Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 171

April 25-May 1, 2020: Update on Of Thee I Sing!

[In honor of Patriots’ Day, and inspired by my book-in-progress for the American Ways series on the history of American patriotisms, a series on that topic and examples of critical patriotism from across American history. Leading up to this special post on that next book project of mine!]It's done (a draft of the manuscript, that is)!What, you want to hear more? Okay, here are three more things about my next book, which I’m hoping will be out before 2020 is done:1)      A Sequel, but Not the Same: Of Thee I Sing is in the same Rowman & Littlefield American Ways series as was my last book, We the People , and it would certainly be fair to describe it as a sequel, presenting a parallel lens through which to analyze debates over American identity (this time the spectrum between celebratory, mythologizing, active, and critical patriotisms, rather than exclusion and inclusion). But it’s of course not identical to that prior book, and one definite difference is in the structure: while We the People moved roughly chronologically, each chapter focused on a particular ethnic/cultural group; while the eight chapters of Of Thee I Sing focus directly on eight historical moments: the Revolution, the Early Republic, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the Depression/WWII, the 60s, and the 80s (with a conclusion on the age of Trump, natch). That meant I could explore a number of distinct histories and stories from each time period, which helped lead to the other two elements I’ll highlight here.2)      Hidden Gems: One benefit of that time period approach was that for each chapter I could in my research/reading dig deep into that period for histories and stories that seemed to have something to do with my focal forms of patriotism, and in the process I uncovered many that were entirely unfamiliar to me and I have to believe are likewise relatively unknown to most Americans. Here’s one compelling example: under the World War I-era Espionage and Sedition Acts, a silent film about the Revolution entitled The Spirit of ’76 (1917) was seized by the government for portraying the English (now America’s wartime allies) too harshly, and the film’s producer, a Jewish American immigrant from Germany named Robert Goldstein, was sentenced to ten years in prison; at the sentencing Judge Benjamin Bledsoe told Goldstein, “Count yourself lucky that you didn’t commit treason in a country lacking America’s right to a trial by jury. You’d already be dead.” There’s a lot more such amazing, largely untold stories in the book!3)      Rethinking the Familiar: The chapters’ time period focal points also, and I would say just as importantly, allowed me to focus on histories with which we are all generally familiar, and reexamine them through the lens of these debates over patriotism. That started with the very first chapter, on the Revolution, and with a great question asked of me by series editor John David Smith. He pushed me to think about the era’s Loyalists, which nicely lined up with my longtime interest in that community and sense of the Revolution as at its heart a civil war. To that end, I argue in my Revolution chapter for the value of seeing Loyalists as critical patriots—not quite to the United States of America, both because the nation didn’t exist yet and because they weren’t advocating for its creation; but to the American community of which they were just as much a part as the Revolutionaries. That’s one example of many such reframings in Of Thee I Sing, which I can’t wait to share with you all soon!April Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

