Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 17

April 4, 2025: Foolish Texts: Fool

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

First, repeatingyesterday’s a bit of inside baseball: I haven’t yet had a chance to check out eitherof the texts on which my last two posts in this series will focus. I don’t wantto pretend to have specific things to say about them, but I did want to both highlightthem and use them as a lens for broader AmericanStudies questions. So in honorof ChristopherMoore’s 2009 novel reframing King Lear from the Fool’s perspective,here are AmericanStudies takeaways from a trio of similar such Shakespeareanadaptations:

1)     Rosencrantzand Guildenstern Are Dead (1966): Tom Stoppard’s play is quite simply oneof the most unique and compelling cultural works I’ve ever encountered, and I’dsay the 1990 film adaptationcaptures its essence (if you’re able to check that out more easily than theplay). There are a lot of reasons why, from the philosophical debates to the wittywordplay to the ultimate pathos, but I’d say a significant element in the play’ssuccess is integral to this broader genre of cultural text: it reminds us thatmany of our greatest literary works (especially from earlier centuries,although the trend undoubtedly continues) focus too fully on elite charactersand worlds, and that it’s worth stopping to consider how different the story andour takeaways from it alike might look from the perspective of others (to foreshadownext week’s series, Myrtle Wilson, anyone?).

2)     Shakespearein Love (1998): Look, I know there are people who think this film (co-writtenby Tom Stoppard!) is one of the most overrated ever, not least because it beat outSpielberg’s Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Oscar. Maybe all I needto say here is that I 1000% support that Oscar win, and think this is one of themost clever, funny, and ultimately moving films I’ve ever seen. But even if youdon’t agree with all of that, I think it’s undeniable that Shakespeareoffers a unique and thoughtful perspective on both the creative process and howit intersects with broader historical events. Given how much we tend to thinkof plays like Romeo and Juliet as timeless or universal, I very muchappreciate this film’s reminder that it was created in one time and place, by aplaywright and a group of collaborators fully and importantly immersed in thatworld.

3)     Opheliamachine (2013): I’veonly had the chance to read that Google Books excerpt of Magda Romanska’spostmodern drama (which as you can see only features peripheral materials forand about the play), and so will mostly direct you to check out that excerpt aswell as the Wikipediaentry on what sounds like a fascinating attempt to adapt Shakespeare’scharacters in a 21st century world. While there are lots of reasonsto create such adaptations, as just these few examples of the genre clearlyreflect, I’d say their most important effect is precisely Romanska’s goal: tohelp us think further about both the original work and our own moment, on theirown terms but also and especially in conversation with each other. I love thisgenre for both those reasons, and look forward to reading Fool soon toadd another example!

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: what do you think? Foolish texts you’d share?

April 3, 2025: Foolish Texts: This Fool

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

First, abit of inside baseball: I haven’t yet had a chance to check out either of thetexts on which my last two posts in this series will focus. I don’t want to pretendto have specific things to say about them, but I did want to both highlight themand use them as a lens for broader AmericanStudies questions. So in honor of theacclaimed recent sitcomabout cholo young men and their families and communities in LA, some thoughtson three other Latino cultural works that each redefined their respectivegenres (as that sitcom seems to have):

1)     Ruizde Burton’s novels: Between that post for the American Writers Museum blogand posts here like thisone, I’ve said a good bit about María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, one of myfavorite 19th century American authors and a truly unique voice andperspective on our history, community, identity, and more. Here I’ll just addone thing: I wrotein this post about my friend Larry Rosenwald’s excellent book MultilingualAmerica: Language and the Making of American Literature (2008), and whileRuiz de Burton published her novels in English, I’d still say she exemplifies amultilingual literary legacy that can help us radically reframe what Americanliterature itself includes and means.

2)     TheSalt of the Earth (1954): When it comes to this groundbreaking filmabout Latino and labor history, I can’t say it any better than did the great filmhistorian Vaughn Joy in that first hyperlinked post for her Review Roulettenewsletter. In many ways Salt is in conversation with other films aboutlabor history, including one of my personal favorites from my favoritefilmmaker, JohnSayles’ Matewan (1987). But in the mid-1950s, with the horrific OperationWetback in frustratingly full swing, a film about Latino workers representsa truly radical cultural work—and one that likewise embodies an alternative visionof what the era’s “socialproblem films” could be and do.

