War, in the name of peace…

The thought is bewildering, paradoxical, and also quite present in our world, both now and in the past–even if it has been defined differently throughout time. Recently, Patrick Cox mused over the meaning of the word “peace” in his podcast, The World in Words (which I’ve cited several times before–great listening), starting with President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. In itself, this oratory does a number on the definition of the easily-rattled-off but elusive-to-conceive word.

Here’s a segment from President Obama’s speech:

“We must begin by acknowledging a hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations, acting individually or on concert, will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: ‘Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem, it merely creates new and more complicated ones.’ As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive, in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King; but as a head of state, sworn to protect and defend my nation, and I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake, evil does exist in the world.”

Maybe it’s a side-effect of my historiographical debates class, where we examine the words of great orators of the past, and where we’re reading and arguing weekly about Hegelian and Marxist views of history as an up-hill march towards perfect societies, but President Obama’s speech incited several things in my mind: as Patrick Cox says in the podcast, these things, phrases like “evil exists,” and “morally justified use of force,” are all things we have heard before in political speeches. Joseph Stalin defended force and violence many times, as a means of improving the Soviet state; Mao Zedong incited suspicion and approved violence amongst his Red Guard youth devotees. These are keywords used by politicians that justify a nation’s actions, and also ensure that the people are enthralled and uplifted by the leader’s response to evil. This means of inspiration, that we are improving, that we see our goal in sight and so violence is justified, appears throughout political oratory, and indeed nearly every leader in every country in the post-Enlightenment modern world harks back to the idea that we are improving, moving towards something better. Classic, and proven to be effective.

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of nonviolence

One may write the whole thing off to being a political speech written to speak to both sides, the peacekeeping America and the two-wars America, and indeed the sentiments somehow seek to provide both at once. And that is not such a terrible thing, for nothing exists in a vacuum and nation-states tend to be bundles of juxtapositions.

So how do we define peace, within ongoing global disunity and war? What is its nature? Does it in fact, contain war, as has been argued? “The word ‘peace’ is either taken as a given or used very lightly,” said Dennis Ross, a U. S. diplomat and author. Can you have a commitment to peace but never come through, or in fact, consistently perform opposite to such peaceful notions? And on a larger scale, is progress the ability to reduce both good and bad in the world?

Listen to the entire discussion and hear the speech in the World in Words podcast #79 (the peace discussion begins around 11:30 minutes in). Then tell me what you think.

India encompasses several of those significant place-names, spots which have incurred a more colorful past and have somehow not only survived, but have continually accumulated layers of traditions, histories, and cultural idiosyncrasies. The Indian subcontinent in particular has somehow managed to retain aspects of its thousands of years and numerous empires, layering all the traditions of countless ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups to reach the diversity and density of its existence today. “India” today is also a relatively vague term, as Pakistan and Bangladesh share the same heritage and history as the nation-state that we think of as India in 2010. These three countries together form the subcontinent, and it really is just that, a continent, with the same linguistic and cultural boundaries as more dissected regions like Europe or the Middle East. A Bengali and a Rajput are as different culturally as a Russian and an Italian, but modern history has placed them in the same country. We must think of India as a continent when we approach its past and present.

This shows the lines drawn to create India, Pakistan, and Bangledesh, three countries that share a history and heritage, but are part of a continent in terms of diversity.

Many before me from western societies have also shared this sense of wonderment with its people, religions, textiles, history, and the interaction of them all; men were fascinated during British economic and later political influence, and many-a-hippie or Beatles fan may also have found themselves seeking enlightenment or finding a guru in their own relationship with India. Since classes began in January, I have rekindled my former addiction to chai, India’s sweet, milky tea. I have been writing journal entries for class that have me thinking about the place all the time. I’m listening to Bhangra music and my Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack more. I’m trying to grapple with the narrative of Pakistani politics since 1947’s partition, when the Muslim nation was left independent and without the structural foundation of government that India had; I’m trying to keep straight who pulled a coup d’état on whom.

