It’s like they had a camera in our apartment

As historical fiction, Selma – however fictional – is a massive improvement over Oliver Stone’s JFK.

I thought the Brits did a great job in these American roles.

The writing at times was ponderous. But otherwise, a visceral look at the hatreds that have owned America and the courage needed to move past the haters.

Sorry to be unimaginative, but what in the world does “XVII-15-IX” mean? I make it -VII, but that can’t be right, can it?

While we’re waiting for someone who knows what she or he’s talking about….

Googling give some stuff about Roman numerals being for spines and Arabic numerals for soft fin rays.

Here’s a picture that seems to clarify that, sort of.
http://svrsh2.kahaku.go.jp/fishis/image/fin.jpg

To the extent that Steinbeck is following Keats’s belief that Newton had “destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to the prismatic colours”, yada yada yada: oh, fuck you, John Steinbeck.

“So clearly, it’s the business of the historian to count those spines (and get the count right). Historians go further, too: we traffic in permissible artifice. Call it cautious narrative, which indicates more often than it depicts: maybe, to press the analogy, we’re allowed to stuff and mount that fish in a lifelike posture that nevertheless permits the observer to see those spines and plainly ascertain their number.
Beyond that we daren’t go.”

This topic makes me think of Greg Dening’s A Poetic For Histories. I remember reading it as a history undergraduate and it was very good but of the kind of good that left me feeling – oh, dear I shall never reach this kind of history writing.

I do think he went a little further in his concept of History/histories than you think histories should go – probably because he was a Pacific historian and your idea disallows non-Western/non-Modern histories from counting as history.

“Being a humanity is one of history’s many graces.
…
So histories in our poetic are not just the stream of consciousness about the past but that knowledge made dramaturgical in its forms of expression. Histories are fictions – something made of the past – but fictions whose forms are metonymy end of the present. Histories are metaphors of the past: they translate sets of events into sets of symbols. But histories are also metonymies of the present: the present has existence in and through their expression. The present – social reality, the structures of our living – has being through representations of the past in coded public forms. We read or hear histories in this double way. We know in them both a present and a past.

This should not be a disturbing statement. But it sometimes is. It is sometimes seen to plunge us into subjectivity and relativism. It is sometimes seen to leave us with the appearances of things and no underlying reality. …

The founding fathers of sociology and anthropology did their sciences a disservice when they confused historical explanation with History and histories. In seeking their independence and separation from other sciences, they looked for ways other than historical to explain human events and actions. Their exclusivity distracted them from the discovery of how histories as everyday experience construct social reality. They equated a method of argument with a mode of consciousness and by that were unable to make a fundamental postulate about human social reality: it is experiential; it is constituted in and by presentations of the past. Put another way : praxis is histories. Histories are sensuous human activity that make and unmake the structures of living.

Such declarations are solipsistic and not a little gnomic. I write a solemn little convention to myself that histories are public knowledge of the past that make a present. But we have everyday usages of words like ‘history’, and these are not changed by any definition of mine…..
…
It has been the myth of historians become the myth of our culture that the past is discovered objectively and factually by our being accurate about it. One symptom of that belief is the statement that “primitive” societies have no history. That statement should be: “primitive” societies do not have the systematic conventionalities – rules of inquiry and evidence – that allow them to historicise in ways recognizable and persuasive to us; nor do they have the infinitude of institutional support systems (from archives to The Guinness Book of Records) to persuade them that accuracy is the truth, that History is the past. I trail my coat. Let me show that being accurate is a fetish of a very special sort of history. A poetic for history will show histories’ more varied concerns. Let me show also that an ethnography of History as a mode of consciousness is History’s anthropology even as it is anthropology’s History. Historians cannot escape a theory of how the past is in the present any more than can anthropologists.

Histories are ways of knowing what happened in the past. The qualities of histories are different from the qualities of the past.”

you have articulated exactly why I don’t like historical fiction. whenever I consume any, I feel like I have gained negative knowledge until I’ve gone and researched the event in question to learn what changes were made in the name of narrative. And even after that, I worry that the fiction, because it’s almost by definition more vivid and compelling than the actual history, is what will stick in the mind.

Johnson did help make the Civil Rights Act of 1957 weaker.

My recollection from the Caro volumes is that had it not been weakened, the 1957 CRA would likely not have passed – the Senate had bottled up CRAs ever since the end of Reconstruction.* What made this one so important was not so much what it did, but that it actually passed. It provided a precedent for the more important ones that followed. If this is correct, one might as well bitch that the main reason Johnson supported it was not any deep feeling for justice or civil rights but because without it, there was no way that he, a southerner, would have had a snowball’s chance in Hell of becoming President, that he only supported it because he was looking ahead to the 1960 campaign.

