Oxford University Press's Blog, page 1033

Sherry Smith on Red Power

In the 1960s hippies and Indians found common cause. How so? They joined forces to challenge and overturn longstanding federal policies designed to extinguish all remnants of native life and culture. In addition, civil rights advocates, Black Panthers, unions, Mexican-Americans, Quakers and other Christian denominations, and Hollywood celebrities also supported Red Power activists’ fight for Indian rights.

Portrait of native American woman in front of teepee. c.1862?-1875? Source: NYPL Labs Stereogranimator.

In Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, Sherry Smith offers the first full account of this remarkable story. Indians understood they could not achieve political reform without help. Non-Indians had to be educated and enlisted. Smith shows how Indians found, among this hodge-podge of dissatisfied Americans, willing recruits to their campaign for recognition of treaty rights; realization of tribal power, sovereignty, and self determination; and protection of reservations as cultural homelands. Thoroughly researched and vividly written, this book not only illuminates this transformative historical moment but contributes greatly to our understanding of American social movements.

How did hippies and Indians find one another in the first place?

The Sixties counter-culture was looking for alternatives to their own essentially Anglo, middle class, suburban way of life. This search took them in various directions: East Asian religions, drugs, and in some cases, Native Americans. Hippies assumed Indians were spiritual, ecological, tribal, communal, genuine holdouts against American conformity, the “original long hairs.” Many hippies were satisfied with using such superficial, symbolic “Indians” in their iconography and dress and went no further. But a significant number of others sought out direct contact, looking for teachers. In short, hippies initiated the interactions. In the process, they learned about the distressed state of Indian America. Indian activists, aware of hippies’ interest, enlisted them in their cause.

Hippies’ relationships with Indian people are usually understood as detrimental. Do you see it differently?

During the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco, Cree folksinger Buffy Sainte-Marie articulated the critique which has since become common-place: that hippies exploited Indians in their efforts to co-opt native cultures. “The white people never seem to realize that they cannot suck the soul out of a race,” she said. “The ones with the sweetest intentions are the worst soul suckers. It’s the weirdest vampire idea.” So, the complaint that hippies engaged in their own form of cultural imperialism and exploitation was there from the start. There is much truth to that criticism and my book certainly abounds with examples. My point, however, is that is not the whole story. Some counterculture people became educated and involved in the political struggles of native people. Some Indians, in turn, actively sought out their help as they worked to bring media attention to Indian issues and push the nation to live up to its treaties, trust responsibilities, etc.

Where did this happen and what did it look like? How could hippies help?

The first place the confluence of hippies, Indians, and progressive/leftist groups came together was in the Pacific Northwest in the context of the Indian fishing rights controversy. For years native fishers had challenged state efforts to interfere with their treaty rights. They endured arrests, prosecutions, and jail time. They also filed lawsuits, but little changed. Noting the success of the civil rights movement in gaining support from non-African Americans and the consequent difference that made, Indian activists such as Hank Adams, Billy Frank, and others realized they needed the same kind of help. So, they sought non-Indian allies wherever they could find them.

Consequently, counterculture and radical types such as Students for a Democratic Society, the NAACP and ACLU, Quakers and Episcopalians, Black Panthers and Corky Gonzales’ Crusade for Justice, and celebrities such as Marlon Brando and Dick Gregory showed up to support “fish-ins”. Their presence brought instant media attention. They also provided enormous material support ranging from bodies at demonstrations to financial and legal help. In the end, the Justice Department weighed in on the side of the tribes and the courts reasserted fishing rights. It was a huge victory.

It sounds like hippies were only part of the coalition.

Yes, in some respects they were the vanguard. But others quickly joined in this strange and unexpected alliance. Activists of all kinds, colors, and inclinations found Indian demands for political reform compelling. The collaboration occurred in a constellation of overlapping interests and issues. Of course, tensions frequently characterized the interactions. But the opportunities for cooperation were important and powerful. Launched in the Pacific Northwest fish-ins, they reappeared at the takeover of Alcatraz Island, during the Trail of Broken Treaties and takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building in Washington, DC, and at Wounded Knee, to give a few more examples.

Did any elements of this loose coalition surprise you?

The role of mainstream church organizations, particularly in supporting the American Indian Movement (AIM) came as a surprise. AIM was generally considered the most radical element of the Red Power movement and its criticisms of churches’ past roles on Indian reservations was pointed, direct, quite harsh, actually. Yet the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church — to name just a few — donated thousands of dollars to AIM.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, however. For starters, churches and missionaries had established relationships with Indian communities for many years. They knew the people and they knew their problems. Further, since the 1950s, churches had been increasingly involved in the civil rights movement. So, moving into the Indian rights arena was a natural progression. But there was a qualitative difference in the dynamic by the 1960s. Indian activists insisted on being in the leadership roles and on defining their own goals. This represented a significant shift away from centuries of missionary efforts to convert Indians to Christianity and dictate to Indians. Now, they willingly took a back seat and worked toward social justice as Indians defined it.

What about the relationship between African Americans and Native Americans? How did that work?