April 24, 2020: Models of Critical Patriotism: America is in the Heart

[In honor of Patriots’ Day, and inspired by my book-in-progress for the American Ways series on the history of American patriotisms, a series on that topic and brief examples of critical patriotism from across American history. Leading up to a special post on that next book project of mine!]On an author and book that both introduce under-narrated histories and redefine American identity.
One of my bigger pet peeves with the dominant narratives of American history is the notion that multi-national and –ethnic immigration has been a relatively recent phenomenon, or at least that it has been most pronounced in the last few decades. It’s true that the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the first immigration law that opened up rather than closed down immigration for various groups and nationalities, led directly to certain significant waves, especially those from war-torn Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. And it is also true that certain ethnic groups represented particularly sizeable percentages of the immigrants in the last decades of the 20th century: Asian Americans, again, and also Hispanic and West Indian immigrants. None of those facts are insignificant, and our understanding of America in the 1970s and 80s (for example) needs to include them in a prominent place. But my issue is with the very different notion that America prior to 1965 didn’t include immigrants from these nations (an idea advanced in its most overt form, for example, by Pat Buchanan in an editorial after the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007, which he blamed on the shooter’s status as the son of South Korean immigrants).
Multicultural historian Ronald Takaki notes this belief in the introduction to his magisterial book A Different Mirror (1993),recounting a conversation when a cab-driver asks him how long he has been in the US, and he has to reply that his family has been here for over 100 years. While the most obvious and widespread problem with this belief is that it makes it much easier to define members of these groups as less American than others, I would argue that another very significant downside is that it enables us to more easily forget or ignore the stories of earlier such immigrants; that group would include Yung Wing, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Sui Sin Far, and my focus for today, the Filipino-American migrant worker, novelist, poet, and labor activist Carlos Bulosan. Bulosan came to the United States in 1930 at the age of 17 (or so, his birthdate is a bit fuzzy), and only lived another 26 years, but in that time he worked literally hundreds of different jobs up and down the West Coast, agitated on behalf of migrant and impoverished laborers and citizens during and after the Depression, published various poems and short stories (and wrote many others that remained unpublished upon his far too early death), and wrote the autobiographical, complex, deeply moving, and critically patriotic novel America is in the Heart (1946).For the most part the book—which is certainly very autobiographical but apparently includes many fictionalized characters, hence the designation of it as a novel (in the vein of something like On the Road or The Bell-Jar )—paints an incredibly bleak picture of its multiple, interconnected worlds: of migrant laborers; of the lower and working classes in the Depression; and of Filipino-American immigrants. In the first two focal points, and especially in its tone, which mixes bleak psychological realism with strident social criticism, Bulosan’s book certainly echoes (or at least parallels, since it is difficult to know if Bulosan had read the earlier work) and importantly complements The Grapes of Wrath . But despite that tone, Heart’s ultimate trajectory (like that of Steinbeck’s novel, which is why I paired them in a chapter in my fourth book) is surprisingly and powerfully hopeful. That’s true partly because of the opening chapters, which are set in Bulosan’s native Philippines and make it much more difficult to see the book’s America as an entirely bleak place; but mostly because of the evocative concluding chapter, where Bulosan develops at length his title’s argument for the continuing and defining existence of a more ideal America, in the very hearts of all those seemingly least advantaged Americans on whom his book has focused. The idea might sound clichéd, but all I can say is “Read the book”; it works, and works beautifully, as a unique and potent literary model of critical patriotism.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

April 23, 2020: Models of Critical Patriotism: Suffrage Activists at the Centennial Exposition

[In honor of Patriots’ Day, and inspired by my book-in-progress for the American Ways series on the history of American patriotisms, a series on that topic and brief examples of critical patriotism from across American history. Leading up to a special post on that next book project of mine!]On national divisions and critical patriotism at America’s 100th birthday celebration.
Birthday parties tend to bring out both the best and the worst in those being celebrated, so perhaps it should be no surprise that America’s 100th birthday party, the Centennial Exposition held over the six months between May and November of 1876 in Philadelphia’s newly designed Fairmount Park, was nothing if not profoundly divided in all sorts of complex ways. I’ve written at length (in the Intro to my first book) about the most defining such division, between the Exposition’s ostensible purpose (to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and thus reflect on America’s historical origins and identity) and its central focus and tone (a thoroughly forward-looking celebration of the nation’s material and cultural prowess and possibilities for continued upward progress). But on any number of specific issues and themes the Exposition displayed similarly multiple personalities: for example, it featured the first American statue dedicated to an African American figure (African Methodist Episcopal Church founder Richard Allen) but also included a restaurant known as the Southern Restaurant where a group of “old-time darkies” continually serenaded patrons with happy songs of the antebellum South.
Of the many such divisions and contradictions present on and around the Exposition grounds, though, I don’t know that any were as striking as those connected to women’s identities, perspectives, and issues. The Exposition was the first World’s Fair to include women’s voices in a central way, both in planning (through an all-female Women’s Centennial Executive Committee) and on the ground (through the Women’s Pavilion that was created as a result of that committee’s efforts and fundraising). The Pavilion was certainly a striking success in many respects, featuring work created and designed solely by women; yet it was equally striking for the near-complete absence of political perspectives or issues, including the most prominent such issue of the period, women’s suffrage. Since the inception of the Women’s Committee organizations such as the National Woman Suffrage Association had protested the absence of such perspectives and voices from the committee and in the planning process, not only from a representational standpoint but through the lens of a particularly salient irony: that women from around the country were asked to contribute money and support to this federal organization, but could not themselves vote in a federal (or any other kind of) election. The NWSA in fact scheduled their national meeting for Philadelphia in May, on the same day that the Exposition (including the Women’s Pavilion) opened, presenting another division within that city and moment for sure.
Yet the most overt and symbolic (yet also very real and critically patriotic) such division would be presented on July 4th. On that day, for obvious reasons, the Exposition reached its fever pitch, with numerous activities and events focused around a main stage where impressive speakers and Americans gathered to lead the festivities. The NWSA asked if they could be a part of that stage and those festivities and were refused, but in truly American (and Revolutionary) fashion they created a second stage of their own elsewhere on the grounds. From that stage they read the full text of the “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments of Women,” a text that had been initially composed for the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY, and had become as much a founding document for this organization and cause as the Declaration of Independence was for the nation of which they were a complicated but vital part. Those contrasting stages were only one of many July 4th, 1876 events that highlighted such complex national conversations and divisions—word was just reaching the East on this day of Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn; a group of parading black militiamen in Hamburg, South Carolina refused to cede the sidewalk to a white group, leading to a violent reprisal and the start of multiple days of anti-black violence in the town—but their location and proximity can drive home just how multivocal America was in this Centennial year, and in particular how much critical patriots like these suffrage activists were adding their voices to the mix.Last critical patriot tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

