History Lesson

Photographer: Howard Liberman, 1942
Library of Congress




Archive caption - each photo:

Manpower, junior size. "Who wants to be a junior commando?" teacher asks. Willing hands shoot up and eager voices cry "Yes!" Everyone in this Roanoke, Virginia class wants to be one of the thirty-million children banding together throughout the United States to form America's junior army, young fighters to collect scrap for ammunition.

Separate pictures; equal captions...

America desperately needs history lessons, yet gets a criminally Faux version.

With one graphic, Driftglass disposes of the con man given a giant public platform—and today's inappropriate-beyond-words setting.

As to the real August 28, 1963: links to audio and transcript of that day's MLK speech here.

And, published this summer, Charles Euchner's Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington looks extremely worthwhile.

I caught part of a radio interview with Euchner yesterday. Certain he would at some point be assassinated, MLK felt the burden of approaching each speech as if it would be his last and thus demanded the utmost eloquence he could muster.

Euchner also reflected that by the early Sixties television was countering the physical isolation of the disenfranchised and changing their outlook. Seeing daily images of how another America lived, it increasingly seemed natural that they too should have a chance at that better life.

Then: a positive, if unintended role played by TV, in raising expectations of equal rights and opportunity for all Americans.

Now: a media empire fuels the politically useful hatreds of its frightened, gullible audience. The same forces that fought justice then will do anything now to rewrite the history—through the media they control outright, and by pushing their spin into the rest.

Then: marchers came by foot, by bike, by whatever means they could—to march on a sweltering August day, in hope of making America a better place.

Now: it's easy for the suckers to get on board: the buses to DC are comfortable, air-conditioned, and paid by a billionaire's front group...