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Ben Railton Profile picture
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24 Jan, 17 tweets, 10 min read
Looking for reading material to help you stay comfy & warm on this frigid January day? Well, it’s easy as another #ScholarSunday morning thread of public scholarly work from the last week! #twitterstorians
Great @benbarber96 interview of @AngieMaxwell1 for @facingsouth on countering the “Long Southern Strategy”:
facingsouth.org/2021/01/politi…
& an equally vital @FAIRmediawatch interview w/@KeriLeighMerrit on the Lost Cause:
fair.org/home/the-lost-…
& one more excellent interview, @nhannahjones w/@VelshiMSNBC on Mike Pompeo’s departing attacks on multicultural America:
msnbc.com/ali-velshi/wat…
@robgreeneII wrote a couple wonderful pieces this week. This one for @madebyhistory on Warnock’s victory & Black churches:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…
& this one for @jacobinmag on the life & legacy of Hank Aaron, on & especially off the diamond:
jacobinmag.com/2021/01/hank-a…
Compelling @Crystallynnweb piece for @madebyhistory on race & girlhood in America:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…
My @Fitchburg_State colleague & friend Sean Goodlett wrote his first piece for @ArcDigi, on the Jacobin-era France parallels to our current GOP:
arcdigital.media/our-jacobin-mo…
A lot of excellent #twitterstorians responses to the execrable #1776Commission report. Here’s the great @DainaRameyBerry for @Forbes:

forbes.com/sites/dainaram…
Important thread from @HilaryGreen77 on books to read instead of the report (which will be even easier now that it’s been taken off the WH website!):

Here’s @craigbrucesmith for @politico:
politico.com/news/magazine/…
Here’s @KevinMKruse for @MSNBCDaily:
msnbc.com/opinion/trump-…
& here’s a thread of mine on the report’s despicable depictions of educators:

Finally, to complement @TheAmandaGorman’s justifiably lauded Inaugural poem, here’s a complementary poem from the great @jerichobrown:
nytimes.com/2021/01/20/mag…
& finally finally, as we try to gear up for a new semester, this @PedagogyAmLitSt roundtable from November remains timely & helpful:
teachingpals.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/pal…
PS. I’m sure I missed plenty of great pieces, so share ‘em (including yours), please! #twitterstorians
That's @sgoodlett, for folks who want to give him a follow!

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Ben Railton Profile picture
19 Jan
So as my fellow #twitterstorians have documented quite potently, the #1776Commission report is propagandistic white supremacist nonsense. But I might be most offended by its depiction of education & educators, at this moment in our history no less. A quick thread:
For nearly a year now, educators—especially at the secondary & primary levels, but we higher ed folks as well—have been doing everything possible to take care of our young people amidst these horrific times & help them respond to all that's in our society & world.
That means fundamental emphases of care & community amidst a deepening global health crisis. But it also means responding to both the year’s protests & activisms & to white supremacist sedition & insurrection, to the worst & best of our history & society.
Read 11 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
1 Nov 20
Don’t want to spend the day reading polls but can’t quit the intertubes? Me neither on both counts—so here’s another #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing from the past week to check out instead. #twitterstorians
For @Medium, @bleachbred boils #Election2020 down to some of the core American & human rights issues on the ballot.

medium.com/the-polis/lect…
Those issues will continue past Tuesday of course, so make sure to check out Th’s @SchomburgCenter event feat @rdunbaro, Johanna Fernández, and Paul Ortiz.

eventbrite.com/e/histories-of…
Read 16 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
28 Oct 20
#OnThisDay 134 years ago, the Statue of Liberty was formally dedicated in New York Harbor. The moment reflects two frustrating layers to American mythmaking, but nonetheless still embodies some of the best of our ideals & community. A thread:
The 1st layer of frustrating mythmaking is the thoroughgoing erasure of the Statue’s original focus on slavery and abolition. Only the broken chains around Liberty’s feet (tellingly invisible to nearly all visitors to the island) reflect those origins.
By 1886 the US was fully in the throes of Lost Cause narratives of Civil War, race, & nation, & this erasure of Edouard Laboulaye’s original vision for the Statue reflects those broader collective elisions & myths.

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2019/04/april-…
Read 14 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
27 Oct 20
We’re a week out from not just #ElectionDay, but also the 100th anniversary of the Ocoee Massacre. & for this month’s @SatEvePost Considering History column, I delve into the foundational ties bt voter suppression & racial terrorism. #twitterstorians

saturdayeveningpost.com/2020/10/consid…
Even as we’ve started to better remember histories of white supremacist violence, from the Red Summer of 1919 and Tulsa to the lynching epidemic, I think we still too often see such horrors as spontaneous explosions of mob hate, reflective of deeper prejudices but impromptu.
But in truth, white supremacist violence in America has consistently been carefully planned & orchestrated, w/voter suppression as one of its chief goals. My column traces that legacy through New Orleans, the 1874 massacres, Wilmington, Ocoee, & the 1968 Mississippi murders.
Read 7 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
26 Oct 20
Determined not to let the limits & frustrations of hybrid/pandemic in-person classes keep me from sharing William Apess as fully as possible w/my Am Lit I students. He remains one of the 3-4 voices we all most need to listen to, & we're gonna hear & respond to him today!
That means "Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man," rivaled only by Douglass's "What to the Slave..." as a bracing, biting attack on white American hypocrisy & prejudice--& an act of hopeful resistance & challenge to move us toward a more perfect union.
english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson…
& it means "Eulogy on King Philip," a critically patriotic speech as brave as Douglass' as it was delivered in Boston's Odeon Theater & made the case for the Wampanoag chief as a Revolutionary US ancestor at least as worthy of commemoration as Washington.
voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/apess-eulogy-s…
Read 4 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
18 Feb 20
On Toni Morrison’s bday, I’m thinking a lot about the end of her masterpiece Beloved in relationship to the @WoodsonCenter’s #1776woodson project (a direct response to the #1619Project). #twitterstorians
@WoodsonCenter Beloved’s short final chapter's through-line is a repeated phrase: “It was not a story to pass on” (shifted to “This is not a story to pass on” for its final repetition). The section's overtone is forgetting, suggesting the phrase's literal meaning (don’t pass this story on).
@WoodsonCenter That desire to forget—the character of Beloved, but also the histories of enslavement, slave trade, slavery's horrors, & esp what they demand of all those affected by them of which she’s a living reminder—is entirely understandable & to some degree even necessary for survival.
Read 13 tweets

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