April 22, 2020: Models of Critical Patriotism: “Eulogy on King Philip”

[In honor of Patriots’ Day, and inspired by my book-in-progress for the American Ways series on the history of American patriotisms, a series on that topic and brief examples of critical patriotism from across American history. Leading up to a special post on that next book project of mine!]On one speech that offers two complementary models of critical patriotism.Many of the ways I’d make the case for William Apess as an exemplary American critical patriot were summed up in this post. I don’t think it’s the slightest bit hyperbolic to describe Apess as the 19th century’s Martin Luther King Jr.—a fiery preacher of supreme oratorical and rhetorical talents who dedicated his life to pursuing civil and human rights for his people and for all his fellow citizens of the world, one whose life was tragically cut short but who achieved a great deal in that time and has left a lasting legacy down into our own. If Apess’ era had had the technology to record and broadcast his speeches, or even to publish his writings in more mass-market ways, I have no doubt that we’d listen to and read his voice and words alongside those of King (and yesterday’s subject Frederick Douglass) and our other most potent orators. And however and wherever we encounter them, we consistently find in Apess’ works models of bitingly critical yet still patriotic visions of our shared American society, community, identity, and history.In that prior post I focused on Apess’ 1833 essay/sermon “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” but I would argue that his critical patriotism is best illustrated by his January 1836 speech “Eulogy on King Philip.” Delivered at Boston’s Odeon lecture and concert hall, which had opened the year before and would go on to host speeches and readings by such luminaries as William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe, Apess’ stunning speech uses his own life story and mixed-race heritage (as scholar Patricia Bizzell traces at length in this excellent piece) to argue for his alternative vision of American history, community, and identity. While much of the speech is as righteously angry about both past injustices and present oppressions as was “Looking-Glass,” the final lines, addressed overtly to his (likely entirely non-native) audience, reflect the optimistic core of Apess’ critical patriotism: “You and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for our fathers’ crimes; neither shall we do right to charge them one to another. We can only regret it, and flee from it; and from henceforth, let peace and righteousness be written upon our hearts and hands forever, is the wish of a poor Indian.”While Apess thus ranges across a number of topics and themes in the course of his speech, its central focus is indeed King Philip (Metacomet), the 17th century Wampanoag chief and distant ancestor of Apess’ mother who was and remains best known in American collective memory for the 1670s war that came to bear his name. Yet from the start of his speech, Apess presents a stunning shift in those narratives, arguing that this supposed enemy of the English should be collectively remembered instead as a revolutionary hero: “so will every patriot, especially in this enlightened age, respect the rude yet all accomplished son of the forest, that died a martyr to his cause, though unsuccessful, yet as glorious as the American Revolution.” Arguing for that vision of Philip, in the same 1830s Boston that was cementing its collective narratives of the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, was as bold a rhetorical move as Douglass’ July 4thspeech. Yet if we can see the Massachusetts Puritans and the Wampanoags as two founding American cultures (as I’ve argued multiple times in this space and elsewhere), there’s no reason why we can’t see Philip as a revolutionary, critical patriot, one whose tragic end shouldn’t overshadow his work toward a collective American community.Next critical patriot tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

