In his piercingly insightful essay, “Unnameable Objects, Unspeakable Crimes,” James Baldwin reflected on the importance of history. Baldwin explained, “For history, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”1 History is alive.
