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Beijing’s vanishing charm: for a buck, for better living conditions, and for a hefty price

Jcedens — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:32:43 +0000

Chicken coup, built atop a home inside a Beijing hutong

It’s a bit mysterious to me how my fascination with China began; this far into it, I cant quite retrace the steps back to the beginning. But one of the first books I read about the country was journalist Ian Johnson’s Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China, in which he deftly researches three different cases of citizens holding their own against a government that says a lot of things it does not follow through on. Johnson’s reputation as a reporter and skill with Mandarin Chinese gave him a great launching point for these tales, and the people who spoke to him no doubt wanted to have their stories heard by others outside their native land–where they’d been received coolly. One section focuses on a peasant lawyer’s confrontation of government corruption and its exploitation of over-taxed farmers; another highlights the controversy surrounding Falun Gong, the physical and spiritual practice that was banned and some of its practitioners unduly prosecuted.

The communal courtyard shared by several families

The third story captures the overwhelming changes residents of the Old City of Beijing faced as their leaders began razing their artery-like system of winding neighborhoods, or hutong, which are simultaneously a relic of Chinese culture and character and a fast-decaying, dilapidated part of the modernizing city. He emphasizes the evicted hutong residents’ situation, as most are not paid appropriately for their loss, cannot afford bigger, newer apartments–nor the commute hours into the city–and will be unable to replace the strong community that has surrounded many of them for their entire lives.

This third one sprung up in my mind as I arrived in Beijing with a study abroad group in May 2007, and I even got to see one of these tight-knit and close-quartered communities myself, with part of what I’m sure was a choreographed tour for tourists. This didn’t matter so much to me, as the hutong was the most charming thing I saw in the capital city, and I even made their rapid disappearance the subject of a paper for one of my classes while I was there. (Here’s a post from my first encounter with the hutong.)

Unfortunately, the story has only gotten worse since Johnson’s reporting, and since my visit three years ago. Government and business developers see the single-level, “dangerous” housing as an obstacle in the way of economic growth in the city, as things can be built upwards and sold as commercial space for much higher prices than any residential buildings could garner. What acres do becomes private homes will land in the price range of millionaires, out of reach to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who grew up on that same ground.

A bright and shiny paint job on one of the areas inside the Forbidden City, the old home of the emperor that is now a tourist site

I happened again upon this subject recently, as Amazon.com had a highly-rated memoir The Last Days of Old Beijing by Michael Meyer, in its bargain bin, and I needed something to accompany me on my summer travels. Meyer lived in Dazhalan, one of the hutong, and worked as a teacher at Coal Lane Elementary, and his neighbors, students, and anecdotes make for a lively portrait of this community that sits at the intersection of its city’s past and future. It is deemed a “historic” area, and is labeled as one of the twenty-five protected parts of Old Beijing; but as he and his neighbors witness, this does not mean their homes and businesses are safe from The Hand, as he calls it– the mysterious force that comes in the night and paints the large, white character on your door, that one that means it’s slated for immanent demolition. There’s not much the residents can do to stop the momentum, and posted advertisements remind each day of the benefit residents will bring to their city by taking their compensation and moving to the ‘burbs–the sooner, the better for all parties.

“Historic” in the eyes of the commercial and governmental developers means razing the dilapidated building that has been neglected for half a century and replacing it with an “authentic” facsimile, with upturned eaves painted classic Chinese colors: reds, golds, greens. Qianmen, a fabled shopping district in the center of the city that has been replaced with a swanky doppelganger, is mourned by urban planning professor Yao Yuan in a July 20 article in the New York Times. “The renovation of Qianmen wasn’t about preserving history, but about creating a fake Hollywood version of it,” he said.

Shopping center in Shanghai

This inclination to the reproduction was already firmly in place when I visited, specifically at the Shaolin Temple–famous for its kung fu masters–where we learned (subtly, this was not widely advertised information) that while the temple was on the location of the original, the one we were visiting was built in the 1980s. That news deflates the excitement a bit. So, it’s slightly older than me? Such reproduction was also obvious in Shanghai, an entire city which aims to please the tourist and attempts to blend its western and eastern influences into something unique. A bustling old-style system of alleyways and tiny stores was less charming with its fresh paint coats, air conditioning, and Haagen-Dazs shop.