April 21, 2020: Models of Critical Patriotism: “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”

[In honor of Patriots’ Day, and inspired by my book-in-progress for the American Ways series on the history of American patriotisms, a series on that topic and brief examples of critical patriotism from across American history. Leading up to a special post on that next book project of mine!]On the stunning speech that challenges us as much today as it did 165 years ago.I’ve written many times, in this space and elsewhere, about the inspiring history of Elizabeth Freeman, Quock Walker, and their Revolutionary-era peers. Freeman and Walker, and the abolitionist activists with whom they worked, used the language and ideas of the Declaration of Independence (along with the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution) in support of their anti-slavery petitions and legal victories, and in so doing contributed significantly to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. I’m hard-pressed to think of a more inspiring application of our national ideals, or of a more compelling example of my argument (made in this piece) that black history is American history. Yet at the same time, it would be disingenuous in the extreme for me to claim that Freeman and Walker’s cases were representative ones, either in their era or at any time in the more than two and a half centuries of American slavery; nor I would I want to use Freeman and Walker’s successful legal victories as evidence that the Declaration’s “All men are created equal” sentiment did not in a slaveholding nation include (indeed, embody) a central strain of hypocrisy.If I ever need reminding of that foundational American hypocrisy, I can turn to one of our most fiery texts: Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass’s speech is long and multi-layered, and I don’t want to reduce its historical and social visions to any one moment; but I would argue that it builds with particular power to this passage, one of the most trenchant in American oration and writing: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?” The subsequent second half of the speech sustains that perspective and passion, impugning every element of a nation still entirely defined by slavery and its effects. Despite having begun his speech by noting his “quailing sensation,” his feeling of appearing before the august gathering “shrinkingly,” Douglass thus builds instead to one of the most full-throated, confident critiques of American hypocrisy and failure ever articulated.As an avowed and thoroughgoing optimist, it’s far easier for me to grapple with Freeman and Walker’s use of the Declaration and the 4th of July than with Douglass’s—which, of course, makes it that much more important for me to include Douglass in my purview, and which is why I wanted to begin this week’s series on critical patriotism with Douglass’s speech. There’s a reason, after all, why the most famous American slave is undoubtedly Harriet Tubman—we like our 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? Yet while Tubman, like Freeman and Walker, is certainly worth remembering, the overarching truth of slavery in America is captured far better by Douglass’s speech and its forceful attention to our national hypocrisies and flaws. And despite the ridiculous recent attacks on “too negative” histories or the concept of “apologizing for America,” there’s no way we can understand our nation or move forward collectively without a fuller engagement with precisely the critically patriotic lens provided by Douglass and his stunning speech.Next critical patriot tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

April 20, 2020: Patriots’ Day and Critical Patriotism

[In honor of Patriots’ Day, and inspired by my book-in-progress for the American Ways series on the history of American patriotisms, a series on that topic and examples of critical patriotism from across American history. Leading up to a special post on that next book project of mine!]
On the only time and way we can be genuinely patriotic.
One of my favorite literary exchanges of all time, and the one with which I began the Introduction to my fourth book, occurs in the opening chapter of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones(1996; the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series that was adapted into the uber-popular HBO show). Seven year-old Brandon “Bran” Stark is riding home with his father and brothers from his first experience witnessing one of his father’s most difficult duties as a lord, the execution of a criminal; his father insists that if he is to sentence men to die, he should be the one to execute them, and likewise insists that his sons learn of and witness this once they are old enough. Two of Bran’s brothers have been debating whether the man died bravely or as a coward, and when Bran asks his father which was true, his father turns the question around to him. “Can a man be brave when he is afraid?” Bran asks. “That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father replies.
On the surface the line might seem obvious, an appeal to some of our very trite narratives about courage in the face of danger and the like (narratives that operate in explicit contrast to the ideas of cowardice with which I engaged in this post). But to my mind the moment, like all of Martin’s amazingly dense and complex series, works instead to undermine our easy narratives and force us to confront more difficult and genuine truths. That is, I believe we tend to define bravery, courage, heroism as the absence of fear, as those individuals who in the face of danger do not feel the same limiting emotions that others do and so can rise to the occasion more fully. But Martin’s truth is quite the opposite—that bravery is instead something that is found through and then beyond fear, that it is only by admitting the darker and more potentially limiting realities that we can then strive for the brightest and most ideal possibilities. I find that insight so potent not only because of its potential to revise oversimplifying narratives and force us to confront a complex duality instead, but also because it posits a version of heroism that any individual can achieve—if everyone feels fear in the face of danger, then everyone has the potential to be brave as well.
I’m thinking today about this exchange in Martin’s book for two reasons: the Massachusetts (and Maine)-specific holiday: Patriots’ Day; and the work I’ve been doing all spring on my next book, Of Thee I Sing: Competing Visions of American Patriotism (on which more in the special weekend post). As with our narratives of courage and heroism, I believe that far too many of our ideals of patriotism focus on what I would call the easy, celebratory kind: the patriotism that salutes a flag, that sings an anthem, that pledges allegiance, that says things like “God bless America” and “greatest country in the world” by rote. Whatever the communal value of such patriotism, it asks virtually nothing of individuals, and does even less to push a nation to be the best version of itself (if anything, it argues that the nation is already that best version). So in parallel to Martin’s line, I would argue for the harder and more genuine, critical form of patriotism, the kind that faces the darkest realities and strives for the brightest hope through that recognition, the kind that, when asked “Can an American be a patriot if he/she is critical of his/her country?,” replies, “That is the only time an American can be a patriot.”First critical patriot tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