Dalrymple's feast of a book, about the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857

Out of this book I have learned the Indian term “wallah,” which comes at the end of a word, such as “Delhiwallah,” and roughly means “person who is from…” or “person who does…” So if the cable guy is coming to your home in Hyderabad, you may tell you friend something like “The cablewallah is coming to install a satellite dish.” It’s little gems like this that only increase my respect and adoration of the culture. I would, personally, much rather be a retailwallah than a “sales associate.” Incidentally, if you have seen Slumdog Millionaire, you may recall the show host referring to Jamal as a chaiwallah, because he got the tea for people at the call center where he worked.

Delicious Thali dinner at Swapna Indian restaurant

This fall, my Mom, does custom sewing, created a wedding dress for a young woman out of vintage saris, which were given to her upon the death of a close relative to their family. Though the bride is not Indian, she was wed on December 19, 2009 wearing a wonderful custom-built dress made from pieces of some gorgeous saris, in rich reds, oranges, and creams. I sometimes have the wish that I could wear a sari, as an American blonde girl in Atlanta, Georgia, and not draw any strange looks. Or even that I owned one just to wear anyway. Someday, I hope.

Although some of these things are part of a class, they transcend the classroom. For me, it is learning on a very personal level, as I find so many beautiful things buried in India’s varied culture. India, even while it is a place I’ve never seen, inspires and bewilders me. Delhi, Bombay, Hyderabad, the coasts of Kerala, are all very different from each other and steeped in layers of history and tradition that a native of a relatively new-born country cannot naturally conceive of.

There are many spots in India that are rich with history, layered with thousands of years of traditions, and they have long-served as the meeting points between ethnicity, language, religion. Today they also serve as representatives to the outside world; some in history have looked disdainfully at the country, seen it as a place unworthy of respect, as the British had been increasingly doing in the years before the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857. But there were generations of men before and after that saw much more than this. Perhaps they saw what we recognize today, those of us who have such great admiration and respect for a land that holds such an ancient, colorful past: India as a continent, an immense, aching, breathing, enlightened, beautiful place.

(Visit “More Ink” to check out some of my recommended books and films in or about the subcontinent.)

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.

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

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).

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.

We used poster board taped toegther to create the homemade pattern, giving each square its essential, unique shape.

The piecing was done to refect the original look, but I took each little design in my own direction. This is the quilt body at five rows, around the start of July.

For color scheme, I wanted to keep the palette close to the pastel and pale dominating colors that bound the original quilt, because that base is what makes all the bold squares really pop. Right as the fall semester was starting, I finished the eighth and final row on the quilt front (nine would have made it disproportionately long, so I opted to stop at eight). A few weeks later, I bought the backing fabric, a funky Amy Butler design I found at my local Red Hen Fabrics. My mom taught me a mitered corner, and I successfully created a bold black frame around my quilt front. It was ready to be quilted.

I learned mitered corners while applying the black edging fabric that would frame the quilt face.

She called me with the good news about three weeks ahead of my estimated completion date, which meant that after everything, I was going to finish the job in time for Christmas. All that was left was the binding, which I again learned from my mother. I used a nice stone-colored fabric for the binding, and hand-stitched the entire back side as I learned this final step.

The finished quilt face, at the start of September.

The entire quilt was a learning process. Every little technique was taken into this larger project as an essential and important skill, one that must be accurate and provide the professional touch that learned quilters look for. Learning from my mother, there was no way I could do things in an amateur way, which is why piecing each square was just as important as reverse applique, and little things like seam allowances had to be accurate. Those skills translate into many other areas of sewing and design, and knowing how things are made when I see them only makes me want to start all over again with a new design. But I’m not quite so crazy; I’ll give it a few months at least. I have mastered the mitered corner (OK, I’ve only somewhat grasped it) and learned some tips and tricks on making a professional-looking doubled-over binding. Along the way, I also bought my own sewing machine (having grown up using my mom’s trusty Viking) and have definitely mastered threading and cleaning that thing.

