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About This Blog
Michael Merschel: Michael Merschel edits books coverage for The Dallas Morning News. November 2010
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From a literary standpoint — which is what we’re all about here on the blog — Taylor Branch offered several lessons in his Dallas appearance Monday night. (Chris Vognar’s excellent critical take can be read in Tuesday’s GuideLive.) Mr. Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the “America in the King Years” trilogy, was keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration put on by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He identified that history is about the stories we remember about ourselves. “My books are storytelling history,” he said, “For one specific reason: I believe we learn from storytelling.” And nowhere is this more important than in America, he said, for “Freedom is America’s sole story.” Unfortunately, he said, the story of Dr. King and the civil rights era, and particularly of nonviolence, has been watered down, co-opted or lumped in with the pot-smoking madness of the Vietnam era and a period when “things went off the rails.” What little is recalled in the mass culture is mere melodrama, and the principle of nonviolence has been discarded as passé, or dismissed insultingly as “political correctness.” He sought to tell the story anew. He told the story of a movement that not only freed the South from racial terrorism and empowered blacks to vote, but taught the world the lessons that can be credited with ending the exclusion of women from colleges and the workplace; turning the South from an economic backwater into a powerhouse (“You never heard of the Sun Belt when the South was segregated”); and inspiring the Velvet Revolution that led to American victory in the Cold War. The movement cracked a racist system of immigration quotas that allowed America to absorb millions of nonwhite immigrants from around the world. And by breaking a single-party stranglehold on Southern voters, the movement even liberated the likes of Trent Lott, who could never have risen to national power in a segregated political system. In short, Mr. Branch’s story was not of a quaint, archaic idea that can be reduced to black-and-white footage of the “I Have a Dream” speech, but of something that was wildly successful and directly influential on every American alive today. Mr. Branch also wants the story told that “The civil rights movement is about our future, not our past, because it is freedom that is at the heart of America.” He clearly believes in democracy, and he believes in the power of words to shape that democracy. He noted that in the civil rights era, the watchword of the culture was “movement,” something personal, engaging and forward-looking. Today, the watchword is “spin,” something that implies lack of any forward motion al all. “Politics has gone from a spiritual thing to a consumer politics with no inherent value but for our entertainment.” But Mr. Branch, who spent 25 years on his trilogy, came across as nothing if not determined that America can, and will, do better. And if you are looking for a happy ending to his tale, perhaps it was best seen in the fact that roughly 350 people — all races, all ages — turned out to hear him and applauded wildly at the end. He noted that 40 years ago, a crowd of that nature meeting in Dallas might have been putting their lives at risk. Instead, they were just able to enjoy a thought-provoking talk led by a vital, if not masterful, storyteller. |
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