So, yes, he weakened the CRA of 1957. And we remember the CRA of 1957 today because it passed and was the forerunner of more important ones to come.

*If you care to trust Wikipedia, see this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act

After Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law much of Kennedy’s civil rights bill with an emphasis on equal access to public places. But Johnson had stripped the act of an important voting rights aspect, since he thought it would be filibustered otherwise.

This only makes sense if one lives in an alternate world where the 1964 civil rights bill was not filibustered. WTF?

marcel @ 14

“had it not been weakened, the 1957 CRA would likely not have passed” sounds like Scott Lemieux winding up for some hippie punching on behalf of making the Practical (but allegedly lesser) Evil the enemy of the Good. This sort of retrospective anachronism erasing any genuine understanding of the past as different from the present is the great risk of popular history.

As I recall, Caro, with his painstaking attention to details, is pretty clear that what Lyndon Johnson achieved in the 1957 CRA was making the Democratic Party a credible vehicle for civil rights reform efforts. Both Parties were promising to enact civil rights legislation, and the Senate of the 1950s was closely divided between the two Parties, but the weight of senior Democratic committee chairman from the South had handicapped the capacity of the Democratic Party to deliver legislatively on civil rights and other issues dear to its liberal and labor constituencies. Johnson’s genius allowed him to use a combination of personal relationships with Southern Senators, insight into the deep desiderata of individual Senators and creative scheduling of legislative priorities to marshal a coalition of Western Senators, lukewarm on civil rights, in a compromise in which Southerners (except Strom Thurmond) agreed not to filibuster.

Johnson’s motivations included enhancing his own national reputation for leadership, as a possible 1960 Presidential candidate. In the 1958 elections, the Democrats won much larger majorities in the Senate with civil rights identified with an ascendant and liberal Democratic Party.

Manju,

That’s an interesting article, but I dare say Klinkner can’t seem to make up his mind whether Johnson’s machinations were progressive or not.

For example, Klinkner allows both that LBJ ‘saved’ the Senate by curtailing it’s unlimited debate and that this reform came as a blow to the status quo. And yet somehow Klinkner feels compelled to imply that there was some preferred course of action available:

Caro may be right that Johnson saved the Senate, but he doesn’t consider whether it was worth saving in the first place. Yes, Johnson did reform the chamber so that it could legislate more effectively, but the institution remained and remains a throwback to a predemocratic era.

Looks like a bit of a reductio-ad-absurdum to me.

dr ngo,

You have quite missed the point I am afraid – accuracy in the symbolic recreation and representation of an “evanescent” past event or series of events is a fool’s or Proust’s quest – “all that has happened is almost indescribable” and that the modernist Western idea of History as a “text-able past” is a “culturally mythic view” as much as traditional folk, non-Modernist, or non-Western histories that are not accepted as History.

“What happened in the past inevitably leaves sign-bearing relics: in personal memories first of all, but, more importantly, in memory translated into its social forms – gossip, legend, story, myth, anecdote, parable, sermon, speech. It leaves relics, as well, in transcriptions of all kinds- in memory written down, in the registers of institutions, in illustrations and depictions, in all the material things of the cultural environment. These oral, literary, material relics are extraordinarily complex in their sign-bearing characteristics, although there is an everyday common-sense prejudice that they are simple. … Inevitably the inscribed language is stripped of the context of speech, the eye to eye exchanges that catch the mood, the nuances, the tropes that condition the signs. Already the relics of the past in their messages are transformed simply by being read…
…
Most relics hold a message : they all hold a code. They all encapsulate their cultural forms”

The whole essay is available in Performances by Greg Dening in Google books

It is quite interesting going through archives. I went through the archives of the old Welsh church in my town – and other archives – and there is a whole lot of materials that you then have to shape into a narrative. The little Welsh church voted to become part of the Uniting Church and so its archives stopped in the 1970s so my essay on the church had to end there – even though many things happened afterwards.

William Berry,

Um, well I didn’t mean to criticise Eric in particular with that, if that is the effect you are pointing to it was inadvertent since I do often forgoe the niceties its true – but my comments are so lengthy think how long they’d be if I included niceties in all of them too.

But I think it is a commonplace idea in Po-mo / Po-co historiography that Western modernist History disallowed for other histories and that its seeming objectivism is a linguistic or literary device rather than The Truth, and this device was used against colonised subjects , others etc etc. Would you disagree with that?