3)     In the Heights (2005): Aspart of a 2016 series on Puerto Rican stories and histories, I wroteabout West Side Story (1957), which as I noted there started with verydistinct cultural backgrounds for its protagonists before evolving to feature aPuerto Rican heroine (and her even more overtly Puerto Rican friends andcommunity). Given that multilayered evolution, I’d say that the title of “firstLatino Broadway musical” was still up for grabs, and that In the Heightsmight well qualify. But such distinctions are ultimately less important thanwhat cultural works themselves feature and do, and there’s no doubt that thevoices and beats, the identities and communities, put on stage by Lin-ManuelMiranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes added something significant to the genreof the Broadway musical, as each of these texts has in its respective genres.

Lastfoolish text tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Foolish texts you’d share?

April 2, 2025: Foolish Texts: Nobody’s Fool

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

Twoimportant American Studies lessons from one of our quirkier, funnier, and moreaffecting late 20th century films.

Nobody’s Fool (1994),the Paul Newman starring vehicle based on the 1993Richard Russo novel of the same name (which I will admit, in a verynon-literature professor moment, to not having read), is a very funny movie. It’sfunny in itsscript, which includes plenty of laugh-out-loud funny insults, retorts, andquips; Newman’s Sully gets the lion’s share, but perhaps the single funniestline is given to a judge who critiques a trigger-happy local policemen bynoting, “You know my feelings on arming morons: you arm one, you’ve got to armthem all, otherwise it wouldn’t be good sport.” And it’s just as funny in itsworld, its creation of a cast of quirky and memorable characters (who, notcoincidentally, are played by some of our most talented character actors,including JessicaTandy in her final role). That those same characters are ultimately thesource of a number of hugely moving moments is a testament to the film’s (andprobably book’s) true greatness.

Unlike many ofthe other late 20th and early 21st century films I’vediscussed in this space—LoneStar and City of Hope,Gangsof New York, Jungle Fever and Mississippi Masala, and many more—Nobody’s Fool is not explicitly engaged with significant AmericanStudies issues. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t American Studieslessons to be learned from its subtle and wise perspectives on identity andcommunity. For one thing, Sully’s most central culminating perspective (SPOILERalert, here and in the next paragraph!) is a powerful and important vision ofour interconnectedness to the many communities of which we’re a meaningfulpart: “I just found out I’m somebody’s grandfather. And somebody’s father. Andmaybe I’m somebody’s friend in the bargain,” Sully notes, rejecting a temptingbut escapist future in favor of staying where he is; while he has ostensiblyknown about all these relationships for years, what he has realized through thefilm’s events is both how significant these roles are for his own identity andlife, and how much his presence or absence in relation to them will in turninfluence the people and communities around him.

If Sully haslearned that specific, significant lesson by the film’s end, he has also, moresimply yet perhaps even more crucially, done something else: recognized thepossibility for change. Sully’s not a young man by the time we meet him, andit’s fair to say that he’s very set in his ways; one of his first lines of thefilm, in response to his landlady (Tandy) offering him tea, is “No. Not now,not ever,” and the exchange becomes a mantra of sorts for the film, shorthandfor Sully’s routines (with every person in his life) and the fixity of hisperspective and voice. So it’s particularly salient that the film ends with anextended and different version of this exchange: “No. How many times do I haveto tell you?” Newman replies, and Tandy answers, “Other people change theirminds occasionally. I keep thinking you might.” “You do? Huh,” are Newman’sfinal words in the film, and he delivers them with surprise and, it seems tome, a recognition, paired with the earlier epiphany about interconnections,that perhaps Tandy is right, and he has future shifts ahead of him that hecan’t yet imagine. If the American future is going to be all that it might be,that’s going to depend on most—perhaps all—of us being open to change, mostespecially in our own identities and perspectives; Sully’s only begun thattrajectory, but exemplifies its possibility, at any point in our lives andarcs, for sure.