April 18-19, 2020: 21st Century Arab American Writers

[April isn’t just National Poetry Month; it’s also National Arab American Heritage Month. So this week I’ve highlighted a handful of the many compelling Arab American stories & figures I feature in the final chapter of my book We the People, leading up to this weekend post on contemporary Arab American writers!]First, I didn’t get to share this week perhaps my favorite Arab American story, and one of the best pieces of long-form journalism I’ve ever read: Kathryn Schulz’s May 2016 New Yorker article “Citizen Khan,” on the early 20th century Afghan American immigrant (Zarif Khan) known to his Sheridan, Wyoming community as “Hot Tamale Louie.”Second, a couple recent scholarly books that trace 21st century Arab and Muslim American communities (among others) with especial power: Zareena Grewal’s Islam is a Foreign Country (2013) and Deepa Iyer’s We Too Sing America (2015).

Third, Yahia Lababidi's wonderful new collection Revolutions in the Heart (2020) offer a powerful and vital antidote to our moment's divisions and hatreds. Finally, here’s just a handful of the many talented and inspiring Arab American writers who are adding their voices to our culture and community in this crucial moment:Naomi Shihab NyeSusan Muaddi DarrajYussef El GuindiKhaled MattawaAnd a special shout-out to Porochista Khakpour(I know Iranian/Persian is a distinct culture from Arabic, but she’s one of my favorite current writers and voicesand I had to include her!)Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other Arab American writers (or figures or stories) you’d highlight?

