Throughout Song in a Weary Throat, Pauli Murray highlights the intersections between Jim Crow segregation and Nazi Germany. Specifically, Murray uses the term “fascism” in these comparisons, drawing attention to the ways that the United States, while working to promote and save democracy abroad nevertheless allowed fascism to grow and spread in the United States, not just in the South. This, of course, is something … Read More The Smoldering of Fascism
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the initial publication of Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream, and as I reread it this past week, I kept thinking about its continued relevance today, especially during 2024, a year which, and I do not feel this is hyperbole, carries within it a huge deal of historical significance for the United States and our democratic experiment. Countless … Read More The Importance of Lillian Smith’s “Killers of the Dream” 75 Years Later in 2024
+ american history, christianity, history, jimmy carter, martin luther king, jr, politics, religion, ronald reagan
Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell’s America’s Providential History, which I started writing about in my pervious post, has been used in Christian schools and in the home-schooling movement since its initial publication in 1989. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges points out that the authors of this textbook define “‘liberty’ as fealty to ‘the Spirit of the Lord.’” Working towards “liberty” means freeing oneself from … Read More Genteel Racism” in “America’s Providential History”
During my Fulbright a few years ago, I went to Paris to give a talk. While there, I took a ride on the metro, and a few seats over from me I saw a woman dressed in a niqab. Fear consumed me upon seeing her, sitting in her seat as the train sped along the tracks. When the fear hit me, I immediately knew … Read More The Politics of Fear
+ american history, fascism, history, nora krug, on tyranny twenty lessons for the twentieth century, politics, timothy snyder
During our trip to Washington D.C. a few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Timothy Snyder and Nora Krug’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. The book is part history book, as the “lessons from the twentieth century” indicates, a part guide to how to work to preserve democracy when confronted with fascism or totalitarianism. Multiple things stand out to … Read More Why we “read books”
Interminable Rambling 