Markers of History

From time to time, I devi­ate from the usual pur­pose of Markers of History (record­ing vis­its to his­toric mark­ers and sites) for an essay that relates to his­tory as well. This blog will return tomor­row to his­toric mark­ers from Norfolk, Virginia.

Friday morn­ing, I was read­ing the news­pa­per and came across two sep­a­rate cases where his­tory met the present.

The first was about the open­ing of a time cap­sule that had been sealed in 1962. Since that time, the build­ing had served as home to a branch of the Norfolk Public Library, but this month, demo­li­tion started on the Kirn Memorial Library to make way for the largest sta­tion of the light rail line that is set to open in 2010. The exis­tence of the time cap­sule had been known, but its exact loca­tion was not until it was dis­cov­ered this week.

This morn­ing, I watched the video of an excited mem­ber of the city coun­cil as the cap­sule was opened pub­licly. Among the items retrieved from the time cap­sule were news­pa­per clip­pings about the early stages of the  building’s con­struc­tion, a library brochure, the city code and city bud­get of the time, and a let­ter from the 1962 mayor (which was addressed to “some future generation”).

The con­tents of this time cap­sule don’t reveal any­thing excit­ing that wasn’t already known about the city: it has not yet been half a cen­tury since they were placed together and sealed in the con­crete of the library itself. But I iden­ti­fied with an 11-year-old boy who was quoted by the Virginian-Pilot in their arti­cle. Randy Bulger is quoted as say­ing “I was so excited to come here today,” and “I saw how the story began, about how they founded Norfolk,” and “I learned a lit­tle bit of his­tory, too.” I feel that when I stand at a his­tor­i­cal marker and read about what hap­pened right where I’m standing.

It kind of reminds me of my feel­ings for watch­ing news events on tele­vi­sion. There is some­thing spe­cial about learn­ing about an event as it hap­pens. I think there’s some­thing equally spe­cial about learn­ing about an event where it happened.

Speaking of the news media, that was the sub­ject of the sec­ond arti­cle. This week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch used its edi­to­r­ial page to apol­o­gize for its role in sup­port­ing the state’s pol­icy of Massive Resistance to the Supreme Court’s deci­sion that racially-segregated edu­ca­tion was unequal and uncon­sti­tu­tional. In their edi­to­r­ial they say:

Massive Resistance inflicted pain then. Memories remain painful. Editorial enthu­si­asm for a dread­ful doc­trine still affects atti­tudes toward the news­pa­per. Many remem­ber. We under­stand. Words have con­se­quences. Artful para­graphs pro­moted ugly things. Stylish sen­tences salted wounds. Euphemism was prof­li­gate. As mem­bers of the Fourth Estate these pages did not keep a proper dis­tance, either. The debate is over. It is done.

…

Yesteryear’s words can­not be revoked. They endure on newsprint yel­low and brit­tle, on micro­film, and in the com­puter files into which they have been trans­lated. They belong to his­tory, and his­tory lives. It is well and good that the words be remem­bered, as a warn­ing per­haps best. We will not forget.

The edi­to­r­ial came the day before a sym­po­sium at the state capi­tol mark­ing the fifti­eth anniver­sary of the end of Massive Resistance. The words writ­ten there, while some will debate their impor­tance, reflect the recog­ni­tion that his­tory touches us.  The actions that come before us have con­se­quences for us today, even if we were not active in their exe­cu­tion: whether it is the actions of a coun­try that behaves dispi­ca­bly towards another, or the actions of a com­pany that prof­ited from sid­ing with power or pop­u­lar­ity instead of speak­ing truth.

Of course, though this case and the exam­ples I just men­tioned are all neg­a­tive, that is not the only way it works. It works when we pay our respects to those who came before us: for our coun­tries and those (often young men) who made great sac­ri­fices in the name of free­dom, for our fore­run­ners in our cho­sen fields who made advances that help us do our jobs today, and for the spe­cial peo­ple in years or even gen­er­a­tions past who have paved the way for each of us (on a per­sonal level) to be where we are today.

History is not just dates and bat­tles and laws. History is the story of how we got to where we are today. And keep­ing our eyes open to his­tory can shine a light on who we are today and how we got here: valu­able insights into ourselves.