Nextfoolish text tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Foolish texts you’d share?

April 1, 2025: Foolish Texts: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On AmericanStudieslessons and limits from an English classic rock anthem.

In oneof my early posts, nearly 14 years ago, I wrote about the Australian rockband Midnight Oil (whose excellent latest album I included in this muchmore recent post), and the limits but also and especially the possibilitiesof the transnational turn in AmericanStudies. Since I’m writing about a song byanother rock group from outside of the US, England’s The Who, in today’s post, I’dask you to check out that prior one (the first hyperlink above), and then comeon back for some thoughts on that transnational band and one of their biggesthits.

Welcomeback! The Who’s “Won’tGet Fooled Again” (1971) is very much a product of its early 1970s moment,and specifically of a rising sense of pessimism and even cynicism about theprior decade’s social movements and efforts to change the world. That tone ispresent throughout the song, but most especially in the chorus: “I’ll tip myhat to the new Constitution/Take a bow for the new revolution/Smile and grin atthe change all around/Pick up my guitar and play/Just like yesterday/Then I’llget on my knees and pray/We don’t get fooled again.” A lot has been writtenabout how Watergatecontributed to an erosion of trust and shift away from 1960s idealism in theearly to mid-1970s, but this song (featured on the album Who’s Next)came out nearly two years before that scandal began to break, and despite itsEnglish origins I have to think it can be contextualized in similar perspectivesin the US as well. The transition between decades is never a singular norlinear one, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments of demarcation, andI’d say this Who song can help us identify one between the 60s and 70s.

At thesame time, it’s fair to say that a bunch of English white men aren’t going tobe the best judges of what did and didn’t take place for disadvantaged Americancommunities, and I think this Who song also features some less apt momentsalong those lines. For example, there’s the second verse: “A change, it had tocome/We knew it all along/We were liberated from the fold, that’s all/And theworld looks just the same/And history ain’t changed/’Cause the banners, they wereall flown in the last war.” Maybe that last line is an anti-Vietnam Warsentiment, in which case fair enough on that score, but when it comes toAmerican domestic history I think it’s impossible to argue that the worldlooked just the same after 1960s changes like (for example) the Civil RightsMovement, the women’s movement, the Great Society programs, and more. I’m not ahistorian of England, and maybe less had really changed across the pond duringthis turbulent decade; but here in the US, I think it’d be foolish to suggestthat “history ain’t changed” over that time.

Nextfoolish text tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Foolish texts you’d share?

March 31, 2025: Foolish Texts: A Fool’s Errand

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On twoinspiring layers to one of our most unique novels.

In this earlypost, I wrote about the life and career of Albion Tourgée, one of myfavorite Americans for a wide variety of reasons (including but not limited tothose I detailed in that post). I had a good bit to say there about his firstnovel A Fool’sErrand, by One of the Fools (1879), so I’d ask you to check outthat post if you would and then come on back for some further thoughts.

Welcomeback! As I discussed in that post, the title of Tourgée’s novel is notmisleading, as it takes a consistently ironic and self-deprecating perspectiveon its autobiographical protagonist’s efforts to contribute positively toReconstruction’s efforts. To be very clear, that doesn’t mean Tourgée iscritical of Reconstruction’s goals when it comes to African Americans andequality (he dedicated his life to those goals, as I hope that prior postillustrated at length), but rather that he recognizes that his own youthful, loftyambitions and sense of self-importance were severely punctured by hisexperiences during Reconstruction and his recognition of the limitations ofboth any individual’s reach and (more complicatedly to be sure) societal change.I remain less cynical and more optimistic than the tone of Fool’s Errand(yes, even in early 2025), but I nonetheless think being able to reflectthoughtfully and critically on our own ambitions and arc is an important andinspiring skill to model.