This was a bit tricky, in part because Indian activists were not demanding civil rights but rather treaty rights. They didn’t want integration but rather a clearer commitment to what distinguished and separated them from other Americans: reservation land bases, the trust relationship with the federal government, sovereign tribal governments, for instance. Some Indian activists feared that by forming coalitions with blacks, Americans would not understand the distinctive nature of Indian rights. Further, no one could be immune to the deep-seated currents of racism that characterized this nation mid-20th century. Mutual suspicion was inevitable. Yet, some individuals on both sides of this racial divide reached out and offered their help.

What can we learn from these unlikely groups working together?

One of the take-away messages of this book is that Americans have demonstrated their willingness to support social justice movements that do not serve their own, personal interests. They will support and fight for others’ interests. A willingness to learn about others — and Indian issues truly required a learning curve for people because the fundamental keystones of Indian rights are so distinctive from those of other Americans — and then act upon it to push for significant reform, is an incredible attribute. That is exactly what many individuals and groups did in the Sixties and Seventies. They had nothing to gain personally other than the satisfaction of knowing the nation was finally living up to its promises to Indian people.

It is important that this coalition building occurred across racial, ethnic, and class lines. I love the fact that both Jane Fonda and working class people (through their unions) supported the Indians who occupied Alcatraz Island. We have become increasingly fragmented in this country. But not so long ago, people overcame the things that separated them and joined together for a common cause.

Can it happen again?

Absolutely. We need more stories like this. We need to be reminded about the possibilities of cooperation and community and educated about the processes and pitfalls. People can be bigger than their selfish interests. I think our nation has been in a reactive state for forty years now, turning away from the turmoil and challenges of the Sixties. But I am heartened by the resurgence of activism — Occupy America, for example. And although things won’t return to the Sixties – I wouldn’t want them to — it is certainly possible and even probable that social and economic justice movements will be revitalized. Our nation is continually in process of moving toward its promises of freedom and justice for all. It moves in fits and starts but it’s still moving.

Sherry L. Smith is University Distinguished Professor of History and Associate Director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. She is the author of Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power; Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940 (OUP, 2000); The View from Officers’ Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians; and Sagebrush Soldier: William Earl Smith’s View of the Sioux War of 1876.

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Red and yellow and pink and green…

By Katherine Shaw

Many of us learn the colours of the rainbow from an early age, but have you ever wondered where the names for the different shades we see around us come from?

The origins of many of the words for the colours of the visible spectrum go back far in time, and are ultimately unknown. But the origins of others are better recorded: ‘orange’ as a colour term postdates its appearance as the name of a fruit, ‘pink’ originates from the popular name for flowers of the genus Dianthus, and ‘purple’ derives from the Greek porphura, which was the name of the dye obtained from the secretions of a certain species of mollusc in classical antiquity.

But why limit our descriptions to ‘blueish-green’ or ‘reddy-brown’ when we have such a rich palette of colour terms at our disposal? Any young artist worthy of his Crayola crayons will have heard of such evocative attributives as maroon, periwinkle, or burnt sienna, the origins of which are often very interesting indeed.

Colours to dye for?

Many chromatic labels take their cue from the natural world, with materials such as ebony, ivory, and coral, precious stones including turquoise, ruby, and sapphire, and flowers like violet, magnolia, and periwinkle providing the perfect tonal match. Animals, too, have lent appellations that include taupe (from the French for ‘mole’, originating from the Latin talpa), puce (from the French for ‘flea’), and teal (a member of the duck family with this shade of green around the eyes). The names of edible plants also conjure vivid synaesthetic associations, from a juicy raspberry, peach, or cerise, to a mouth-watering pistachio or maroon (from the French marron meaning ‘chestnut’).

Another common means of denotation is the original source of extraction for different coloured dyes. Sepia, for example, comes from the Greek word meaning ‘cuttlefish’ owing to the colour of its ink. Indigo was originally the name of a dye created using the leaves of a plant of the genus Indigofera, while ultramarine comes from the Medieval Latin ultramarinus meaning ‘beyond the sea’, since its original source was lapis lazuli obtained from outside of Italy.

Among the earliest pigments to have been used in cave paintings are browns with names relating to the natural materials from which they derive. The term sienna originates from the name of the Italian city from where the pigment was predominately extracted during the Renaissance. Similarly, umber is obtained from clay originally found in the Umbria region of Italy. Other geographical influences include burgundy from the eponymous wine-producing region (first used as the name of a colour in 1881), and magenta, from a dye that was named in honour of the Franco-Sardinian battle that took place in the Italian city of the same name in 1859.

You say potato…

Even with this seemingly endless range of linguistic possibilities on the tips of our tongues, are colours — like beauty — in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps your laurel green will be somebody else’s myrtle; their midnight blue your navy. In fact, when different language systems are compared, the distinctions become even more blurred. As Brent Berlin and Paul Kay demonstrated in their 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, the number of basic colour terms varies across different cultures. The English language classifies blue and green as two distinct colours, for example, while Chinese has a character that encompasses both. Italian, meanwhile, has two separate linguistic categories for what we call blue — blu and azzurro – making it easier for native speakers to discriminate between different shades along this part of the spectrum.

These examples inform the debate surrounding linguistic relativity – whether the language we speak influences the way in which we think — with arguments to support the impact of both biological and cultural-linguistic factors. Whatever your opinion, it is clear that colour terms conjure a spectrum of multisensory experiences as we attempt to put the world around us into words. So the next time you think to compliment somebody on their lovely yellow sweater, remember that they might actually see it as jonquil, citreous, or jessamy.