I’m not here to pass judgment or even complain, really, because some of those modern amenities made my visit more comfortable, and surely improves the living conditions and salaries of many of China’s urban dwellers. But as many others have asked before me, at what cost are these things forming? Is a newly-built shopping center doing the people of Beijing much more good than its previous shopping center? Is it really a part of the city’s history that could not have been preserved more carefully from the start? Many of these areas, deemed “dangerous” by the government, were named as such in the late ’80s and early ’90s, which means they were slated for demolition or at least known to be in need of renovation and preservation for nearly two decades by now.

Many of these areas did not survive to see the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. I hope there are people in charge who will listen more carefully to the preservationists and historians both domestically and internationally who have been offering their advice on the ever-vanishing character of the city, and I hope what little is left of the city’s pre-modern composition can survive. I hope this for the sake of outsiders who visit, but more so for the sake of its own people.

Newly constructed buildings, complete with Starbucks and westerners

Aww, so the little white girl wants to make a difference? Or: The intimidating world of changing the world

Jcedens — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:45:13 +0000

Plenty of young people have dreams of changing the world, making a difference, having a purpose in the wider world. Realizing this goal seems more accessible the more the world shrinks, as if maybe through our interconnectedness and supposed knowledge of each other we can somehow bring about change, that we’ve learned enough to avoid the pitfalls of those before us who wanted to abolish poverty or illiteracy or some other plight of humanity. But an overflow of information can also have the opposite effect; can make us think we have all the answers before we even set foot in someone else’s country and culture. Even with the very best of intentions, and the most endearing empathy for others, compassion alone can bring no large-scale result. The flip side is an all-brains approach, with its theories and algorithms and–if you’re really serious–some language skills to really work with the people of the global community. Take all that, and it’s still not enough. You also need really thick skin.

Fruit sellers plop happily outside the entrance to Yangzhou University, Yanzgzhou, China (2007). Microfinancing companies loan money to people who are otherwise unable to borrow from typical lenders, opening up their realm of economic endeavors and allowing local artisans the ability to expand their businesses.

Jacqueline Novogratz learned this the hard way. Walking in to the African Development Bank for her first day on the job in Côte d’Ivoire in 1986, she received stony glares from African women in immensely colorful dress, and felt the part of an uptight librarian in her skirt-and-blouse combo and glasses. “I hadn’t expected to encounter poisoning and voodoo among women bankers in Africa,” she says, but after a week or two, that is exactly what was faced her. As most would, when she took a job with a development company in Africa, she had been imagining something more along the lines of sitting on the ground with women in a rural village; instead, she was facing somewhat powerful and relatively wealthy women who hated what she represented: white people from the economic “North” (read: developed world), who sat in their offices thousands of miles away and wrote up plans for improving the African continent while sipping $4 lattes.

Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen Fund, wrote about her experiences as a banker out to make a difference in her memoir The Blue Sweater.

This is a stereotype, of course, but as the women she encounters there argue, how can Africa ever stand on its own without Africans leading the changes, with the knowledge of their world and their ways. What kind of organization promotes solidarity by neglecting to ask the opinions of the people most dedicated to fixing their nations’ problems, instead deciding to send in a young, white woman without first seeing whether the skills were already there. Regardless of the role Novogratz was supposed to play, and regardless of her most earnest intentions, her position there did not work out; but the feeling was mutual: she smiled daily at the street vendors during her time in Cote d’Ivoire without every getting to understand how they lived. “I’d wanted to know who low-income people were so I could be of greater service, but I had spent most of my time [in Africa so far] in big institutions with people who chattered and hobnobbed at conferences and did very little listening.”

Long story short, Novogratz is today the CEO of Acumen Fund, which has successfully invested in local businesswomen in the form of microloans that have proven effective ways of empowering those who cannot start businesses or get loans the traditional way. She emphasizes loans instead of donations, proving to be a more sustainable approach, one which invests in the skills and integrity of real merchants and artisans in a bottom-up way. She has also spoken at TED about her real belief that poverty can be abolished, her determination founded not in naive idealism but in experienced optimism and creative thinking. She also wrote a book, The Blue Sweater, chronicling how it all happened. (Listen to the amazing story of her beloved Blue Sweater, and what it taught her about the world.)

I have not finished reading the book yet, but one of the most striking things I’ve discovered is how harshly the world can hit that little white girl with a big heart and some education, who wants to make a difference and see the world while she’s at it. Novogratz spent three days writhing on the bathroom floor after a reception she’d attended with the women of her development banking office, unable to drink even water; whether this was a coincidental illness or a moderate dose of poison, the event was ominous and painful. And the world is ominous and painful, especially for poverty-stricken women in villages and cities around the world, but also for little white girls who venture out into it.