In boththat prior post and the paragraph above I focused on the real-life elements of Tourgée’sbook—the autobiographical echoes and the political and cultural contexts ofReconstruction. But while those are undoubtedly present and perhaps even paramountin the book, it’s important to add that it is a novel, a work of fiction, aswas Tourgée’s follow-up second book about the Black experience ofReconstruction, BricksWithout Straw (1880). Which is to say, having spent years serving as alawyer, politician, and journalist (careers he would continue fully andsuccessfully for the rest of his life), at the age of 40 Tourgée turned hishand to creative writing and published not one but two novels in a two-yearspan. And they’re good, with really interesting creative choices (such as the distancedthird-person narration of Fool’s) that engage his readers and get themthinking about those aforementioned personal and political contexts. As someonewho’s own career and writing have evolved a good bit over the decades, and whohopes that trend continues for the rest of my life, I find this aspect of Tourgée’snot-at-all foolish books particularly inspiring as well.

Nextfoolish text tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Foolish texts you’d share?

March 29-30, 2025: March 2025 Recap

 [A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

March3: Hockey Histories: Origin Points: On the 150th anniversary ofthe first organized hockey game, a series on the sport’s histories kicks offwith three telling layers to that first game.

March4: Hockey Histories: Fighting: The series continues with the way not toargue for the sport’s violent tradition, and a possible way to do so.

March5: Hockey Histories: The Miracle on Ice: The symbolic role of sports insociety, and the line between history and story, as the series skates on.

March6: Hockey Histories: Black Players: Three groundbreaking players whotogether reflect the sport’s gradual evolution towards its more diverse 21stcentury community.

March7: Hockey Histories: Team Trans: The series concludes with two complicatedand equally important ways to contextualize a groundbreaking hockey team.

March8-9: Significant Sports Studiers: Following up my own SportsStudying, aspecial weekend post highlighting Bluesky Starter Packs of other SportsStudiers.

March10: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Spring Break: A Spring Break series oncinematic representations of the college tradition starts with more and lessdestructive pop culture stereotypes in a 1983 non-classic.

March11: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Spring Breakers: The series continues withthe fine line between challenging and exploiting the objectification of femalecelebrities.

March12: Spring Breaking at the Movies: From Justin to Kelly: What wasn’t newabout a historic beach bomb, and what was, as the series parties on.

March13: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise:American anti-intellectualism and the worse and better ways to challenge it.

March14: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Baywatch: The series concludes with arepeat of one of my favorite posts, on why the beautiful beach bodies are alsoa body of evidence.

March15-16: Reflections of a College Dad: As I near the end of my first year asa college dad (and the start of my first year with two young men in college…lesigh), three of the countless moments when I’ve been pleasantly reminded of mychanged circumstances.

March17: ScopesStudying: The Butler Act: For the 100th anniversary ofthe anti-evolution Tennessee law, a series on it and its famous legal aftermathkicks off with three historical ironies.

March18: ScopesStudying: John Scopes: The series continues with threeinteresting facts about the science teacher who became the center of one of ourmost famous trials.

March19: ScopesStudying: Bryan and Darrow: Two ways to contextualize the trial’smost famous debate, as the series evolves on.

March20: ScopesStudying: Three Plays: How three stage adaptations of the trialreflect the fraught relationship between art and history.

March21: ScopesStudying: “Part Man, Part Monkey”: The series concludes withthree layers to one of Springsteen’s funniest and most under-rated tracks (justask my wife!).

March22-23: 21st Century Attacks on Educators: A special weekend poston what’s new about our horrifying spate of anti-education attacks, and what’s frustratinglynot.

March24: Patriotic Speeches: Patrick Henry: A series for the 250thanniversary of the “Give me liberty” speech kicks off with excerpts from bookon the contested history of American patriotism.

March25: Patriotic Speeches: Frederick Douglass: The series continues with thestunning critical patriotic speech that’s just as important 170 years later.

March26: Patriotic Speeches: August Spies: The inspiring patriotic speech that concludeda farcical show trial, as the series orates on.

March27: Patriotic Speeches: Margaret Chase Smith: Why we shouldn’t misrepresenta famous 1950 speech as apolitical, and why it’s well worth celebrating nevertheless.

March28: Patriotic Speeches: Alexander Vindman: The series concludes withanother excerpt from my book, this one on a crucial 21st centurymoment of critical patriotism.