Katherine Shaw is an Editor in the English Language Teaching division at Oxford University Press and was tickled pink to be asked to contribute to the Oxford Dictionaries blog, where this article originally appeared.

Oxford Dictionaries Online is a free site offering a comprehensive current English dictionary, grammar guidance, puzzles and games, and a language blog; as well as up-to-date bilingual dictionaries in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The premium site, Oxford Dictionaries Pro, features smart-linked dictionaries and thesauruses, audio pronunciations, example sentences, advanced search functionality, and specialist language resources for writers and editors.

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Saving Sibelius: Software in peril

By Meghann Wilhoite

You may not have known it, but July was a pretty stressful month for the composers of this world. Or at least several thousand of them.

The life of Sibelius, one of the leading music notation software programs, has seemingly come under threat of dissipation as Avid (who owns the software) has recently shut down Sibelius’ UK office, simultaneously laying off the software’s core development team. While Avid insists that Sibelius will continue to receive the attention it needs, one commenter on the change.org petition “Avid Technology: Sell Sibelius!” (signed by close to 7,500 people as of the writing of this post) states that without the UK development team, “the product is doomed.”

Originally developed by Brit brothers Ben and Jonathan Finn in 1986, Sibelius has a history about as old as our modern day personal computers (tablets?). The first public release of the program came in the early ‘90s, running off of a floppy disk and designed for the now defunct Acorn Computers. With the 2011 release of the latest version, Sibelius 7, the software seemed on a fair way to becoming the preferred notation program for composers and other musicians.

A close composer friend has expressed to me more than once how much improved the latest version of Sibelius is, allowing him greater flexibility to create his hybrid staff notation/graphic scores. Another composer friend recently tweeted that he’d stop using Avid audio recording product Pro Tools and switch to another, non-Avid product if Sibelius were discontinued.

Twitter isn’t the only place where people are expressing their dismay over the closing of Sibelius’ UK office. The outcry has also found voice on the website Sibelius Users (Sibelius users of the world unite!), as well as a Facebook group called Save Sibelius.

The firing of Sibelius’ UK development team has even got those of us who work on Grove Music Online here at Oxford University Press a little concerned, since all of our musical examples were created using Sibelius.

For now, Sibelius users will have to wait to see what the final outcome will be for the program. Will the software be able to continue living on the cutting edge of electronic music notation without its UK team? Will Avid sell the product to “to a viable new owner…so as to avoid a diaspora of its development team” as the change.org petitioners have requested? Only time will tell.

Meghann Wilhoite is an Assistant Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwhilhoite.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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Buddhism or Buddhisms? Rhetorical consequences of geo-political categories

By Richard Payne

The categorization of Buddhism along geo-political lines is perhaps the most common organizing principle today. It also tends to be accepted uncritically. Thus we find, without explanation, such expressions as “Indian Buddhism,” “Tibetan Buddhism,” “Chinese Buddhism,” “Burmese Buddhism,” and so on. These categories predominate not only in popular representations of Buddhism, such as the Buddhist magazines, but also in textbooks of both “world’s religions” and of Buddhism, in academic societies, and publishing, and perhaps the most durable entrenchment, in academic appointments (full disclosure, my own title is that of Professor of “Japanese Buddhism”). The general absence of discussion regarding contemporary geo-political divisions as the organizing principle for the field of Buddhist studies, much less its justification, suggests implicitly that dividing the field along these lines is unproblematic — that it is a simple reflection of things just as they are. Naturalized in this way, the categories become hegemonic, molding both decisions regarding research and the ways in which research is presented. The category system and its consequences need to be consciously evaluated, either so that they may be used with more nuance, or replaced with less problematic and (one hopes) more intellectually productive ones.

There are two general areas in which such categories can be seen to be problematic. These may be identified loosely as the rhetorical and the lexical. This blog post will consider the rhetorical, while the lexical will be considered in a separate post.

Candles in buddhist temple near Emeshan, China. Photo by Noé LECOCQ, 2005. Creative Commons License.

Geo-political categories, for example “Chinese Buddhism,” segment the object of study in a particular fashion, and imply that there is something uniquely “Chinese” about it. Five consequences follow from this essentializing rhetoric:

   It tends to confuse the geographic boundaries of nations as they exist today with religious cultures, and support that confusion by identifying geo-political boundaries with linguistic communities.
   It feeds into the politicized rhetoric of ethnic identity at the expense of historical accuracy.
   It tends to privilege certain strains of Buddhism as more authentically Chinese, treating them in isolation as adequately representative of the putative essence of Chinese Buddhism. This privileging creates a dialectically self-supporting rhetoric and a petitio principii fallacy.
   It claims that some particular tradition is more authentically representative of some particular geo-political categorization: playing into sectarian politics, and employing propagandistic claims rather than explicitly justified and objective rationales, such as historical or sociological. Consider, for example, D.T. Suzuki’s claim that:

“after Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu and their immediate followers, [Buddhism] could not continue its healthy growth any longer in its original soil; it had to be transplanted if it were to develop a most important aspect which had hitherto been altogether neglected—and because of this neglect its vitality was steadily being impaired. The most important aspect of Mahāyāna Buddhism which unfolded itself in the mental climate of China was Ch’an (Zen)….This was really a unique contribution of the Chinese genius to the history of mental culture generally, but it has been due to the Japanese that the true spirit of Zen has been scrupulously kept alive and that its technique has been completed.”