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (Rodale, 2009)

I’m not comparing the experiences of these two types of women at all, I am simply observing through Novogratz’s experience the heart-breaking rejection the world can serve even when you bring it everything you’ve got. We question, once again, the outsider’s role in development and economies not our own. We question the very goal we have set out to achieve–making a difference–and many have dismissed it as impossible. Novogratz has not, and she is an inspiration. I read of the discrimination she faced and literally question my own courage and confidence. I question whether I would have even risen from the floor; I like to think so, but sometimes I am victim my own doubts, which seemed exponential in her shoes. Even when things started to turn towards positive progress, she was still communicating in French, far away from her family and home, and living in the pre-internet world of letter-writing. In Rwanda, where she found a more welcoming evironment and was helping to create a microfinance company for women there, she still had boughts of doubt and despair:

Starting anything new is an all-encompassing proposition, and typically I worked 16-hour days. Doing this in a different language, in a place far from home, where navigating even simple things could thwart the best intentions challenged me to my bones. There were plenty of nights when the sheer injustice of the world in which I lived would come crashing down. With no mean of communication other than letters, a sense of isolation would envelope me, and there were nights that ended in tears of tiredness and sadness for a world that didn’t seem to want to see the possibilities right there in front of it. In those time, I would turn to music. Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Cat Stevens began to feel like good friends on lonely nights.

I crack so easily over my own trials and am such an emotional person when I’m talking about things I’m passionate about, I honestly think I would have broke down crying in front of those intimidating, strong, hardened, female African bankers. What things they have faced that I’ve never had to face myself! And then, even if I began to make progress with a new job in a new country, as Novogratz did, the work is still accompnaied by doubts and tribulations aplenty, and you go about witnessing hardships while struggling against the established status quo. This difficulty intimidates me to my core. The world of changing the world is scary, messy, disheartening business. But Novogratz never gave up hope; for it is also rewarding, enlightening, and after everything, beneficial to the people who need it the most– if you’ve got a smart plan. And great compassion. And, really, if you’re tough enough. I hope that if such an opportunity or chance position comes my way, I’m brave enough–and also crazy enough–to take it.

Food and, after all, friends

Jcedens — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:49:56 +0000

Four days before I wave goodbye to the last semester of my undergraduate degree, I ate dinner at the house of one of my professors. It is a rather strange idea, and perhaps a little bit awkward–unless the class is South Asian politics and she’s having everyone over for some of her homemade Indian food. Seven students showed up, and so we rearranged the furniture and pulled out two leaves to add to her dining room table; in true South Asian style, it was an improvised and cozy set-up, and we spent nearly five hours tucked away in her home laughing and sharing stories over tons of food and a little bit of wine. It was as if we had been together much longer than a semester, I thought, except that last night we learned so much about each other that we’d never gotten to in our political discussions in class.

We talked about family backgrounds, origin countries (I’m the only one whose parents were born in the U.S.), childhoods, vacations, politics and current events, sports, cultural oddities– you name it. Oh, and a good portion of the night also went to discussing some of the overall concepts and questions regarding South Asia in terms of its political, social, and economic systems throughout each country. To round out the night, we critiqued many of the articles and scholars that we had read throughout the course, and talked through ways of improving the course for future terms.

It really got me thinking about how lucky I am to know these people, my professor and my seven peers, and how I would have gone through my whole life not knowing what I learned about them had we not eaten dinner together. How many other amazing classmates have I missed knowing throughout my college experience? Regardless of missed opportunities, I am fortunate to have had this night now, at the very end of my undergraduate years, to segue into the new relationship I will share with these people: that of colleagues. I left with such great respect for the lives of all of them, and excitement for what our lives hold ahead of us.

Smart educators, often a rarity.

Jcedens — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:25:00 +0000

Chinese students I met in May 2007, who attend a bilingual Chinese-English school in Zhengzhou, China

In an atmosphere of economic recession, budget cuts, and even failing K-12 schools, good news in the public school system can be elusive. And in U.S. schools, if the first things to be cut are the arts and music programs, the next in line are the foreign languages. Often schools may keep minimum Spanish and French (as my high school offered– only the minimum French I and French II required to graduate) classes, and cut higher-level grammar, conversation, and composition courses, along with any additional languages previously offered.