AprilFools series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

March 28, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Alexander Vindman

[250 yearsago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his “Give me liberty orgive me death!” speech to theVirginia Assembly. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four otherpatriotic speeches!]

Since Ibegan this week’s series with an excerpt from OfThee I Sing, I wanted to end it with another, the opening paragraphs ofthe book’s Introduction:

“On November19th, 2019, Army Lt. Colonel and National Security Council (NSC) officialAlexander Vindman testified before the House of Representatives’ impeachmentinquiry into President Donald Trump. Vindman, who had first-hand knowledge ofthe telephone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, offered testimonythat was highly damaging to the president, and so Trump’s defenders and allieswent on the attack against Vindman. They did so in large part by using hisstory as a Ukrainian American immigrant to directly impugn his patriotism andimplicitly accuse him of treason: after Fox News host Laura Ingrahamhighlighted Vindman’s background in relationship to his work as a Ukraineexpert for the NSC, law professor and former Bush administration official JohnYoo replied, “I find that astounding, and some people might call thatespionage”; and the next morning CNN contributor and former RepublicanCongressman Sean Duffy went further, claiming, “I don’t know that he’sconcerned about American policy, but his main mission was to make sure that theUkraine got those weapons . . . He’s entitled to his opinion. He has anaffinity for the Ukraine, he speaks Ukrainian, and he came from the country.”Unstated but clearly present in these responses is the idea that Vindman’scriticism of the president had marked him as unpatriotic and even un-American,opening up these broader questions about his affinities and allegiances.

Just over acentury earlier, however, former president Teddy Roosevelt began his 1918Metropolitan magazine article “Lincoln and Free Speech” with these lines:“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by thePresident or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which hehimself stands by the country . . . In either event it is unpatriotic not totell the truth—whether about the President or anyone else.” And in the preparedstatement with which he began his testimony, Alexander Vindman expresses hisown vision of patriotism clearly. “I have dedicated my entire professional lifeto the United States of America,” he begins. “As a young man I decided that Iwanted to spend my life serving the nation that gave my family refuge fromauthoritarian oppression, and for the last twenty years it has been an honor torepresent and protect this great country.” He contextualizes his ability tooffer such honest public testimony as part of “the privilege of being anAmerican citizen and public servant.” And he ends with his father, whose“courageous decision” to leave the U.S.S.R. and move his family to the UnitedStates had, Vindman argues, “inspired a deep sense of gratitude in my brothersand myself and instilled in us a sense of duty and service.” Addressing hisfather directly with his closing words, Vindman makes a moving and compellingcase for Roosevelt’s point about the essential patriotism of telling the truth:“Dad, my sitting here today . . . is proof that you made the right decisionforty years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States ofAmerica in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be finefor telling the truth.””

As I go onto trace there, and as has only become more evident in the years since, Vindmanwas not entirely fine, as he paid both a professionaland a personal price for his truth-telling critical patriotism. Here inMarch 2025, a couple months into the second and even more radical and unhinged administrationof the President whose allies and supporters levied those attacks on Vindman,it’s fair to say that critical patriotism has become one of the most fraught perspectivesone can take on the U.S. government. But, as I hope every figure and speech inthis week’s series has illustrated, critical patriotism has always been fraughtand fragile, always put those who express and fight for it in danger, andalways been an absolutely essential element of our nation’s ideals andidentity. May we learn from and live up to the legacies of these figures, and ofall our critical patriots, past and present.

MarchRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Speeches you’d highlight?

March 27, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Margaret Chase Smith

[250 yearsago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his “Give me liberty orgive me death!” speech to theVirginia Assembly. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four otherpatriotic speeches!]

On why weshouldn’t misrepresent a 1950 Senate speech, and why it’s well worthcelebrating nonetheless.

Throughouther long and impressive life and political career, Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995) wastwo things in roughly equal measure: a groundbreaking woman in American politics,including the first woman to and the first to have her name placed innomination for the presidency at a majorparty’s political convention; and a prominent figure and voice in theRepublican Party, both in her home state of Maineand on the national landscape. There’s of course nothing wrong with her beingassociated with both of those histories, and indeed I would say the opposite—toomuch of the time we view our most pioneering figures as somehow outside of ourpolitics, and reversing that trend would help us understand how everythingin our history is political, even if (or rather especially because) it alsohas the potential to transcend politics.