   It further distorts our understanding because it tends to treat particular forms of Buddhism hermetically. Why bother inquiring, for example, into possible influences of esoteric Buddhism on Zen in Japan, when we supposedly already know that what is important for understanding Zen is only Zen itself? Its almost sui generis origin in China and historical transmission to Japan can be explicable only by reference to its status as uniquely representative of Japanese Buddhism. Thus, the discourse becomes dysfunctionally self-referential.

The counter-argument may be made that nationalistic forms of Buddhism do exist, and that they have played an important historical function in creating Buddhism as it is known today. One thinks in this regard of Nichiren Buddhism, the origin of which is sometimes referenced to Nichiren’s concern for the nation of Japan. Similarly, consider the function of the category “Tibetan Buddhism” in present-day international politics. To the extent that Nichiren was “nationalistic” and that other similar examples may be found, the counter-argument should be treated empirically with categories based on generalizations from evidence. In other words, for this argument to be effective, a majority of Buddhist institutions would have to place a doctrinal emphasis on nationalistic concerns for the category system to be justified.

The proposed counter-argument also suffers from the historically anachronistic projection of the modern social, political, and ideological institution of the nation-state back onto earlier historical eras. Nichiren died in 1282 and what we think of today as Japan can reasonably be traced only as far back as the mid-nineteenth century with the Meiji Restoration (a full six centuries later). In contrast to the modern nation-state that we know as Japan (the four major islands, a single currency, an educational system that promotes a unifying language and sense of identity, an integrated transportation system, etc.), Nichiren’s concern was focused instead on the aristocratic court with its legitimating authority and political power. Thus, his concern may be described as “centripetal” (moving toward the center), rather than “centrifugal” (bounded by the edges). One of the legitimating rhetorics of the modern nation-state is continuity with historically pre-existing forms, no matter how tenuous that continuity may be. (Consider the claim of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī: that he was heir to a continuous monarchy dating back 2,500 years to Cyrus the Great.) Religion has often been employed as part of that rhetoric of continuity.

Stepping through the veils of geo-political categories, one might well ask in what sense is the present-day People’s Republic of China continuous with the Tang Dynasty? More specifically, in what sense are contemporary Buddhist institutions in China continuous with those of the Tang? Does it make sense to employ a single category, “Chinese Buddhism,” as if it applied equally appropriately across all of Chinese history? The impression that a single, unified institution is the norm requires explanation. This is not, of course, to say that there are not continuities, but rather that those should be demonstrated, rather than simply presumed because of a system of categories that molds our ways of thinking.

Academics are sometimes accused of simply following fashionable trends of thought. Thus, critical concepts such as “essentializing” and “hegemony,” might negligently be dismissed as merely shallow thinking. However, essentializing rhetorics, in this case geo-political ones, mold the field of Buddhist studies in profound ways and shouldn’t be employed uncritically. It is through critical self-reflection on the established field that new research and insights become possible.

Look for the next post “Buddhism or Buddhisms? Lexical Consequences of Geo-Political Categories” next Monday.

Richard Payne is the Dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley; serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Institute’s annual journal, Pacific World; is chair of the Editorial Committee of the Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series; and is Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism. He also sporadically maintains a blog entitled “Critical Reflections on Buddhist Thought: Contemporary and Classical.”

Developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.

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Imagining the Internet and why it matters

By Robin Mansell

Societies are benefitting in numerous ways from an open Internet, not least because of the collaborative culture it seems to favour. Increasingly, however, national and regional legislative initiatives are raising questions about how citizens’ interests in being free from monitoring of their online activities can be reconciled with the interests of the state in securing their safety, and of companies in safeguarding their revenue streams.

Legislation is being introduced to extend the responsibilities of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with respect to communications data collection on the assumption that the result will be reduced illegal behaviour. These measures downplay the complexity of human behavior, and the norms and practices of online communities of Internet users.

The idea that technical fixes in the form of communications data capture and sophisticated data processing yields solutions to social problems is associated with a particular social imagination of technological innovation and progress. It is deeply rooted in what I call the Internet Age. This way of seeing is driven by a vision of the benefits of ever faster, more extensive and intrusive computerized information processing, using data generated by citizens’ online activities.

The UK government is consulting on a new Communications Data Bill in the summer of 2012. Characterized by some as a ‘snooper’s charter’, the government says that communications data (mobile texting or using Facebook, Twitter) must be collected to provide information for the police to protect citizens from serious criminal and terrorist threats. Ofcom, the communications regulator, is consulting on a Code under the Digital Economy Act which requires ISPs to notify Internet users if they are suspected of illegally downloading music, films, and television programmes and, with court permission, to provide the names of suspected infringers to the creative industry so that a charge of copyright infringement can be brought.

The claim is that the complexity of the open Internet requires these legislative responses, but the risk is that those seeking to evade authorities will simply work harder to do so. Safeguards and protections for citizens against wrongful charges of misbehavior are being put in place, but are governments right to be confident that the scope for error can be kept at acceptable levels? The challenge is reconciling conflicting interests when the choice is not simply between an Internet that serves the interests of the government in security or a network that respects the democratic rights of citizens.