April 17, 2020: Arab American Stories: Abdallah Ingram

[April isn’t just National Poetry Month; it’s also National Arab American Heritage Month. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of the many compelling Arab American stories & figures I feature in the final chapter of my book We the People, leading up to a weekend post on contemporary Arab American writers!]On the inspiring individual who exemplifies the contributions of Arab American communities to our nation and the world.While the figures on whom I’ve focused so far in this series are certainly part of the broad arc of Arab American history, it’s also fair to say that their circumstances made them somewhat isolated (especially the system of slavery, which by design separate families, communities, and cultures). But in my book chapter I also trace the development of a number of late 19th and early 20thcentury Arab American communities that represented an important next stage in those histories and stories. There were for example the turn of the century immigrants from the region of the Ottoman Empire known at that time as Syria (now part of modern-day Lebanon) who settled in Ross, North Dakota in 1902 and in 1929 built there a mosque that is known as the oldest such dedicated structure for Muslim worship in American history. And around that same time, another group of immigrants from the same region settled in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in 1934 constructed what is considered the oldest mosque still in operation today: the Mother Mosque of America (also known as The Rose of Fraternity Lodge and the Moslem Temple). That Iowa community also built the first Muslim National Cemetery, among other ways that they worked to represent Muslim and Arab American communities more broadly.One particular individual from that Cedar Rapids community truly exemplifies those communal and national efforts. Abdallah (sometimes Abdullah) Ingram was a World War II veteran who in 1952 incorporated an organization known first as the International Muslim Society (IMS; the name would be changed to the Federation of Islamic Associations in the United States and Canada in 1954) which began to hold annual meetings to convene Arab and Muslim American (and eventually Canadian) communities. But during those years Ingram was also pursuing a more personal and striking goal: convincing President Dwight D. Eisenhower to formally recognize Islam as an official religion within the U.S. military. After more than a year of petitioning the president to that end, Ingram succeeded; Eisenhower’s 1953 recognition of Islam meant that (among many other effects) Muslim American soldiers or veterans who died could have religious funeral services (previously they had been forced to be buried as “atheists”). As Ingram wrote in one of his letters to the president, “I am fighting for my right, and the right of my people, to be recognized as a religious faith.”The Muslim and Arab American communities are not identical, of course; there are Muslims from many different cultures and nations, and not all Arab Americans are Muslim. But Ingram’s quest for recognition can and should be connected not just to that religious community and identity, but to the broader goal of this week’s series (and of this chapter in my book): to recognize and remember as well these Arab American individuals and communities that have been a foundational, central, and ongoing part of American identity at every stage and in every way. Too often, even those who would celebrate the Arab and/or Muslim American communities see them as relatively recent additions to our national landscape (often, the narrative goes, made possible by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and its effects). As with many other American communities, certainly the number of immigrants from Arab and Muslim cultures and nations has increased since 1965 (as has the number of distinct nations included in that mix), but the crucial truth of that trend is that it represents an amplification of (rather than a change in) our foundational diversity. Better remembering the long history of Arab American figures, stories, and communities helps us recognize that crucial truth, while also celebrating these influential and inspiring lives and legacies.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Arab American figures or stories you’d highlight?

April 16, 2020: Arab American Stories: Muhammed Ali “Nicholas” Said

[April isn’t just National Poetry Month; it’s also National Arab American Heritage Month. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of the many compelling Arab American stories & figures I feature in the final chapter of my book We the People, leading up to a weekend post on contemporary Arab American writers!]On how a striking life and book help us engage with a few key historical questions.As every entry in this series has illustrated, for any 19th century (or earlier) historical figure to be remembered in the 21st century, they must have led a pretty interesting life. But even among this collection of interesting lives and stories, that of Muhammed Ali Said (1836-1882) is especially striking. Born into the family of a renowned general in the Central African Kanem-Bornu Empire (part of modern-day Chad and Nigeria), as a result of whose military exploits he learned Arabic and converted to Islam while still a teenager, Said was subsequently taken captive and enslaved, first to a Turkish diplomat and then to two Russian princes, Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov and Nicholas Vassilievitch Troubezkoy. While enslaved to the latter Said was baptized as a Christian and given the new name of Nicholas, and was then granted his freedom, which he used to travel to the Americas in the late 1850s. He spent time in the Caribbean, New York, and Ottawa, before settling in Detroit where he worked as a teacher in a school for free African American students. Shortly thereafter the Civil War began, and in 1863 Said volunteered for the 55thMassachusetts Infantry, one of the first African American regiments. After that wartime service he moved to Alabama, possibly with a new wife (more on such ambiguities in a moment), and went on to write and publish The Autobiography of Nicholas Said, a Native of Bournou, Eastern Soudan, Central Africa (1873). Those details and experiences would be complicated enough if they were all straightforward and agreed-upon. But that’s very much not the case, and the reason, ironically enough, is Said’s own version of them in his autobiography. To cite the most prominent confusion: in the book Said does not refer at all to his Civil War service, possibly because he was writing while living in the Deep South during Reconstruction and did not want that side to his past known by the white (and especially the ex-Confederate) members of his new community; we know today of that service from such primary sources as an 1867 Atlantic Monthly article and a surviving photograph of Said in his 55th Infantry uniform. The 1867 article also refers to Said’s marriage to an American woman, with whom he had journeyed to that new Alabama home; but that significant detail is likewise not included in the autobiography (perhaps due to similar fears of communal reprisals), and thus that side of his life remains largely ambiguous and uncertain. Besides producing such gaps or ambiguities, this element of Said’s story opens up important questions about how we read and analyze personal narratives, about their relationship to the lives and identities on which they focus, and about them as fraught (but also in many cases crucial) historical documents and primary sources. As with the story of Olaudah Equiano on which that last hyperlinked post focuses, however, both Said’s autobiography and his life open up other important historical questions regardless of the precise details of particular events. Like Equiano, Said’s life and identity were strikingly multi-layered, featuring significant shifts in culture, place, language, religion, and race among other elements; both men thus help us think about what remains continuous across such stages, but also about the fragility (or at least the breadth and variability) of categories like Muslim American, Arab American, African American, enslaved person, and so on. But despite those individual complexities and layers, I’m also struck by how much Said’s American experiences do link him to the broader community of mid-19th century African Americans. After all, each of the three communities I referenced above—the school for free children in Detroit, the 55thMassachusetts, and Alabama during Reconstruction—represents a hugely telling and important space and stage for African Americans, and one with which a newly arrived immigrant like Said could and apparently did connect. The relationships between individual American identities and broad cultural and social communities and categories are another fraught and vital question, and another one Nicholas Said helps us engage and analyze.Last Arab American story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Arab American figures or stories you’d highlight?

