A More Beautiful and Terrible History Quotes

“There has been a tendency to personify racism in the figure of a working-class white redneck who dislikes Black people and spouts hateful things, as opposed to a middle-or upper-class white person who might decry such hatefulness but still embraces racially unjust policies.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“Many white Northerners wielded their power and voting pressure at home, even as they might have pressed for desegregation in the South, understanding that you didn't need a governor at a schoolhouse door if you had the Board of Education officials constantly readjusting school zoning lines to maintain segregated schools. You didn't need a burning cross if the bank used maps made by the Federal Housing Authority to mark Black neighborhoods as "dangerous" for investment and deny Black people home loans. You didn't need white vigilantes if the police were willing to protect and serve certain communities while containing and controlling others.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“By 1987, 76 percent of Americans held a favorable opinion of the civil rights leader, almost the reverse of his popularity at the end of his life (only 28 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of him in 1966).4”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“But if racism is pictured as parents asserting their rights as taxpayers & questioning whether the Brown decision applies to "their schools"; if it is shown in calls for more "law & order" & "fiscal responsibility"; if it is demonstrated in the lack of public will to address differentials in resources & services in schools, streets, policing & housing; if it is revealed in the kinds of issues the news media chooses not to cover; if it is illustrated in who stays silent when inequality is brought to light--then it raises questions about where we are today.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“Rosa Parks drew solace & sustenance from the long history of Black resistance before her time, placing her action & the Montgomery bus boycott in the continuum of Black protest. Her speech notes during the boycott read: 'Reading histories of others--Crispus Attucks through all wars--Richard Allen--Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. & Jr. Women Phyllis Wheatley--Sojourner Truth--Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune. For Parks, the ability to keep going, to know that the struggle for justice was possible amidst all the setbacks they encountered, was partly possible through reading & referencing the long Black struggle before her.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. . . . But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots . . . without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. . . . [A] riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.85 In”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“In short, we prefer our heroes and heroines in the past and will cast aside the parts of the story that raise questions about our current directions.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“In July 2016, Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed invoked King’s spirit and the power of free speech but then explained to reporters the large police presence at demonstrations following police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile: “Dr. King would never take a highway.”21 There is something deeply ahistorical and ironic to call for voices muted, tactics softened, disruption avoided, and more honorable spokesmen located, when these very criticisms were lobbed at the civil rights movement as well. And there is something convenient, too—a way of justifying remove, by making it seem as if people would join movements such as BLM if the upstanding likes of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were part of it, but these new movements were just going about it the wrong way. Looking more deeply into the Black freedom struggle challenges such misuses of civil rights history and reveals the politics behind this mythmaking.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“This history as national progress naturalized the civil rights movement as an almost inevitable aspect of American democracy rather than as the outcome of Black organization and intrepid witness.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“Racial injustice is America’s original sin and deepest silence.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“By stripping King and Parks of the breadth of their politics—which interwove economic justice, desegregation, criminal justice, educational justice, and global justice—many of these national tributes render Parks and King meek and dreamy, not angry, intrepid, and relentless, and thus not relevant or, even worse, at odds with a new generation of young activists.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“The only Black bookstore in Detroit, Vaughn's Bookstore-a frequent gathering place for young activists-was intentionally destroyed by police, witnesses reported. Police firebombed the building, mutilated the artwork, damaged many photographs, and left the water running, ruining the vast majority of books.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“A majority of Americans didn’t like it, the federal government feared it, and many good people kept a distance. And we see the work and power of the organizing that made it possible, which shows that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the changes the movement wrought, highlighting the relentless courage, effort, and vision it took to imagine a different America.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History