I draw on theoretical perspectives from the social sciences, systems theory, science and technology policy, and media and communications to analyze these and related developments. In the Internet age the trend is to rely too much on technological progress and too little on social values. The consequence is that the monitoring of online behavior is being extended further and further into the private domain of citizens lives. Citizens are entitled to a world in which the benefits of digital media and information are not outweighed by the harm of increasingly intrusive incursions into their virtual and ‘real’ lives. The challenge is to imagine how governments can privilege democratic rights in the face of the seductive attraction of superfast computing and sentient software in their efforts to make citizens safer and encourage respect for copyright law.

Robin Mansell is Professor of New Media and the Internet, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, and the author of Imagining the Internet: Communication, Innovation, and Governance. Her work focuses on the social, economic, and political issues arising from new information and communication technologies, the integration of new media into society, and sources of governance effectiveness and failure. She was Head of the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics (2006-2009) and President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (2004-2008).

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A small town near Auschwitz: 70 years on

By Mary Fulbrook

Take a trip to the Polish town of Będzin today, and there is not a lot to see. The ruins of the old castle rise above the town; a Lidl supermarket helps the casual traveller searching in vain for an open pub or restaurant. And for anyone arriving by public transport, the bus terminus and neighbouring railway station seem about as desolate as can be. This certainly does not seem to be a key location on the trail to Auschwitz, now the epicentre of what might be called Holocaust tourism.

Będzin Bus Terminus. Photo courtesy of Mary Fulbrook.

But think back seventy years, and things looked very different here. What is now the bus terminus was then the Jewish ‘Hakoach’ sports field – Hakoach meaning, roughly, ‘The Strength’. And on this sports ground, on 12 August 1942, some 15,000 Jews were brought together under the cruel pretext of an identity card check. They were forcibly held there for several days, without food, water or shelter, surrounded by armed police, members of the Gestapo and the SS; those who sought to resist, or to flee, or who even stood up or sat down at the wrong times, were brutally beaten or shot dead on the spot. One by one they had to come up to a table where they were directed into different groups, with the elderly, the infirm, and the very young pointed to a corner headed for death. A further 8,000 Jews faced a similar ordeal at another nearby sports ground; there were also selections in the neighbouring town of Sosnowiec at this time.

In an ‘action’ that lasted nearly a week, from 12 to 17 August 1942, some 4,700 Jews from Będzin were sent down the railway tracks to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a mere 25 miles to the south. Thousands of others were chosen for the slave labour camps run by the SS across Upper Silesia, a part of the Greater German Reich. The rest were allowed to go home – for the time being – as still potentially useful workers in the locality. Within a year they too would be headed for the gas chambers, wiped out in the final ghetto clearance of the summer of 1943.

One of those at the Hakoach sportsground was a teenager by the name of Rutka Laskier. She recalled the selection of August 1942 just a few months later, in a diary entry written in the ghetto. After describing her own experiences, she added:

Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of a mother’s hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby’s brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy. I am writing this as if nothing has happened. But I’m young, I’m 14, and I haven’t seen much in my life, and I’m already so indifferent. Now I am terrified when I see ‘uniforms’. I’m turning into an animal waiting to die. One can lose one’s mind thinking about this.

Rutka died in Auschwitz just a few months later. Another Jew, who was lucky enough to survive, later recalled the days following the deportations of August 1942 in her memoirs:

For the next several days Będzin was a city of tears. Mostly people just stayed in their homes mourning and praying. I would say that, at the most, only about one fourth of the people from our apartment complex returned to their homes the night of this devastating selection. The rest were on their way to Auschwitz or a slave labour camp.

By the time the area had finally been rendered ‘Jew-free’, a total of perhaps 85,000 Jews – more than were deported from the whole of France – had passed through the linked ghettos of Będzin and Sosnowiec on their way to Auschwitz.

There is nothing at Będzin’s decrepit bus terminus or forlorn railway station today to commemorate the frightful events of those days in August 1942; nothing to indicate what had gone on in this place of terror. There are no memorial ‘sights’ at what should have been a key ‘site of memory’.

Contrast this with the veritable rash of ‘stumbling stones’ (Stolpersteine) across the streets of Berlin (below), commemorating former Jewish residents who were killed, or the massive Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located by the Brandenburg Gate at the very heart of Germany’s capital city. The Federal Republic of Germany has (belatedly) come to identify overwhelmingly with the victims of Nazi persecution.

Even so, there remain massive difficulties in Germany with confronting the personal legacies of parents and grandparents who had supported the Nazi regime. One such conformist was the former principal civilian administrator of Będzin, who had implemented the ghettoization of the Jews in his area while growing increasingly uneasy about the transformation of everyday racism into policies of mass murder. His own role at the time, his ambivalence, and the subsequent gaps in his memory of these events, shed much light both on how it was possible for Hitler’s murderous policies to be effected, and how so many Germans after the war could profess that they were ‘always against it’ and had ‘known nothing about it’.