A glimmer of hope lies in Brooklyn, NY, though, where over 400 middle-grades students are learning Mandarin Chinese. Ninety percent of Medgar Evers College Preparatory School’s students qualify for subsidized lunches, yet their school is giving them invaluable tools for their future: fostering an interest in Chinese language and culture makes these students more prepared for the multi-ethnic face of the United States they know. Of course, there are also the career and opportunity benefits that accompany knowledge and skills in the Chinese language in today’s global (job) market.

Some sloppy attempts at writing my Chinese name, Yi Jia Xi, which I wouldn't have without my years studying the language.

My own Chinese professor, who has been teaching to foreign students both in China and the United States for more than twenty years, was dismissed from Georgia Perimeter College after the Chinese language program was cut there. She now faces the same danger as higher education faces an even more severe squeeze. No matter your thoughts on education budget cuts, we cannot ignore the significance of being able to communicate in a world whose citizens are intricately connected; learning Mandarin Chinese extends these kids’ potential friends by nearly 885 million people who speak it as their first language (the number goes up to 1.3 billion if including all other speakers).

I know my experience in college would have been vastly different without a Chinese program: two-month study abroad, Asian studies minor, and an intermediate level of language skills. Learning Mandarin brought Chinese history to life. This interest also led me to my senior thesis research topic, missionary Young J. Allen. Amidst the bleak backdrop of every other public education news story, this one proves there is still some hope for U.S. schools. There are still some educators who understand what is important for their students and the future.

A snowman comes to Georgia

Jcedens — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:16:39 +0000

On Friday, February 12, 2010, Metro Atlanta got a little bit of the weather that the northeast has been experiencing; a couple of inches of snow was just enough to cover the entire landscape, painting the world a beautiful black and white. I got off work early because campus was closing, and I took the opportunity to stroll through several shops in downtown Woodstock that I’d never been in before. I bought something for each of my parents, for their upcoming birthdays, and relished every moment against the backdrop of a thick snowfall outside. The local bookstore, Foxtale Book Shoppe, was particularly charming; I couldn’t help but think of You’ve Got Mail, with Meg Ryan and her independent children’s bookstore.

When I got home, I took a lovely walk, breathed in the white wonderland, and took a few pictures. We made a snowman when I got home, and frolicked around the backyard a bit more. By Sunday afternoon, most of the snow had already melted, and I must admit I was sad to see it go. My parents moved us from Michigan in 1998, partly due to a search for better weather (read: no snow). I can’t say I’ve missed it this past decade. But this weekend, it was a true snowfall, thick and gorgeous, and I found myself wishing it snowed here more often. (However, I know my Dad is still grateful he lives a few hours south of me, where the snow was melted within a few hours.)

Our full-sized official Georgia Snowman

I was the first one to disturb the snow on this sidewalk.

At the edge of our neighborhood, the forest grows wild, and was a lovely sight.

Look cloesly, and you'll see the camoflauged umbrella strewn into the bushes.

The vague aspirations of one neighborhood’s street signs

Jcedens — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:42:26 +0000

Five months ago, I discovered a townhouse subdivision of sorts called “the Magnolias,” when I moved to a spot nearby. In the months since I’ve lived in the area, I’ve wandered bemusedly around the neighborhood, growing more bewildered with each passing street sign.

Anyone living in the United States is familiar with the “Pine Groves” and the “Terrace Hills” and insert-generic-nature-term-here subdivisions that plague areas developed in the last several decades. I find them terribly boring, non-distinct from each other, almost comical. But having never really researched it thoroughly, I don’t know many of the details about street names inside those neighborhoods. Do they follow the same theme? Are they based entirely on nice-sounding and emotionally inspiring concepts? Do they simply draw names from hats? The answer is out there somewhere. I can only shed light on one example, the Magnolias in Cherokee County, Georgia, and the answer for this case may be all of the above.

The Magnolias on Google Maps

Thirteen roads needed to be named in the Magnolias. A fourteenth “road” was given a name as well, though, so that anyone who pulls into the neighborhood drives gloriously down 200-foot Plantation Parkway. The grand parkway is all of the length of an extra-long dog leash. Which begs the question, who decided this span of concrete even merited a name different from the main road in the subdivision, and when that person won his case, who let him call it a parkway? Doesn’t that imply lots of traffic, busy sidewalks, or even a state highway? For whatever reason, Plantation Parkway is there, and if you use Google Maps to obtain directions, it shows up in the list of left- and right-turns.