The singlemost famous moment in Smith’s political career, her June 1, 1950 “Declarationof Conscience” speech to the Senate, perfectly embodies both of thoselayers. It most definitely represented a Republican Senator’s perspective onboth the Democratic Truman administration and the upcoming presidentialelection, as illustrated by lines like: “The Democratic administration hasgreatly lost the confidence of the American people by its complacency to thethreat of communism here at home and the leak of vital secrets to Russiathrough key officials of the Democratic administration….Surely these aresufficient reasons to make it clear to the American people that it is time fora change and that a Republican victory is necessary to the security of the country.”Smith, a moderate Republican throughout her career, had previously been an allyof President Truman on various issues, and so these political and electoralstatements were significant ones and can’t be overlooked when we remember Smith’sspeech.

Yet Smith’sspeech also and crucially transcendedsuch partisan political concerns, offering one of the earliest public critiques of Senator Joe McCarthyand in the process making a critical patriotic case for a very different visionof the Senate, the US government, and American ideals. It did so throughperhaps her most famous lines, “As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascistjust as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist….They are equally dangerous toyou and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nationrecapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy insteadof our ourselves.” But it also did so through her argument for “some of thebasic principles of Americanism,” including “The right to criticize,” “Theright to hold unpopular beliefs,” and “The right to protest.” Throughout OfThee I Sing I make the case for both criticism overall and protestspecifically as core characteristics of critical patriotism, and I’m not sureanyone has made that case more potently in a political setting than didMargaret Chase Smith on the Senate floor.

Last SpeechStudyingtomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Speeches you’d highlight?

March 26, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: August Spies

[250 yearsago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his “Give me liberty orgive me death!” speech to theVirginia Assembly. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four otherpatriotic speeches!]

On the inspiringpatriotic speech that concluded a farcical show trial.

From the outset,the arrest and trial ofthe Haymarket “bombers” was an overt case of presumed guilt, and not just(not really at all) for the Haymarket Square bombing. The media used thebombing to whip up xenophobic fears and violent exclusionary fantasies, asillustrated by a ChicagoTimes editorial that argued, “Let us whip these slavic wolves back tothe European dens from which they issue, or in some way exterminate them.” Thepolice followed suit, raiding the offices of the pro-labornewspaper Arbeiter-Zeitungwithout a warrant and arresting its editors, and then doing the same with theresidences of numerous known socialist and anarchist activists. While the eightmen eventually charged with the bombing were indeed swept up during thesewidespread raids (including those two newspaper editors, August Spiesand MichaelSchwab), there is ample evidence to suggest that the raids were designedand executed to intimidate and destroy entire communities, and that pickingscapegoats for the bombing from among those targets was simply a convenientside effect.

The trial itselfwas no more fair or legally sound. The eight defendants were charged not withthe bombing itself, but with the broader and vaguer charge of conspiracy, whichcame to mean simply producing anarchist journalism and propaganda that mighthave inspired a bomb-thrower: as state’sattorney Julius Grinnell instructed the jury, “The question for you todetermine is, having ascertained that a murder was committed, not only who didit, but who is responsible for it, who abetted it, assisted it, or encouragedit?” That jury was hand-picked from the jury pool by the court’s bailiff, abreak from the normal random selection procedure; it included no immigrants orlaborers. After presenting the jury with a long series of circumstancial andtangential details and accusations that only vaguely connected any of the defendantsto the Haymarket violence, in his closing argument Grinnell made plain thetrial’s true stakes: acquitting the defendants would mean more radicals on thecity’s streets, “"like a lot of rats and vermin”; and only the jurors“stand between the living and the dead. You stand between law and violatedlaw.”