April 15, 2020: Arab American Stories: Omar ibn Said

[April isn’t just National Poetry Month; it’s also National Arab American Heritage Month. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of the many compelling Arab American stories & figures I feature in the final chapter of my book We the People, leading up to a weekend post on contemporary Arab American writers!]On watching an inspiring figure and text finally enter our collective memories, and the need to push further still.Omar (or Umar) ibn Said (or Sayyid; ah, the complexities of historical and cultural names!) was from the Fulani people in the 19th century West African nation of Futa Tooro (part of modern day Senegal), and was kidnapped into slaverysometime around 1807 (when he was in his 30s, and not long before the 1808 legal abolition of the slave trade). He was brought to Charleston, SC, enslaved to a brutal master there from whom he escaped to Fayetteville, NC in August 1810, and recaptured, imprisoned, and eventually sold to a kinder master, James Owen of NC’s Bladen County. Owen, a devout Presbyterian, purchased Said both a Qur’an in English and a Bible in Arabic, in order to help Said learn English but also to discuss religion with him in an effort to convert him to Christianity. It’s unclear whether Owen succeeded, but in any case Said remained committed to expressing his Muslim and Arab American experiences and identity; in 1831 he completed a fifteen-page autobiography in Arabic, which has been recovered (in conjunction with another prominent Muslim American, on whom more in a moment) and remains the oldest extant Arab American text.I spent much of my life entirely ignorant of Said’s story and autobiography; but while many of the figures and texts I highlight in this space remain largely unknown in our broader collective memories and conversations, Said and his book have actually started to receive some national attention in the last couple years (the same period in which I learned about them). The Library of Congress put Said’s book (the full title of which is The Life of Omar ben Saeed, called Morro, a Fullah Slave in Fayetteville, N.C. Owned by Governor Owen) on digital display in early 2019, and that digitization led to a good deal of follow-up news coverage (at least compared to most 19th century figures and texts), such as this March 2019 story from the Boston public radio station WBUR. That visibility in turn has prompted additional scholarly and pedagogical work with Said’s narrative, as illustrated by this wonderful November 2019 Teaching United States History post from my friend Matthew Teutsch on his experiences teaching the book. I know the structure of my posts often follows up second paragraph points with a “but,” and I am about to make a somewhat similar rhetorical move—but I want to be very clear that this increased visibility and attention for Said and his book are entirely good things, and indeed a great model for adding histories and stories to our collective memories.My “but” in this case is just an argument that we should not see Said or his book as in any way individual, unique, or isolated (a trend I’ve seen in at least some of the news coverage), but rather as part of broader Muslim and Arab American communities and networks in the early 19th century. Said himself offered a perfect starting point for focusing on the latter in 1836, when he sent a copy of his book to Lamine Kebe, a Muslim American former slave living in New York City. Kebe had purchased his freedom after some forty years of slavery in South Carolina and Alabama, and had moved to New York where he became a prominent community leader known as “Old Paul.” Prominent enough to be known to Said as a fellow Muslim American to whom he should send his book; and enough of a community leader to keep Said’s book alongside more than thirty other works on Muslim and Arab identities, cultures, and religion, a collection that was discovered after Kebe’s death and has become an inspiring research archivist for all those interested in these 19th century American communities. Which, as I hope this whole week’s series has made clear, should be all 21st century Americans.Next Arab American story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Arab American figures or stories you’d highlight?