The main road is Magnolia Leaf, which sounds normal to an unknowing stranger or newcomer to the ‘hood. Take a left on the next intersecting road however, and things start to digress. That’s Society Way, which begs an air of I’m not sure what, but definitely sparks pretension in my mind. What political message is trying to make its point on Society Way? I’m not sticking around to hear it.

After that you can walk down any of the surrounding streets and feel the confusion build: Market Place Dr., Breeze Lane, Blossom Way, Lantern Lane, until you arrive at the other end of the neighborhood and land on Antebellum Place. This is the first helpful clue to the theme the street-naming council was going for, with its clear reference to a historical time period. So, they’re thinking Southern atmosphere, let’s stir ideas of the weather, the plant life, lack of electricity, a pre-Civil War society…

A Magnolia tree, long a favored symbol of the South (Old and New).

The effect for someone who doesn’t really study history is mostly confusion. The effect for someone who does is… still confusion. Vague references to serene southern images rest on some streets, while parallel names proffer concepts like the plantation and the South during slavery. Whitefield Way provides another clue, but only to people who are really paying attention: Georgia Whitefield was a preacher from Charleston, South Carolina. That is probably Whitefield they meant, as Charlesstone Court lay a few streets over. Another tiny connecting road, Battery Way, makes reference to the Battery in Charleston, a main road and historical thoroughfare there. Cotton Gin Drive again provokes images of the Old South. My personal favorite is Rocking Chair Court which, while indeed related to the Antebellum South, must have been pulled from a hat when the committee realized they were one street name short. In keeping with the random selection, Bay Overlook Drive does not pass by any water, except the neighborhood pool; maybe any type of water represented a bay in this case?

After some thought, it can be roughly deduced what theme the developers were going trying to provide. Most people who use these roads will give it little thought at all, or will give it the least amount of thought. Perhaps the developers were going for a nostalgic Charleston theme. Introducing a confusing selection of South Carolinian and Old South terms to a neighborhood in a neighboring state can stir images of those things for drivers-by, whether or not their imaginations are accurate . So perhaps in this sense, they have created the mood they were going for. For others who put together the strange relations between the words and the historical references of each, the message becomes even more vague. Are we trying to recall this era in southern history in grand terms, by mixing traveling preachers with cotton gins and breezes, and adding a little nod to southern society by naming one road that very general “Society Way”? Are we pairing rocking chairs with “antebellum” because it will make the subject more approachable? I don’t think people want a history lesson in their neighborhood street signs; and if they do, let’s attempt to make it a bit more clear than the one presented here. There’s already enough trouble reconciling today’s South and the antebellum era of slavery. We don’t need to exacerbate the issue with vaguely related street names drawn from a hat.

Fighting for a country in which you have no rights…

Jcedens — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:43:25 +0000

This may sound more like a description of a totalitarian state, a lawless nation in remote Africa (or urban Africa), or maybe a Soviet-era Eastern European country. I’ve just been learning all about the atrocities suffered on the German-Russian front of WWII in Dan Carlin’s “Ghosts From the Ostfront” podcast series, and how many of the Russian soldiers were fighting for a country that had imprisoned, tortured, and perhaps killed their own family members. WWII was an epoch of worldwide chaos, really, more than History Channel specials can ever express. As Carlin says, it seems sometimes as if the people alive and doing these things during the war were creatures unlike people of today, because how could such brutality have been carried out?

Animosity towards Japanese during WWII

America has its own ghosts, which we often brush under the rug much as any other country, because who wants to remember how we forced Japanese-Americans out of their communities and into internment camps while we blasted a cultural homeland some of them had never even visited? Well the patriotic Japanese-Americans who lived through it sure want you to…

It can be easier to point to other countries and cultures and say, “But look at what they’re doing to their own people! That’s much worse than our past.” But the problem here is the disconnect that exists between our history and what the average American knows about it; and the misinformation that runs rampant when you have sports coaches teaching your high school history classes. Our own people have also suffered under legislation that in hindsight seems unbelievable.

The United States had another demon from its WWII past that was finally given its proper recognition in 2007. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American pilots in the U. S. military, and they fought in the war in the south European and North African front, earning a stellar flight record with very small losses. Then they returned to a homeland that subscribed to Jim Crow traditions of discrimination and racism. In fact, although many of these pilots were even more extensively trained than their white counterparts (due to disbelief in their abilities), many of these men returned home and could not find employment in the commercial aviation field. Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson reported that he was treated better as a POW of Germany than he was treated in his own state of Mississippi. Read that again. Now remember that we’re talking about the most brutal war in human history, which he willing went to fight for a segregated United States. And the most ironic and tragic thing of all: he had to fight even to earn that opportunity.

