“And I wonder,” Angela Davis asked in a 2013 lecture at Birkbeck University in London, “will we ever truly recognize the collective subject of history that was itself produced by radical organizing?” The narratives we tell ourselves, the myths we construct, obscure the foundations and erase the stories of countless individuals and moments in history. We seek a clear path for our narratives, a firm beginning and a solid closure, eschewing what came before we entered the story or what follows after the last sentence appears on the page.

Speaking about the fiftieth anniversary of the events in 1963, Davis states, “What I fear about many of these observances is that they tend to enact historical closures.” The “historical closure” eliminates anything that occurs beyond the end; it serves as a punctuation mark, closing off any indication of a future beyond that final mark on the page. When we come to the “historical closure” of a narrative, we fail to see that time moves onward, forever marching beyond the end of the book, long past the last breath we exhale as we recite the narrative. Davis continues, “[Historical closures] are represented as historical high points on a road to an ultimately triumphant democracy; one which can be displayed as a model for the world; one which perhaps can serve as justification for military incursions, including the increased use of drones in the so-called war on terror, which has resulted in the killing of vast numbers of people, especially in Pakistan.”

Davis pushes back against the individualized narratives that center specific people in movements. Instead of focusing on individuals, we must remember the collectives, the multiple people involved in movements for liberation. Our cultural stories, especially in the United States, center the individual, but the individual does not accomplish things on their own. In a 2013 speech at Davidson College, celebrating Black History Month, Davis told the audience, “You see, we think individualistically, and we assume that only heroic individuals can make history.” This framing erases countless individuals and collectives, groups of people who laid the groundwork, supported the movement, and continued it long before and after the individual physically dies.

As I walked around Old Screamer Mountain recently, I thought about Davis’ words and the ways we seek to confine history and stories to neat packages in order to absolve ourselves of past generational sins and to inhibit our own desire to continue fighting for freedoms in the face of systemic issues. I walked the moss covered paths that once housed Laurel Falls Camp for Girls and where Lillian Smith, Paula Snelling, and others lived during their lives. Walking the paths, I came across some wind chimes hung from a tree near the Director’s Cottage and the library. The wind blew through the trees and caused the chimes to sway, creating a soothing melody that rang through the space.

I don’t know how long the wind chimes had been there, but as I stood there, listening to the sounds of the metal disc hitting the different chimes and emitting varied tones that formed into a melody, I thought about those who walked the same moss-covered paths, heard the same trees rustle in the wind, heard the same wind chimes play a different melody. I thought about those that inhabited the space. Those whose existence in that space and in our collective memories has never fully existed, thus causing them to become excised from the narratives we tell ourselves about the past.

I thought about people such as Melanie Morrison’s parents, specifically her mother, who during her time in college in the 1930s came up to Screamer Mountain with other students from Alabama for a weekend and spent time with Lillian, Paula, and others, talking about race, sex, and more. I thought about campers such as Sarah Brabant who went to Laurel Falls in 1943 and the question Lillian to the young camper Sarah as she worked on Strange Fruit. Lillian asked her, “Your world is about to change. Are you willing to change with it?” Both Melanie and Sarah would go on to dedicate their lives to working for social justice in Michigan and Louisiana respectively.

Standing there, I thought about the conversations that Lillian had with Eslanda Robeson and Mary Church Terrell during September 1943 when Lillian had an interracial gathering of women on the mountain. I think about what they said to one another, the dinner where a white guest felt nauseous eating with Robeson or Terrell even though she knew in her heart it was the right thing to do, her conscience, the lessons she learned from Southern Tradition, made her sick to her stomach. I think about what they said during dinner, after dinner, on their walks in the woods, in the library, while swimming in the pool.

Listening to the wind chimes, I thought about the two young boys, possibly at the behest of the Klan or other local white supremacists, who came up the mountain and burned down Lillian’s study, destroying over 10,000 pages of manuscripts, letters, and other priceless items. I think about the GBI or FBI snooping around, listening in on conversations in some way. I think about what they heard, what they said to one another, and their reactions to all of it.

When the disc sways and hits one of the chimes, causing a metallic sound to resonate, I think about whether Coretta and Martin Luther King, Jr. ever made it up there and sat in the library a few feet from where I stood. They told Lillian and Paula, after an overseas trip, they wanted to come to Screamer Mountain over the summer. Did they make it? I know that Lonnie King and the student activists in 1960 made it up there before the October sit-ins in Atlanta that year. Jane Stembridge tells us that. What did they say? What were the discussions about the sit-ins? What strategies did they lay out? The occupied the same space I did; they heard the same woods I did as I stood there on the path.

What did it sound like when they laid Lillian to rest, as they sang and celebrated her life as she sunk into the ground? What did those who came after say? What conversations did Paula have with Esther, Annie Laurie, and those making a pilgrimage to Old Screamer? What plans originated on that mountain? The wind chimes play melodiously in my ears, spurred on by the rushing wind, and the sounds of the past join with them, leading to a cacophony of voices that played a role in history, in the movement. I hear the voices of those we know and those we don’t know. I hear the voices of campers, students, activists, artists, musicians, everyday people seeking truth about themselves and the world we inhabit, seeking answers to ways to make this world better.

There is no “historical closure.” There never will be any “historical closure” because time continues forward, marching ever into the future. The voices of those who came before remain, and those who came before thought about life beyond their mortal coil. They thought about us and future generations. As Angela Davis said at Davidson College, “And so we have to learn how to imagine the future in terms that are not restricted to our own lifetimes.” We must think about those who come after as much as we think about those who came before. The march towards progress is a relay, the passing of the baton from one runner to the next, in a continual movement forward. If we adhere to “historical closure,” then we are doomed to repeat the 1860s, the 1960s, and . . .