How should we remember these events of seventy years ago? Should there be a plaque at the Będzin bus terminus, or the railway station, to the deportation of tens of thousands of victims of Nazism – or should today’s inhabitants be able to live undisturbed by the ghosts of the past, untroubled by the murder of half the former residents of their town? Memorialisation is anyway always partial, in both senses, selectively highlighting aspects of the past while serving particular interests in a later present. Certainly the reintegration of former Nazis helped establish a powerful democracy in postwar West Germany, even while it explicitly rejected its Nazi heritage.

Perhaps letting the dust settle on this awful past was the best way to try to heal the wounds – at least among those who were not too scarred by its tragedy. Or does this desire to cover or ignore the traces do an injustice to the pain of survivors and the memory of so many victims?

Mary Fulbrook is Professor of German History at University College London. She has written widely on modern German history. Her most recent books are A Small Town Near Auschwitz

Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust (OUP, 2012) and Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence through the German Dictatorships (OUP, 2011). A fellow of the British Academy, she is former Chair of the German History Society and a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Foundation for the former Concentration Camps at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora.

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Images: Będzin Bus Terminus, photo courtesy of Mary Fulbrook; Entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, by alessandro0770, iStockphoto; Stolpersteine, Berlin, from the private collection of Mary Fulbrook.

An Olympic roundup of blog posts

By Alice Northover

It’s been a long, hard road to London 2012 and while the closing ceremony brings an end to the sporting events and spectacle, we all know it’s not truly the end. The Paralympics begin in a few weeks. There will continue to be reports, analysis, and even a few more blog posts from us. Let’s take a look back on Olympic news, analysis, context, and history from the past few months.

And we’ll see you in Rio de Janeiro in 2016!

Exactly how modern is the Olympics?

First modern Olympic Games held in Athens | This Day in World History (6 April 1896)

Why did the Olympic cafe change its name to the Lympic cafe?

Why is there a ban on advertising activity in and around the Olympic Games? by Phillip Johnson

Money is corrupting true athletics… an age old problem?

The Money Games by David Potter

Will you take away my baby’s knitted Olympic Rings jumper?

How not to infringe Olympic intellectual property rights by Rachel Montagnon

What do we have in common with the athletes, coaches, and spectators of the past?

The Ties That Bind Ancient and Modern Sports, a video interview with David Potter

What is the lasting effect of the Olympics in the local London area?

What is the health impact of the 2012 London Olympic transport plans? An interview with Mark McCarthy

Did you know that music and poetry were once part of Olympic competitions?

The Olympics and Music: then and now by Lucy Allen

Why did Mayor of London Boris Johnson recite a poem in Greek at the Royal Opera House?

The Victory Odes of Pindar, an excerpt from the introduction by Stephen Instone to The Complete Odes by Pindar, translated by Anthony Verity

Who were the great sportsmen and women of Britain’s Olympic past?

British Olympic lives By Mark Curthoys

When did North and South Korea begin competing as separate countries?

Olympic confusion in North and South Korea flag mix-up by Jasper Becker

Amazing, beautiful, frightening, and a little confusing… Who was that supposed to be exactly, Danny Boyle?

An ODNB guide to the people of the London 2012 opening ceremony By Philip Carter

You, me, three corgis, a helicopter, and the greatest theme song ever made.

James Bond at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony by Jon Burlingame

From 17th century masque to Dizzee Rascal…

Music and the Olympic Opening Ceremony: Pageantry and Pastiche by Ron Rodman

What do you know about performance-enhancing drug testing?

Test Your Smarts on Dope by Leslie Taylor

How do Americans versus Brits approach the Games with music

Music and the Olympics: A Tale of Two Networks by Ron Rodman

The corrupting influential of private funding… in Ancient Rome.

Funding and Favors at the Olympics by David Potter

What is the relationship between athletics and music?

Excelling Under Pressure by Gerald Klickstein

You hate the Olympics! Do you love Harry Potter?

Anyone for Quidditch? by Adam Pulford

Casey’s English teacher is at the bat.

Baseball: America’s national language? by Allison Wright

Football or soccer. (Ha! I mentioned it.)

The language of the beautiful game (just don’t mention the S-word) by Owen Goodyear

Can you count the wickets?

Of chanceless innings and textbook shots: the language of cricket and what it says about the game by Jean Pierre de Rosnay

Golf is the best way to ruin a good walk.

Brassies, bunkers, and bogeys: celebrating The Open by Fiona McPherson

ANDY MURRAY IS A GOLD MEDALLIST!

Anyone for tennis? by Fiona McPherson

From Jesse Owens to Gabby Douglas…

African Americans at the Olympic Games by Robert Repino

Do you know your Mandeville from Mandeville? Medieval and early modern England in London 2012.

Where are the ‘Isles of Wonder?’ by Anthony Bale

What does ‘great’ mean in sports, ancient and modern?

Olympic Greatness by David Potter

What is cheating?

The Science Behind Drugs in Sport, an audio interview with Chris Cooper

How to ensure your blog editor loses sleep…

The Oxford Companion to the London 2012 Opening Ceremony by Alice Northover

Still to come…

Understanding Olympic design

An analysis of the closing ceremony

An analysis of Olympic knock-offs

Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.

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Image credit: Pictured London2012 mascots Wenlock and Mandeville. Athletes and local children first on completed track Picture taken 03.10.11 by David Poultney for LOCOG.