Unsurprisingly,the jury convicted the defendants, with seven sentenced to death and one (labor organizer Oscar Neebe) tofifteen years in prison. Four were executed inNovember 1887, while three others had their sentences commuted to life inprison or otherwise were still in limbo when Illinois GovernorJohn Altgeld pardoned them in 1893, his first year in office (due to hisoutrage at the farcical arrests and trial). That pardon (which costAltgeld his political career) was one inspiring moment to emerge from thishistoric injustice, but to my mind even more inspiring was AugustSpies’s concluding statement to the judge and jury. “The contemplatedmurder of eight men,” Spies argued, “whose only crime is that they have daredto speak the truth, may open the eyes of these suffering millions; may wakethem up.” Detailing the prosecutor and judge’s numerous inappropriate andlikely illegal staetments, he added, “I will say that if I had not been anAnarchist at the beginning of this trial I would be one now.” And in hisconcluding paragraphs, he brilliantly reversed the concepts of patriotism andtreason that had been used to condemn the defendants: “I can well understandwhy that man Grinnell did not urge upon the grand jury to charge us withtreason. I can well understand it. You cannot try and convict a man for treasonwho has upheld the Constitution against those who trample it under their feet.”A moment of American ideals amidst a history that did indeed trample upon them.

Next SpeechStudyingtomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Speeches you’d highlight?

March 25, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Frederick Douglass

[250 yearsago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his “Give me liberty orgive me death!” speech to theVirginia Assembly. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four otherpatriotic speeches!]

On thestunning critical patriotic speech that challenges us as much today as it did 172years ago.

I’vewritten many times, in thisspace and elsewhere, aboutthe inspiring history of Elizabeth Freeman, Quock Walker, and theirRevolutionary-era peers. Freeman and Walker, and the abolitionist activistswith whom they worked, used the language and ideas of the Declaration ofIndependence (along with the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution) in support oftheir anti-slavery petitions and legal victories, and in so doing contributedsignificantly to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. I’m hard-pressed tothink of a more inspiring application of our national ideals, or of a morecompelling example of my argument (made in this piece) thatblack history is American history. Yet at the same time, it would bedisingenuous in the extreme for me to claim that Freeman and Walker’s caseswere representative ones, either in their era or at any time in the more thantwo and a half centuries of American slavery; nor would I want to use Freemanand Walker’s successful legal victories as evidence that the Declaration’s “Allmen are created equal” sentiment did not in a slaveholding nation include(indeed, embody) a centralstrain of hypocrisy.

If I everneed reminding of that foundational American hypocrisy, I can turn to one ofour most fiery texts: FrederickDouglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass’sspeech is long and multi-layered, and I don’t want to reduce itshistorical and social visions to any one moment; but I would argue that itbuilds with particular power to this passage, one of the most trenchant inAmerican oration and writing: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, whyam I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to dowith your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedomand of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extendedto us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to thenational altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude forthe blessings resulting from your independence to us?” The subsequent secondhalf of the speech sustains that perspective and passion, impugning everyelement of a nation still entirely defined by slavery and its effects. Despitehaving begun his speech by noting his “quailing sensation,” his feeling ofappearing before the august gathering “shrinkingly,” Douglass thus buildsinstead to one of the most full-throated, confident critiques of Americanhypocrisy and failure ever articulated.

As anavowed and thoroughgoing optimist, it’s far easier for me to grapple withFreeman and Walker’s use of the Declaration and the 4th of July thanwith Douglass’s—which, of course, makes it that much more important for me toinclude Douglass in my purview, and which is why I wanted to begin this week’sseries on critical patriotism with Douglass’s speech. There’s a reason, afterall, why the most famous American enslaved person is undoubtedly Harriet Tubman—we likeour histories overtly inspiring, and if we’re going to remember slavery at all,why not do so through the lens of someone who resisted it so successfully? Yetwhile Tubman, like Freeman and Walker, is certainly worth remembering, theoverarching truth of slavery in America is captured far better by Douglass’sspeech and its forceful attention to our national hypocrisies and flaws. Anddespite the ridiculous recent attacks on “toonegative” histories or the concept of “apologizingfor America,” there’s no way we can understand our nation or move forwardcollectively without a fuller engagement with precisely the criticallypatriotic lens provided by Douglass and his stunning speech.

Next SpeechStudyingtomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Speeches you’d highlight?