The quilt comes alive with the quilting lines, which I had done professionally in order to maintain the technical mastery I had tried to keep with my quilting.

Look closely to see the geometric quilting pattern running through the entire body. The reverse-side fabric is an Amy Butler design. That is also some of my hand work on the appliqued binding.

Close-up of the corner I used to make the binding look lovely.

Most importantly, it is Avery-approved, so it's a cuddly spot for Ben's cats too. She spent a lot of time snoozing in my quilt basket too, getting hair on the fabrics that would grow into this quilt.

We read.

For two months we read an array of articles from the Georgia Historical Quarterly, on various topics in Georgia history from the Civil War to the early 1970s. During this time, we were each seeking to become well-read in our respective areas of interest, often guided through the sources by our professor, Dr. David Parker. Then around the end of September, we stopped meeting to discuss articles and hypothetical topics and started using that class time to scour the archives, the library, and the research databases we’d used to much less extent in previous classes: we had to come up with a thesis and flesh it out into a contextual and well-argued history thesis by Dec. 7.

No pressure.

Young J. Allen in his early twenties; he mentions in a letter to his aunt and uncle (who raised him) that he stopped shaving his beard at the outset of the American Civil War. It is apparent that he never picked up the habit again. (Photos courtesy MARBL, Emory.)

I had arrived in this class at the eleventh hour, signing up about two weeks before the start of fall semester– and without one last prerequisite class I needed. And in fact it was quite surprising to some of my history major friends that I would end up in a Georgia History senior seminar after spending college studying Asia. But several weeks earlier, in mid-July, Dr. Parker and I had found a way to combine these two seemingly unrelated regions: Young John Allen.

Young J. Allen (yes, Young is his first name, not a kindly prefix) graduated from Emory College when it was just a newly-founded school in Oxford, Georgia, and spent his life as a Methodist missionary in Shanghai, China. He left the United States in Dec. 1859 and remained in the Far East until his death there in 1907. His manuscript collection as well as a large library of his own books reside at Emory University in Atlanta, deeming Allen the subject of a day’s trek over to the archives at their Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL). What started as a fun mini-project for my summer class (which I also took with Dr. Parker) would have to become my senior thesis topic; when else was I going to find a subject that would so perfectly blend documents in Georgia and three years’ worth of my knowledge about Chinese culture, language, politics, and religion? Plus, I was raised Methodist, so I would get to know a little more about that history to boot.

What I would discover was much more than the life, failures, and triumphs of Young J. Allen and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in China, but simply how enthralling it is to pour over documents that he poured over more than a century earlier. Call me a dork, or a call me a historian, but it felt utterly like touching history. Thankfully, he had somewhat legible handwriting, so I read what I could of his hand-written letters, journals, sermons, and notes for the books he wrote. It felt romantic in the way it seems when you read The Historian and follow a generation of historians across Cold War Europe in search of Vlad Tepes (the prince who inspired tales of Dracula) but also monotonous in the way that you feel work must inevitably be. The result is a happy medium, a wholly rewarding experience and with any luck, worthwhile when you sit down to write.

What did I find?

Allen would spend his life devoted to not only evangelism but the added social goals of education, journalism, writing, and translating.

I found a man inspired by God, baffled by Confucius, and bound to pragmatism. The state of the young Methodist mission was sad when he arrived, and much as he tried to expand it, the American Civil War stole any hope of support or funding from abroad. Allen and his fellow missionary J. W. Lambuth spent nearly a decade working odd jobs to keep themselves afloat. Their families were present in Shanghai too; in fact, Allen had six children with his wife Mary Houston Allen, but only three survived past toddlerhood. By the time funding returned in any sense, Allen had made his own revelation about Chinese society. The non-receptive citizens he’d been preaching to had been anything but successful; but the young men he taught while working at a government school seemed just the type, the upper class families, who may have more influence in a hierarchical Confucian society. Maybe, he decided, reaching these people first and educating them in western subjects (including but not exclusively Christianity) could later influence more people through the top-down formation of their citizenship. These people would not only receive the accompanying western education that Allen considered paramount, but might have more success at reaching the laypeople with whom he’d become so disenchanted.