When war was looming, the United States military realized they had an entire segment of the population that it need to utilize, the African-American men and women who were ready and willing to serve. The “Tuskegee Experiment” that grew out of this was deemed a failure before it had even fully begun, as black men were literally seen to be incapable of handling the complicated process of flying a plane, as reported in the War College Report of 1925. Eugenics and other notions of a hierarchy of intelligence were rampant during the first few decades of the twentieth century, but it is somewhat shocking that they were still considered pertinent, influential–and, worst, of substance or truth–by the start of the second world war.

G. I. Washington, Dr. Frederick Peterson, and Charles "Chief" Anderson. This photo appears in the exhibit, courtesy Tuskegee University.

The Airmen had a lot to be proud of though, they fought their “Double V Campaign” (victory both on the war front and at home) with honor and tenacity; only one of the Vs came to fruition. And then for over half a century proper credit was not given. The pilots and their ground crew were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement by a decade or more. The men founded Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. (TAI) in the early ’70s and it continues to have annual conferences and has welcomed “torch-bearers” into their ranks to carry on the legacy of the Airmen and their stories. Several of the Airmen have written books (unfortunately when you search Amazon, top results are the 1995 Laurence Fishburne film…).

Bill Clinton, during his presidency, commissioned a national historic site to be established on Moton Field in Tuskegee, Ala. where the men had done some of their training; that historic site opened in 2008. Several exhibits exist currently on various military bases around the South. And opening Nov. 17, 2009 is a traveling exhibit created by students in the Public History program at Kennesaw State University (I am one of those students) in partnership with the school’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education and Tuskegee University. The coordinators of the Public History program, Drs. Dickey and Lewis, were the overseers of the entire project, and it has turned into our own little legacy. In 2007, President Bush awarded the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Medal of Honor, finally recognizing in the federal record books the amazing obstacles incurred and bravery maintained by all graduates of the Tuskegee aviation program during WWII. The honor also shed greater light on the legacy of TAI and the scholarships and public services they have provided since the group’s inception.

Invitation

"The Tuskegee Airmen: The Segregated Skies of WWII" opens Nov. 17, 2009.

I am proud to have been a part of curating this exhibit on the Airmen. “The Tuskegee Airmen: The Segregated Skies of WWII” is a traveling, collapsible exhibit consisting of ten panels that tell the story, with photos courtesy of Tuskegee University, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives. It opens Tuesday, Nov. 17 at the KSU Center, and will be on display there until Feb. 28, 2010. I am very excited about the opening, and some of the original Airmen from the Atlanta chapter of TAI will be attending. (As a side note, my mom made me an incredible black Donna Karen design dress. Perfection for a co-curator.) If you live in the area, stop by and see it. After that, it will be traveling to various schools and organizations; the Airmen even want to bring it to their annual conference next year. What an amazing thing to have as my own tiny legacy at KSU, one that will potentially reach 50,000 people over its lifespan, according to Dr. Catherine Lewis, the museum’s director.

The Tuskegee Airmen waited a long to time to be acknowledged for their military service and impressive record in WWII. The United States has its own ghosts, but I like to hope in time, they can all be laid in the open and understood for their good and bad. I’m surprised by how many people I find who don’t know who the Tuskegee Airmen were. I hope this exhibit inspires people through their story.

Decatur Street, 2009: Lessons in Atlanta’s 1906 race riot

Jcedens — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:30:36 +0000

For the first half of my history senior seminar class, we had assigned readings–articles from the Georgia Historical Quarterly–that we discussed for their knowledge and arguments but also for their technical structure and research methods. Because the ultimate goal of the course is our own senior theses, we were using these as models for what our own research would become. The length, breadth, and coverage of journal articles like this is the aim for my own project, which I’m currently tackling with success so far (overwhelming at times, but I’m handling it well). I’ll explain a little more about my thesis in another post, sometime soon.

