Foster Dickson's Blog, page 61
March 13, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Teach.”
On the evening that my students and I met the traveling students from Phillips Exeter Academy for the first time, their teacher Olutoyin Augustus-Ikwuakor had a sheet full of activities planned for our two-hour preliminary session. Mrs. Augustus-Ikwuakor and I had corresponded in the spring about their trip from New Hampshire to Alabama, where they would spend four days in late November learning about social justice and Civil Rights issues, and she wanted her students to meet and collaborate with some local students. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, we were gathered in their hotel’s conference room to eat dinner together, to get to know each other, and to do some educational groundwork. As we looked over her list of activities, I asked if I could have a few minutes to talk with them about Southern history, and she replied, a little surprised, “Oh, you want to teach?”
March 10, 2018
Afternoon Movies: “Billy Jack” (1971)
Back in the day, laying on the couch on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, flipping among the only three or four channels we had, afternoon movies were unpredictable, often raw, usually cheap, and always edited offerings from the backwaters of cinema history. At a time when most people had TVs but on-demand was not yet a thing, weekend afternoon movies – as bad as they usually were – were about the only thing on, if you didn’t want to watch sports, Three Stooges reruns, or a Ronco infomercial. God only knows who was programming these selections, but whoever those unpaid young interns may have been, they added that offbeat, low-budget twinge to the otherwise boring hours that we wasted waiting for Saturday night.
March 9, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “The Boxes in the Attic”
They’re these low, wide boxes that the Paperback Book Club used to send shipments of four or five books at a time. They’re sturdy and durable, and they hold tabloid newspapers and 13″ x 18″ posters laying flat. They’re perfect.
Today, these boxes languish and collect dust for most of the year in the back of the storage space in our attic— until some glint of a memory nags me badly enough that I have to go upstairs and dig out the item on my mind. At a time before internet bookmarking and favorites, I used to tear out pages from magazines and newspapers and keep them. Even though I near-refused to read what my teachers assigned me in school, my habit of devouring periodicals never dulled, nor waned.
March 8, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Twitter, Tim Scott, and the Strange Career of Jim Crow”
[image error]Since writing my last post about post-election racism on Twitter made me want to delve even further into this subject of race in Deep Southern politics, another noteworthy development within that same subject occurred just this week when South Carolina governor Nikki Haley appointed Rep. Tim Scott to fill the US Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Jim DeMint, making Scott the first African-American senator from the South since Reconstruction. (Interestingly, you can read this Slate blog about how Gov. Haley was already downplaying Scott’s race on the day he was appointed.) I just have to make one remark on this situation before moving on: a Deep Southern state has now provided the US Senate with its lone black member.
March 7, 2018
53 Years since Bloody Sunday, 1965
It’s not too difficult to get people to come to a big anniversary of a major event in American history, like the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday— especially when a popular president is speaking there. Yet, it is difficult to get people to think about that event and its long-term ramifications on an odd anniversary, when the celebration isn’t as big.
[image error]Fifty-three years ago today, a group of marchers led by Hosea Williams, John Lewis, Amelia Boynton, and others attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on their way to Montgomery to protest the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson, a black man who was killed by a police officer in nearby Marion. Since then, the practice of honoring those brave marchers commonly involves a bridge-crossing re-enactment and reminders of the importance of voting. Even though Americans too often shirk our responsibilities to take action against injustice and to vote, we are reminded (and admonished) annually on March 7 to change those habits for the better.
However, in addition to those obvious features of the commemorations, another feature of Bloody Sunday should be noted as well: the importance of the media. Scholars and historians acknowledge that, as courageous and forthright as those marchers were, Bloody Sunday may not have become an iconic event in America had the images from that day not been piped directly into American living rooms by the press, who were there to cover it. There could be no denials of what was happening in the Deep South when people all over the country saw it for themselves. The media coverage ensured that otherwise-uninvolved Americans saw that wall of officers in Selma as they moved toward the marchers then proceeded, unprovoked, to shove and beat them mercilessly, to shoot tear gas into their midst, and to chase them on horseback. Ordinary Americans had been shown the images of Emmett Till’s misshapen corpse in Mississippi and the images of dogs and firehoses in Birmingham in earlier years, and here was another brutal example.
In an election year, we are reminded of our right to vote, but today’s anniversary of Bloody Sunday should remind us, too, about our First Amendment right to a free press, because without them, we might never have known about these facts that we now take for granted. Efforts to sow distrust of the media are just as insidious as efforts to deny some people the right to vote, and we’ve got to be diligent in safeguarding both.
Image from the Library of Congress collection: Carol M. Highsmith
March 6, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Taking another step forward in the South”
Last Friday, browsing Social Reader on my smartphone while waiting on my daughter to get out of school, I ran across a story about a recent controversy over the renaming of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Florida. This story aligns with other stories that I’ve written about here before, like the school that finally integrated their prom in 2013, because schools are often the front lines of how communities socialize their children and perpetuate their ideals.
March 4, 2018
the #newschool: Every single day.
I don’t even consider participating in protests. Certainly, there are issues worthy of waving a multicolored sign on the Capitol steps, but that just isn’t me.
If you ask me about protests, I’d tell you two things: first, the quest for social justice needs all kinds of action. I am thankful for the people who do go into the streets and protest, though I wish the folks among them who accuse the rest of us of “silence” were equally thankful for action that takes other forms. Second, my preferred form of action happens every single day. It is far slower, far less glamorous, and far more effective: education. Education does not only occur in classrooms in accredited institutions; it occurs everywhere that people converse honestly and share ideas: in everyday conversations, in media and programming, in slogans and heuristics. More powerful than those one-time willful exertions of a political stance will always be knowledge, and knowledge that results in wisdom will change hearts and minds for the better.
I agree that sometimes we need for others to hear us, and that’s why protests are important. But more than simply being heard, we need to be understood and respected. As a man who favors justice, equality, and freedom, I place my faith in knowledge and wisdom as the best mechanisms to lead us away from injustice, inequality, and oppression. You’re far less likely to cheat or oppress someone you know, understand, and respect. And respect is earned every single day.
March 3, 2018
Afternoon Movies: “Sweet Jesus Preacher Man” (1973)
Back in the day, laying on the couch on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, flipping among the only three or four channels we had, afternoon movies were unpredictable, often raw, usually cheap, and always edited offerings from the backwaters of cinema history. At a time when most people had TVs but on-demand was not yet a thing, weekend afternoon movies – as bad as they usually were – were about the only thing on, if you didn’t want to watch sports, Three Stooges reruns, or a Ronco infomercial. God only knows who was programming these selections, but whoever those unpaid young interns may have been, they added that offbeat, low-budget twinge to the otherwise boring hours that we wasted waiting for Saturday night.
March 2, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “On the Edgy Edge of Edginess”
Recently, I was listening to a little cluster of students who huddled around a computer, giggling at what each other didn’t know and at what was too old to care about. One proudly explained that she couldn’t name a single Beatles song, though her friend began to sing the chorus of “Here Comes the Sun.” A third proclaimed loudly that Madonna was overrated and that Beyoncé is so much better. This is the same group who call ’60s and ’70s classic rock “dad rock.”
March 1, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “A Conscientious, Competent Teacher Knows”
The article, “Plagiarism-software earns middling grades,” published on USA Today’s website, explains that a German research firm found that plagiarism software and websites are only “‘partially useful’ at best” in detecting plagiarism and other types of academic dishonesty in student papers. Surprise, Surprise!