Who should Mitt Romney choose as his Vice Presidential running mate?

“The choice of Vice President is going to be extremely difficult for Mitt Romney to game…” The GOP campaign has good reason to be nervous about the running mate choice. Will it be someone who previously sought the presidential nomination — Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum — or someone out of left field, as Sarah Palin was for John McCain’s campaign?

We spoke to Samuel L. Popkin, author of The Candidate: What It Takes to Win – and Hold – the White House, about Mitt Romney’s choices.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Bryant Park Reading Room and New York Historical Society will be hosting Sam Popkin to discuss The Candidate and the election. So, you can catch Sam Popkin in person in New York at the Bryant Park Reading Room, 40th Street and 6th Avenue on 15 August at 7:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

President Clinton’s former press secretary, Mike McCurry recently reviewed the book for the Washington Post: “The Candidate will make enjoyable reading in the midst of the current campaign. One of Mitt Romney’s big money guys, Anthony Scaramucci, reportedly just sent the book to the former governor’s entire campaign team. All the Obamaites would be wise to get copies, too.”

Samuel L. Popkin is the author of The Candidate: What It Takes to Win – and Hold – the White House and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He has also been a consulting analyst in presidential campaigns, serving as consultant to the Clinton campaign on polling and strategy, to the CBS News election units from 1983 to 1990 on survey design and analysis, and more recently to the Gore campaign. He has also served as consultant to political parties in Canada and Europe and to the Departments of State and Defense. His most recent book is The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns; earlier he co-authored Issues and Strategies: The Computer Simulation of Presidential Campaigns; and he co-edited Chief of Staff: Twenty-Five Years of Managing the Presidency. Read his previous blog post “Five pivotal moments from incumbent campaigns” and view his previous video “How will Mitt Romney fare in the general election?”.

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African Americans at the Olympic Games

By Robert Repino

Though they were conceived for idealistic reasons and designed to celebrate universal human aspirations, the modern Olympic Games have served as a stage for the world’s political and social struggles. Virtually every political controversy — from wars to ideological conflicts to human rights struggles — have managed to find expression every four years in the athletic events and in the media campaigns that go with them. Perhaps no group has influenced the Games more — both as athletes and as human rights pioneers — than African Americans, whose very participation in the modern games has been one of many tiny steps forward in the progress toward a more just world.

Of course, if all they did was participate, then this story would not be nearly as interesting. Instead, African-American athletes helped to remake the Games: breaking records, standing up to stereotypes of their abilities, refuting suspicions about their patriotism, and bringing the American struggle for equality to a global audience. This month, the Oxford African American Studies Center (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Editor in Chief) features a new Focus On photo essay highlighting some of the major accomplishments of black Olympians. Such an essay could not be comprehensive — there are simply too many events to list. However, it is useful to look back on the Games and see the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement — as well as the women’s rights movement — manifested in the accomplishments of athletes such as track star Jesse Owens, high-jumper Alice Coachman, and boxer Cassius Clay.

The well-known example of Owens — whose record-setting day at the 1936 Berlin Olympics challenged the Nazi ideal of Aryan supremacy — was one in a series of African-American achievements in track and field dating back to hurdler George Poage’s performance in the 1904 St. Louis Games. Like Owens, Poage also had to confront racism head on; civil rights leaders urged him to boycott the Games when it was revealed that the athletic facilities would be segregated. Poage decided that competing would send a stronger message than refusing to participate, thereby beginning a string of dominating track performances by African Americans that continues into the present day.

The storied 1936 Olympics are famous also because they were the first to feature an African-American woman, Tidye Pickett. (Louise Stokes had expected to compete, but was pulled from the relay team at the last minute.) Stokes and Pickett had been scheduled to participate in Los Angeles in 1932, but were left out of the competition in yet another example of segregation. Unfortunately, Pickett broke her foot while racing in Berlin, and because the Second World War cancelled the Games in 1940 and 1944, it would not be until the 1948 London Games that a black woman brought home a medal. That year, Alice Coachman, a product of the prestigious track and field program at the Tuskegee Institute, won the gold in the high jump, while Aubrey Patterson won the bronze in the 200 meters. But like Owens’ victory twelve years earlier, the accomplishment was more symbolic than revolutionary. Coachman returned to the American South of the Jim Crow era, where her hometown of Albany, Georgia sponsored a segregated parade in her honor. Awareness of African-American athletes was increasing, but there was still little progress to show for it outside of the field of competition.

Few Olympic events increased awareness of the Civil Rights Movement more than the symbolic protest carried out by track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. Like Poage over 60 years earlier, Smith and Carlos had once considered boycotting the Olympics altogether. But their iconic gesture while standing on the winners’ podium — pointing gloved fists into the air during a rendition of the national anthem — had a far greater impact. Today, the moment is revered as an inspiring act of defiance at the height of the civil rights struggle. But, at the time, many in the sports broadcasting world criticized the move as overly political and provocative.