I can’t find a cite, but I’m fairly confident that Johnson was proud of his record regarding civil rights, not to mention Medicare and Medicaid. After his landslide victory in 1964, he got some important things done.

but the weight of senior Democratic committee chairman from the South had handicapped the capacity of the Democratic Party to deliver legislatively on civil rights

Ok, check this out. Here is a procedural vote concerning whether or not to send the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee…run by vicious racist James Eastland of Mississippi. So Aye = Evil

AL Aye [D] John Sparkman
AL Aye [D] Joseph Hill
AR Aye [D] James Fulbright
AR Aye [D] John McClellan
AZ Aye [R] Barry Goldwater
AZ Aye [D] Carl Hayden
DE Aye [R] John Williams
DE Aye [D] Joseph Frear
FL Aye [D] George Smathers
FL Aye [D] Spessard Holland
GA Aye [D] Herman Talmadge
GA Aye [D] Richard Russell
LA Aye [D] Allen Ellender
LA Aye [D] Russell Long
MA Aye [D] John Kennedy
MS Aye [D] James Eastland
MS Aye [D] John Stennis
MT Aye [D] James Murray
MT Aye [D] Michael Mansfield
NC Aye [D] Samuel Ervin
NC Aye [D] William Scott
ND Aye [R] Milton Young
NM Aye [D] Clinton Anderson
NV Aye [D] Alan Bible
NV Aye [R] George Malone
OH Aye [D] Frank Lausche
OK Aye [D] Robert Kerr
OR Aye [D] Wayne Morse
SC Aye [D] Olin Johnston
SC Aye [D] Strom Thurmond
SD Aye [R] Karl Mundt
TN Aye [D] Albert Gore
TN Aye [D] Carey Kefauver
TX Aye [D] Lyndon Johnson
TX Aye [D] Ralph Yarborough
VA Aye [D] Absalom Robertson
VA Aye [D] Harry Byrd
WA Aye [D] Warren Magnuson
WY Aye [D] Joseph O’Mahoney

The usual suspects are all there, but look at LBJ (and for that matter JKF).

This is not an outlier. We can look at rule-22, jury trial amendment, Title III, and we will get similar results. It is here that the real history of civil rights legislation is told. This is what you do when you want to maintain Jim Crow, but want folks to think otherwise.

Don’t think otherwise, Bruce.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/85-1957/s57

That’s an interesting article, but I dare say Klinkner can’t seem to make up his mind whether Johnson’s machinations were progressive or not.

He saying this…what I gather is the consensus view of those within the Movement itself.

In 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) is preparing his run for the Presidency in 1960. In his 20 years in office, Johnson has never voted for a civil rights bill or amendment. But with the fledgling Freedom Movement beginning to stir, he knows that he cannot win the Democratic nomination if he is seen in the North as opposing civil rights for Blacks. Yet to win the nomination he also needs the support of the “solid South” — the segregationists.

With the bill now so watered down to the point of being meaningless, he convinces the Southern senators that it is better to allow a sham bill to pass without a filibuster rather than risk the outside chance that growing public support for civil rights might be strong enough to break the filibuster and pass a real bill that might actually provide some protection for Blacks. This strategy allows him to pose as a civil rights supporter in the North when he seeks the 1960 nomination, while still retaining the “solid-South” support of the segregationists.

I gather that “Selma” is making a similar accusation, only we have to move the date to 1964-65 and point out that the Movement ultimately forced LBJ’s hand onto the right side of history.

For the record, I don’t agree with this interpretation (’64-’65 that is…I agree with ’57 one) but I think its reasonable and mainstream (within the Movement).

http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis57.htm#1957cra57

#31 mattski

‘imagine, if you will, those seven votes going the other way. Jim Crow would have died in the late 1950s, avoiding much of the tumult of the 1960s. The Republicans, led by Richard Nixon, would have been the party of civil rights, not the Democrats and Lyndon Johnson.”

“Avoiding much of the tumult of the 1960’s”? Richard ‘southern strategy-civil rights’ Nixon? That’s a little hard to swallow.

If we imagine that they were both primarily cynical politicians, trying to get votes, then it could have been a tossup early on which of them would try to get the pro-black votes and which the white-southern votes. But once it developed that one of them had one, the other would hold tight to the other.

If we assume that Johnson was an amoral gambler who did whatever he thought would get him the Presidency, it isn’t a big stretch to assume the same of Nixon.

