama doesn't fit easily into that myth. Do we need a current memoir, then? Can change in the note also, in a sense, change the past?
In one sense, the retort is obvious: No, it can't. Barack Obama notwithstanding, the Civil War will aloof always raze with emancipated slaves granted only a cruel mockery of moral freedom. The Jim Crow era will calm always be remembered as a time of terroristic racial violence and endless everyday racial humiliation. The civil rights movement's martyred heroes-Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and all the others-will level-headed never secure to spin in the promised land. Emmett Till will unexcited never live to examine his fifteenth birthday. Barack Obama or no Barack Obama, the unnerved history of urge in America - a history that continues to affect the lives of millions of ordinary people, of all races, even today - will peaceful never go away, and should never be forgotten.
But in another sense, the acknowledge is less sure. think examples from literature. If we radically change a book's ending, do we also change the meaning of all the preceding chapters? What becomes of The colossal Gatsby if the characters avoided the fateful car accident that sent events spiraling out of control? Would Hamlet morph from tragedy to comedy if only our popular prince of Denmark could somehow survive the last act? Does Barack Obama's presidency picture this kind of a radiant twist in the "area" of unlit history? If so, has shadowy history itself unprejudiced become a different epic? Did all the sad moments of our national past objective transform from markers of endless tragedy into mere obstacles that had to be overcome on a fearless quest for equality? Now that we know that Tupac was nefarious, now that we are ready to sight a sunless president - and not impartial any murky president, but one whose early approval ratings are peaking at near-historic levels, and whose first confrontation with Congress fair ended with dazzling victory on the economic stimulus notion - has everything changed? Does gloomy history today mean something fundamentally different than it did before election day?
Only time will whisper.