Abraham Lincoln And The American Civil War - amazonia.fiocruz.br

Abraham Lincoln And The American Civil War Video

The fictional lawyer Atticus Finch and the real-life president Abraham Lincoln occupy the same space and play the same role in the white imagination. Both Lincoln and Finch are hailed by white Americans as pivotal figures who stood up against racism in singular moments of clarity.

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Yet the defenses of both Lincoln and Finch remain robust by both white public writers and white public teachers. In his recent column on the importance of Juneteenthjournalist Jamelle Bouie outlines the important role that Black Americans played in Emancipation and in life after the Civil War. Twitter comments about the piece reveal a white imagination that equates naming the contributions of Black Abraham Lincoln And The American Civil War in the struggle for article source with erasure of a prominent political figure. This type of uncritical reaction is typical in responses to calls to rethink the role of To Kill a Mockingbird in secondary English curriculum.

However, their placement not only obscures the contributions of Black Americans but also perpetuates myths about racism as a uniquely regional issue. This narrative actively erases Abrahwm work of Black Southern activists, abolitionists, and philosophers whose work was foundational in Wa our current conceptualizations of democracy. Subsequently, this narrative works to cover up the ways in which racism operates in Northern states, including through racist legal structures that maintain white supremacy.

I am not suggesting that Abraham Lincoln did not play a role in abolishing the legal system of slavery. Nor am I suggesting that Atticus Finch did not try to use his attorney power to minimize the harm of the racist legal system in Maycomb for at least one individual. However, I do believe that the common ways in which I and other white Americans have understood and article source Abraham Lincoln And The American Civil War stories overemphasize the role of individual white people and minimize the importance of Black people in movements whose names are never honored in secondary curriculum.

Fortunately, our classrooms can provide space to accelerate the progress of academic history and close the gap between history associated with the academy and history associated with popular memory.

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Lionizing individuals such as Lincoln and Finch not only erases the ways in which they have upheld racist ideas; it also minimizes even erases the roles played by everyday activists to push political leaders and lawyers such as Lincoln and Finch in the direction of justice. Centering Lincoln and Finch privileges the process of legal institutions and individuals rather than the activists who demand that those institutions change and then organize to align political leaders with their demands. Too often, Lincoln and Finch play the role of savior of the system, both in curriculum and in popular imagination, for white educators.

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