Allen spent the rest of his life working to varying degrees in education in Shanghai. The Anglo-Chinese College, Shanghai would eventually merge with two others to become Suzhou University in 1901, which had been one of his life’s goals. He would also play his hand in journalism and publishing, using his Wan-kuo kung-pao magazine to propel a combination of world and national news, essays on religion, and attacks on Confucian lifestyle. He contributed many translations of tomes on politics and religion, including The Relations Between East and West that was popular among his colleagues and governmental gentry. He wrote several books of his own as well, including one that you can find on Google Books today (by the way, it’s in Chinese!). While he did not abandon his evangelistic goals, he expanded those initial plans by adding his social missions to his ambitious strategy to win converts. He wound up somewhere in between fully accepting Confucian society and fully condemning it, and allowed students to learn about Christianity in a non-pressured way. At the end of the day, he saw both mental and spiritual parts of man to be significant.

My thesis touches on this and other aspects of what made Allen a combination of the two worlds of missionary work that grew out of that late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as Americans and other missionaries encountered reluctant natives in the field; a strong camp of traditional strictly evangelical missionaries would go forth alongside the newer social progress proponents. It wound up being around 8000 words (thirty pages double-spaced). I had an embarrassing number of library books checked out from mine and other university libraries across Georgia.

It was an incredible exercise in being a historian. Almost every person in my ten-student class ended up spending at least a few days in an archive somewhere in Georgia, from Emory to Koinonia Farm and in between. What any of these theses will become in the future remains to be seen, but I think we all felt like historians during those months. I am one of the only living experts on Young J. Allen, and I think that’s pretty darn cool.

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.

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.

But this summer, I stumbled upon a weakness of sorts within myself. I spent the first eleven years of my life in the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan (1987-1998), where my fourth-grade teacher taught a paltry Michigan history; at least, it’s paltry in my mind due to my minimal memory of anything that happened in Michigan history. I know Lewis and Clark passed by and the U.P. was a stronghold of iron mining (and I believe it still is…). Enough “Northern” was in me, I’m afraid, to consider Georgia history inferior and mostly see it as a compilation of idiots’ doings and praise of the Confederacy. Right as my family arrived (1999), the state flag had sparked controversy and the notion of “southern pride” seemed, to me, the ramblings of the ignorant. I didn’t understand Georgia’s past, nor did I care much to learn it. I was from Michigan, I didn’t need to know. By the time eighth grade rolled around, I was enrolled–along with every other public school eighth-grader–in Georgia History. Three years in the state had not improved my outlook on the relevance of Georgia’s past. I knew the state had been burned by that nobleman General William T. Sherman, and he gave Lincoln the city of Savannah as a Christmas present (I lived in Savannah during these years, and Savannians love to tell that story); I knew John Wesley landed in this state and spread his new philosophy across it (what would become Methodism, the denomination of my upbringing). I knew that modern-day white people loved to talk about their beloved Confederate battle flag, a topic I found boring. These were the basics in my mind, and this was enough for me to declare it a waste of time. It did not help that my eighth-grade Georgia history teacher was, for some reason, thought to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I cannot remember one ounce of information or reasoning backing this statement up, and looking back he seemed to be just a quirky guy who wore transition shades, but you know how schoolchildren are– the rumor stuck, and I disregarded a lot of the things he said. (I feel bad about that now, and I feel worse the more I think about it. I can’t think of one piece of evidence against him.) The KKK was a scary, historical image in my young head, another testament to the horrible past the South had, and another reason why it should be disregarded.

I am far beyond that, obviously, high school and college have smartened me slightly, and I do not have such a myopic view of southern history. But I must admit that I have spent three years in college avoiding American history classes; until this summer when a course I took was focused on post-Civil War and Reconstruction. As it turns out, there are endless subjects in Georgia history to examine, and a trove of colorful characters who participated in the state’s amazing story.