Two of the very first articles we read were about the Atlanta race riot of 1906. (Specifically, Harvey K. Newman and Glenda Crunk, “Religious Leaders in the Aftermath of Atlanta’s 1906 Race Riot,” GHQ 92, no. 4 [Winter 2008]: 460-85; Gregory Mixon, “‘Good Negro–Bad Negro’: The Dynamics of Race and Class in Atlanta During the Era of the 1906 Riot,” GHQ 81, no. 3 [Fall 1997]: 593-621.) This event in Atlanta history had been largely brushed under the rug since it occurred, so in 2006, for the centennial anniversary of the riot, efforts were made to bring this event into public light. The class readings were my first exposure to the event, in fact, and my interest was especially sparked by trying to visualize the Atlanta in which such a violent event took place. More than the social tensions, the gubernatorial smearing, and the yellow journalism, I was also interested in the physical Atlanta; where on Decatur Street were the saloons that were targeted, where did the mobs head, which buildings are still around, and where were these spots in relation to modern-day cityscape?

As it turns out, there is a walking tour that answers those questions. The tour is lead by Cliff Kuhn, associate professor of history at Georgia State, and began as part of the riot’s centennial events. Due to its popularity, the tour is still going, meeting at Woodruff Park at Five Points on the second Sunday of each month. I didn’t have to work this past Sunday, and so headed downtown with my boyfriend Ben to see and learn about Decatur Street and the surrounding spots.

When the riot broke out on a Saturday night in September, it did not come as a shock to most people. For several weeks, newspapers had been reporting alleged cases of assault by black men upon white women, and tensions were coming to a head. A heavily publicized gubernatorial race between Hoke Smith and Clark Howell had the men pitted against each other over who was better, ultimately, at disenfranchising African Americans. Behind these things were the growing pains of turn-of-the-century Atlanta, as it had become a multicultural city including immigrants and women working in the new industrial factories. Change was not easy for rural Georgians who came to Atlanta and found unfamiliar faces and behavior. Part of that behavior was the lifestyle available down on Decatur Street, where Eastern European Jewish immigrants (among some others) owned saloons where men could gallivant and drink and perhaps other unholy things– much to the dismay of Prohibitionists and rural Southerners who saw this as a dark spot on their city. Within these saloons, the intermingling of various classes and races was itself a huge threat to the way things had been. A particularly reported lynching had also fueled animosity throughout communities in Atlanta. In the days just before the riot began on September 22, newspapers were practically egging white men on, towards a response to the perceived danger posed by black men in the city.

The building where Alonzo Herndon's barbershop was once housed

With the atmosphere as tense as it was, Atlantan Alonzo Herndon (Atlanta’s first black millionaire) decided to have the employees of his barber shop head home early. Herndon was not alone in that, and those African Americans who made it home before the violence began were lucky; violence was aimed that night–and in the days after–upon any man or woman who happened to be on the streets. Violence continued for three days after the first night. The riot intensified the social tension between blacks and whites, and actually created a split of middle- and upper-class African Americans from the lower-class, who they had to set apart as a saloon-going violent group who would have to be dealt with. This was seen as necessary in order to maintain the social and economic success that had so far been earned by Atlanta’s urban black community.

The violent riot, which drew anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 men to the streets on that Saturday night, brought large tremors to the social situation of Atlanta, and its main response as a city was to blow on past it. Newspapers claimed the riot was mostly caused by low-class rabble-rousing white men, never mind the reports they had been printing just days earlier. On a larger scale, the city sort of entrenched itself even deeper into segregation, seeing it as the best way to deal with the friction that had brought this event in the first place. Reverberations of this outburst, although brushed away quickly for most of the public, affected many witnesses for the remainder of their lives; this includes W.E.B. du Bois, Elizabeth McDuffie (who later worked for President Franklin Roosevelt), and newspaper publisher Max Barber.

Henry Grady Memorial, Atlanta, Ga.

There is no way to easily explain the riot or its effects afterward, and that is not my intent here; you can read more on that on your own time. My own experience seeing the downtown spots was worth the parking fee and the overzealous homeless street preachers; Herndon’s barbershop is still intact, on Peachtree Street, and is now a clothing store. The Henry Grady memorial monument down Marietta Street was constructed after his death in the 1890s, and during the riots at least three men were dragged to the foot of it to their own deaths. The Atlanta newspaperman had coined the term “New South,” and had believed in the South’s potential while still being a white supremacist. Professor Kuhn, the tour guide, said he interprets the laying of these men at Grady’s feet as a sort of cry of these southern men: “Here’s your ‘New South,’” Henry.” The economic opportunities and other promised changes had not yet come.

It has taken me three years studying world history to arrive at the doorstep of my own region, and to appreciate its history. It has, more incredibly, taken me eleven years to learn that Georgia history is more colorful and unbelievable than I ever knew. I’ve got to spend some time getting to know my history.