It is predictable, but still amusing, to see a bunch of people whose contributions to civil rights perhaps amount to blog comments, condescending to that Texas redneck Lyndon Johnson.

I’m so sorry none of you were in his shoes in 1957, or 1964, or 1965. Then something worthwhile might have been accomplished.

#33 matski

“If we assume” and “if we imagine” then certainly we could go on all day.

Or until we get bored with it.

And this is what people are doing, right? They are imagining what LBJ wanted to accomplish by looking at what he did, assuming that his constraints were not important and that his results matched up to his desires. Or else arguing that he was a good guy in his heart and it’s mean to be so cynical.

Isn’t that what the discussion amounts to? Trying to decide about the thoughts and feelings of a dead man based on the footsteps he left on the sand?

If we’re going to do it for Johnson, we might as well do Nixon too.

Mattski it isn’t worth it….

/loved the video by the way.

Good post, Bruce. The idea that a small group of pols reaching a legislative agreement could have defused cross-currents of Cold War and racist tension is a bit much. Especially given the incentives driving the process.

See, military industrial complex…

“Only why, in a movie that has Martin Luther King, Jr., Lyndon B. Johnson, and George Wallace, do they all have to be played by Brits?”

For the same reason that there are so many Brits playing Americans on television. They are prepared to work for less money.

“Then think of Brad Pitt. In anything where he has to talk”

Oh I don’t know… He was great in Inglorious Basterds

But to Ze Kraggash, no politicians have any convictions about anything. Their only aim, all the time, is to acquire and keep power. It’s like the Cliff Notes version of The Prince seasoned with a dash of dime-store Marxism and a soupcon of “realism” and then taken for a spin in a trollish race car.

Reading multi-thousand page biographies of US presidents is definitely not part of my MO but e.g. Perlstein in _Before the Storm_ is very clear that LBJ post-’63 was deeply committed to civil rights and more than willing to pay a heavy political price for it.

LFC’s smack down of the shameless Irritationist Ze warms my heart.

“deeply committed to civil rights and more than willing to pay a heavy political price for it.”

It delivered the South to the Republicans. Over 50 years, that’s a lot of electoral votes, senators, congressmen and governors.

No worries, LFC. But do watch that film if at all possible.

“deeply committed to civil rights and more than willing to pay a heavy political price for it.”

It delivered the South to the Republicans. Over 50 years, that’s a lot of electoral votes, senators, congressmen and governors.

Well, he feared it (the 1964 Civil Rights Act) would. But that could be used to support the view of the SNCC at the time, as opposed to Rick Perlstein’s opinion.

Their view: LBJ was going to screw them over (again) in order to keep the South in Democratic control:

In order to win legislation at the national level, SCLC has to influence and maintain ties with the Johnson administration and the northern-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But LBJ and those same liberals betrayed the MFDP at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City and SNCC wants nothing more to do with them. Instead, they have turned toward building independent Black-led political organizations outside the Democratic Party which puts them in direct conflict with some national party leaders who still hope to retain southern Electoral College votes that are essential to keeping a Democrat in the White House.

http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.htm

The Veterns of the Civil Rights Movement argue that LBJ’s treatment of Fannie Lou Hamer (he sided with the Dixiecrats) during the 1964 convention was a sign that (prior to the ’65vra) he was still double-dealing. “Liberals” is a clear reference to Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.

You’re entitled to disagree with them. I only ask that you:

1. Recognize that this idea (LBJ as ambiguous on civil rights, even after 1964) is mainstream within the Movement.
2. Hollywood didn’t invent these ideas

For you, Sir.

@51: I would say, snivelingly, that the more I learn about Kennedy and Johnson the more LBJ looks like a pale shadow of the man JFK was.

Jeebus Christmas. There are things to like about Kennedy and LBJ could be a monstrous person, but certainly as far as civil rights were concerned he provided far more effective leadership than Kennedy, combined with some actual passion for the cause (in which Kennedy was utterly lacking; he had intellectual sympathy and contempt for the racists, but it often seemed as if his primary concern about Jim Crow was how bad it made the U.S. look abroad). After the death of JFK, Richard Russell remarked of the new situation with regard to civil rights legislation, “We could beat Kennedy. We can’t beat Lyndon.”

Anderson,

It is predictable, but still amusing, to see a bunch of people whose contributions to civil rights perhaps amount to blog comments, condescending to that Texas redneck Lyndon Johnson.

I’m so sorry none of you were in his shoes in 1957, or 1964, or 1965. Then something worthwhile might have been accomplished.

Well said.