Smith and Carlos’s protest was the high-water mark of African-American political statements in the context of the Olympic Games. Over the next few years, more barriers to participation and equality quietly fell. By the 1976 Montreal Games, Dr. Leroy T. Walker had become the first African American to coach an Olympic team. In the 1990s, Walker served as the head of the entire US Olympic Committee. Meanwhile, African Americans branched out into more sports, including events held in the Winter Olympics. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, the predominantly African American “Dream Team” became an international phenomenon, easily becoming one of the most famous Olympic teams ever assembled. And though it has often been overlooked as an important moment in African American history, the 1996 Atlanta Games represented a major step forward for the most progressive city in the American South. Leading the effort to bring the Olympics to the city was civil rights leader, diplomat, and former mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young. Fittingly, those Games began with an inspirational torch lighting ceremony that featured 1960 gold medalist and cultural icon Muhammad Ali. Later, after a terrorist detonated a bomb in the Olympic village, Young evoked the words of Dr. Martin Luther King during the reopening of the park. The city, he said, had overcome its segregationist history, and would serve as a venue for the people of the world to learn from the past and to build a better future.

It is easy to look at the diversity of the 2012 U.S. team and take for granted the strides made by pioneering Olympians over the years. While the issue of racial bias remains — perhaps especially in media depictions of athletes — the ever-increasing participation, visibility, and popularity of African-American Olympians continues to push us toward the noble ideals of the Games.

To learn more, view the photo essay on African American Olympians currently featured on AASC and their list of curated articles.

Robert Repino is the Editor of the Oxford African American Studies Center. After serving in the Peace Corps in Grenada, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. His work has appeared in several publications, including The African American National Biography (2nd Edition), The Literary Review, The Coachella Review, Hobart, and JMWW.

The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. The Oxford African American Studies Center provides students, scholars and librarians with more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field. Over 2,500 images, more than 450 primary sources with specially written commentaries, and nearly 200 maps have been collected to enhance this reference content. More than 150 charts and tables offer information on everything from demographics to government and politics to business and labor to education and the arts.

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Olympic Greatness

By David Potter

In a year when Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals, and Usain Bolt became the first man to win the 200 meters twice, it’s worth asking: What does ‘great’ mean in sports? We might gain perspective by considering how the Ancient Greeks determined greatness in athletes. Then and now, true greatness is as defined not by a single moment, but by the ability to build a record of extraordinary achievement.

Milo of Croton was the greatest ancient Greek Olympian. He was a wrestler who won six consecutive Olympic crowns beginning in 540 BC, and lost in the finals of his seventh consecutive competition. He won even more titles at the other important athletic festivals of his time — the Python games, also held every four years, the Nemea and Isthmian games that were held at two year intervals — becoming a five time winner of the grand slam (winning the title at all major festivals). That’s twenty-eight years at the top; he was in his early forties when he lost his first Olympic match. That match was a classic confrontation between an aging champion and a rising star, a man who had trained in Milo’s home town. Timesitheus, the man who beat Milo, wore him down while avoiding the body slams that were Milo’s specialty. The loss did nothing to diminish Milo’s near legendary status in the Greek world and may have even helped people understand how astonishing his achievement actually was. It proved that he was human. In same way seeing Michael Phelps’ loss in the 400 individual medley (IM) made his later performance — the four gold and two silver medals — all the more impressive. They remind us that Olympic victories don’t just depend on ability, they depend on desire.

Two wrestlers is a scene from palaestra. The Base for Funerary Kouros in pentelic marble. Kerameikos, built into Themistoclean walls. c.510 BC. Photo by Fingalo, 2007. Creative Commons License.

In the post-Milo era of the Olympic desire, willingness to take on extraordinary feats of endurance or compete in radically different events came to define true greatness. The theoretical founder of the games was Hercules, who being the greatest hero (albeit mythological) came to set the theoretical standard for above average excellence by winning two of the three combat sports: boxing, wrestling, and pancration (a combination of boxing and wrestling). The first person who tried to do this was Theagenes of Thasos, a boxer whose townsmen would later celebrate him as a semi-divine figure (the shrine in his honor survives to this day). He failed because was exhausted after beating another great boxing champion, Euthymus, just before the pancration began. Euthymus was so impressive that people believed that he had actually defeated a divine spirit himself — the story was still told more than five hundred years after his death!

Two hundred years after Theagenes failed, Caprus of Elis finally won two events (wrestling and pancration) and was remembered as a man who won because he was willing to take on great challenges. There would be six more men who would do the same in the next 150 years before competition in the two events was banned. All seven victors were well remembered. So too was Polites, described as “a great wonder” by an ancient writer because he won all three Olympic foot races on one day. While two of these events were sprints, the third was a distance race, and it appears that he placed first in the qualifying heats for each final — meaning that he won six Olympic races on a single day! Our source for his achievements said he was the second greatest runner of all time; the greatest, in his view, was Leonidas of Rhodes who won the two sprint events in four straight Olympics.

Greatness in the ancient Olympics required longevity and the willingness to take on exceptional challenges. That is what Phelps and Bolt have done, and that’s why they’ll be remembered amongst the greatest of all times (ancient and modern).

David Potter is Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Greek and Latin in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, Ancient Rome: A New History and Emperors of Rome, and two forthcoming OUP titles, Constantine the Emperor and Theodora. Read his previous blog posts: “Funding and Favors at the Olympics,” “The Ties That Bind Ancient and Modern Sports,” “The Money Games,” and “Sports fanaticism: Present and past.”

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