Museum studies and the Tuskegee Airmen

Jcedens — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:00:35 +0000

This fall I am part of a team that is curating an exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen for KSU’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education. The exhibit will be on display Nov. 17 – February, and then will begin to travel to schools for possibly the next ten years. That’s a project that turns into our own small legacy within Kennesaw State. I am quite excited about this huge assignment.

Below will be, at the end, the journal entries I write each week regarding my thoughts on class discussion, readings, and project development. The brief entries will chronicle each week of the class and the exhibit progress, until its opening on Nov. 17. By that date, I will be more knowledgeable about public history and capable of working on historical projects to benefit the community. And you’re invited to the opening.

Week 2:

The more I read about putting together exhibits, the more excited I am to be part of a team that is putting one together. Having never really dug into the field of public history before, I am excited to see the impact public historians can impress on the community in which they work. It it such a subtle art. It is trying to teach people something without them realizing it, really; and it is making the information user-friendly and painstakingly clear. What an exciting challenge.

I have also been met with two separate and equally exciting reactions when I mention this class assignment. The first is, “Who are the Tuskegee Airmen?” This offers the obvious satisfaction of being able to explain, and then invite the friend/coworker/classmate/parent to visit the exhibit when it opens. The other reaction has been, “What a great topic! I know a guy who knows one of them…” While this second one has obviously been less often, I was still able to learn about those several people who were very knowledgeable about the Airmen and learn a little about their perception of and thoughts about them. One of my coworkers in particular knew an Airmen that had lived next door to him in Alabama several years ago, and offered his phone number for a chat. Potential conversation, respectfully declined but with a open invitation should I want to speak with him later. Overall, my discussion with people has given me the inspiration to really make this an exhibit people can take with them when they leave, in the form of a powerful, lasting memory.

I have also been giving the titles some thought, and am looking forward to seeing where everyone else has wound up after mulling over last week’s brainstorming session. We made some great progress, and my notes were full of thought-provoking panel topics. Looking forward to developing our plan further on Tuesday.

The “Revisiting the Past: History Museums in the U.S.” has been lingering in my mind since I read it several days ago. I did not know very much about Ford’s propulsion of his own version of historic preservation, or the formation of Greenfield Village. Neither did I know anything about Rockefeller, Jr.’s role restoring Colonial Williamsburg, VA. The details about their roles in preserving U.S. history (and both the positives and negatives of their projects) were quite fascinating.

I have spent some time studying revisionist historians’ role in changing the face of and perspectives regarding American history; I have also studied the movement towards pluralistic, social history that bloomed in the 1960s-70s. But I had never considered those movements to revise historic traditions and perceptions in the context of the MUSEUM– that proved the most enlightening element of the article. It seems simple to me now, and obvious that the museum world would have to be adjusted as women, African Americans, Native Americans and others were writing a more dynamic American history. But prior to this I had not made that connection. The museum’s role is an important element of the story of American history (and its recent revisions), so I found this article very worthwhile.

I found it surprising that prior to the founding, mid-nineteenth century, of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, there was not a large or well-orchestrated effort to obtain or maintain historic sites and houses. The women who had organized before that were somewhat successful, but I suppose it is taken for granted, in today’s world of UNESCO sites and national parks, that spots of intrinsic value have not always been valued as they are now.

The article was well-worth the read, as I have made several connections to other historical trends I’ve studied; it has also remained in my brain, where I continue to ponder the main points. To me, that is the mark of a strong piece of writing.

On a different note, I have been looking into the photos for my exhibit panels, and have found several that may work for the introduction. I am very interested to visit Tuskegee during our upcoming field trip, particularly now that I am part of the team that is working on the “Why Tuskegee” panel. The history of that area, Booker T. Washington, and the field and institution will all come to life, I feel, when I can see them myself and have the place in my mind. Looking forward to it.

Newseum was a curiosity, to say the least. I am not sure what to make of it, and can certainly see the reason behind the controversy (both the topic being covered and the investors who funded it). Nevertheless, it seems a bit inevitable, albeit sad, that visitors today are lured to flashy, technology-driven exhibits and museums. The average citizen might prefer it to quiet, reading-based, reflective museums. It is a real issue facing the museum world today, and technology will probably never be able to be entirely left out of museums as an element in telling the stories of history. The trick will be making it just as thought-provoking. Well-made videos can do this– I know I have seen several excellent ones while visiting exhibits and museums in the past.