Turns out I was dead wrong all those years. And now in a bit of a sticky spot.

I had now spent eleven years as a resident of Georgia (1998-2009). I can really no longer hold on to any idea of myself as a “northerner,” since really, my memories of Michigan are of childhood and subsequent return visits. Not only that, but I have no adult perception of life in my chilly childhood state, and know none of its history. So I don’t know Michigan history because I’ve lived in Georgia so long, but I’ve resisted learning about Georgia because I excused myself as “northern.” And I am a… historian?

Not to mention the fact that I am going to be graduating from an American university–a Southern American university–and taking my career into the wider world, a world that expects me, as a historian, to be educated on my own region’s past. If I venture into a global community of historians and start to chat about their histories but know none of my own, what good am I to the field? What kind of respect will I expect to earn with such an embarrassing lack of insight on my own state’s history?

My last year in school, however, has started to build my education in this critical element. The summer class really sparked a desire to learn more about the amazing history there is to study in Georgia. My senior seminar, in which I write my senior thesis, is on Georgia History. Some of the articles we read in that class blew my uninformed little brain: Stone Mountain’s history, anti-suffragist women, the Lost Cause, the state flag change of 1957–I never dreamed of the complexity and intrigue wrapped up in all the issues in the state’s history, and how these elements still linger in the present. My museum studies class has taken me to several museums in the area that I’d never before visited. And my own new-found interest is encouraged by personal endeavors: reading books I pick out and visiting places I’ve yet to see for myself. Learning about my city, my region, my state. Eleven years later, I’ve made a discovery: the thirteenth colony is pretty darn cool.

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

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.

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.

East Asia

Assisted by a Korean Chinese guide, they were doing research and conducting interviews near the Chinese-Korean border, along the Tumen River. They state in their explanation that they are neither prepared to discuss in detail their experiences as prisoners nor looking to take any attention away from the dire situation they were there to cover in the first place.

As both of the articles I have linked to will suggest, the “underground” crossing North Korean citizens are making to escape the totalitarian state is dangerous and heart-breaking– and means either death or a life sentence in a labor camp if they are caught and deported. Ling and Lee were near the border where this journey begins when they were arrested, interviewing refugees and the people helping them escape in an effort to highlight their stories. It is a frightening reality to imagine that for just a 90-second stint on North Korean soil, these two American citizens were apprehended and subsequently sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp. This is a government that clearly has some issues, and seriously takes action against anyone trying to escape or trying to illuminate the situation.

Refugees camp out in the forests during their trek across China, Laos, and finally, Thailand. This photo appeared in National Geographic along with an article on the state of this escape movement.

A refugee who has landed safely in South Korea, or maybe even one waiting on placement back in Thailand or China, still has cultural and linguistic barriers to overcome. These people have been living in a hermit society, speaking a somewhat archaic and nowhere near modern version of the Korean spoken by South Koreans. Down to the phrases and greetings used in everyday life, it can be a struggle for North Koreans to communicate with their Southern counterparts. Oftentimes looked down upon for their accents, it can be difficult for them to find good jobs in the South Korean job markets; sometimes they are not qualified educationally. Every day is a struggle.

LiNK helps refugees learn language and job skills, and helps them become acclimated with their new surroundings.

Journalists Ling and Lee have been making headlines since March 17 when they were arrested. But the more important story has been going on much, much longer.

I urge you to listen to PRI’s The World in Words podcast from February 19, 2009: “Two Koreas divided by language,” which takes the listener on a journey into North Korea, from the point of view of a Korean-American young woman who is granted permission to visit with her uncle and mother. Some of their family members were suddenly enemies when the line was drawn through the peninsula in the 1950s. She is quite aware, during her stay, that their lives could just as easily have been hers; her story is stunning, and highlights the Korean split in a starkly personal way.