Monthly Archives: January 2016

My holiday post on December 26 featured Jarrett Drake, who used the image of Double Dutch jump rope to illustrate understanding diverse communities.  Last month, @jmddrake shared a link to “Historical Commemoration and the Age of Marble,” a December 6, 2015 essay on The Atlantic site.   I’m interested in change and how we interact with the public and I set aside the essay to blog about in the new year.

Mason B. Williams, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies, looked at “The Age of Marble” in early 20th century historic commemoration in the context of recent campus protests about iconic symbols of white supremacy.  He points to the early 20th century style of commemoration as focused on shared values, not contention.

Williams notes that

“…the Age of Marble produced many of the most iconic images of American civic culture, among them the Lincoln Memorial (1922), the Jefferson Memorial (1943), and Mount Rushmore (1941). These were the years when Treasury put Andrew Jackson’s likeness on the $20 bill (1928), when Yale named one of its new residential colleges for John C. Calhoun (1932), and when Princeton, staking its position as a training ground of the postwar foreign-policy establishment, expanded its school of public and international affairs as a ‘lasting memorial’ to Woodrow Wilson (1948).”

The Great Man approach to history coincided with the Age of Marble in commemoration.  In Williams’s view,

“To understand the commemorative style of the Age of Marble is to appreciate where its weak points are. Built on the idea of fixed and timeless national values, it assumed moral development would be progressive rather than revolutionary; consequently, it has not been flexible enough to accommodate moral and ethical development on the scale of the anti-racism and gender revolutions. Its reliance on racial exclusion was not only an evil in itself; it was also a structural flaw. Built on the artificial consensus made possible by white supremacy, this ideology simply could not survive in a more diverse, pluralistic world. And its ‘great man’ theory of national development squared poorly with how politics actually worked—as historians and social movements alike would soon demonstrate.”

In 1990-1991, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) marked the 200th anniversary of the city of Washington with a temporary exhibit, “Washington:  Behind the Monuments.”  I visited the exhibit several times; it remains one of my favorites.  Bruce Bustard was the chief curator of the exhibit which looked at Washington’s neighborhoods using some 90 documents, 100 photographs, and artifacts displayed in what then was the circular gallery behind the Rotunda.

At this same time, for a history project, I did extensive research in records from the Age of Marble held at NARA and in special collections at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial public library in downtown Washington.  At the National Archives, I drew on Record Group 66, Record Group 121, and Record Group 328, including the aerial photos of an extensive parked car survey of 1930.

The large clusters of government buildings in Washington–in the Federal Triangle area between 6th and 14th Streets, N.W., in the Southwest portion of the city, and in the Northwest Rectangle–did not yet exist in 1922, when the Lincoln Memorial opened.  A few departments and agencies had buildings near the White House and the parkland of the national Mall but many operated out of leased space.

In 1926, officials approved plans for an enormous public works project on a triangle of land along Pennsylvania Avenue between 6th and 15th Streets, NW. There was fierce competition for space in this prime spot and changes along the way.  An early plan showed Federal Triangle buildings for the General Accounting Office, a General Supply Building, an Independent Offices Building, the Departments of Justice, Commerce, Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and the National Archives.

The first three quickly fell out of the designs.  The latter now houses records that trace changes in the nation, the city, and the government since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  Some document the civil rights struggles that Mason points to as marking the end of the Age of Marble.   But even in the records that show construction of the buildings of official Washington in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, you get glimpses of another Washington.  And why the civil rights struggles occurred.

Downtown congestion played a part in planning for expansion as did ability to acquire land.  After the completion of Federal Triangle, planning officials looked beyond the downtown area at sites to the East and South of the Mall.  In 1935, the chairman of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt in support of a proposal to place a federal building south of the Mall.  He wrote of Willow Tree playground, just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, that “completing the acquisition of this square would clean up one of the worst and most historic slum neighborhoods in Washington.”

In the period before World War II, 4-1/2 Street, described as “obnoxious” by the local black civic association, was the border between segregated white and black sections of southwest Washington.  Willow Tree playground stood at 4-1/2 Street on the site of Willow Tree Alley, a block that so symbolized the worst of the slums that there was a campaign to tear down its dwellings in 1913.* (See footnote below for recommended reading).  But the impact of change can be…uneven.

“Urban renewal” efforts between 1954 and 1960 removed some of the slums near the Capitol but displaced many lower income residents.  Redevelopment in SW brought new office buildings and high rise apartment buildings (Hubert Humphrey lived in one, the Harbour Square co-op, as did Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell).

 

If you look at photographs and records from the 1930s and 1940s, you see different signs of segregation–and defined explicit and implicit borders.  Black and white Federal employees who worked in the same division photographed separately, their images filed in different folders.  Or references in employee newsletters to the accomplishments of a “regular” employee bowling league and to a Colored Bowling League (“the boys did well.”)

Willims writes that

“As issues of racial and gender inequality and colonialism gained space in public conversations, reassessments of practically every ‘great’ American political figure followed. These currents changed the meanings of some older icons: The Lincoln Memorial has not looked the same since Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. And they have led to the creation of more inclusive statues and monuments, such as the Memorial to Japanese Patriotism in World War II and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, among others. But only now have these developments produced a full-on attack on the iconography of the Age of Marble.”

Records in the National Archives and in the Library of Congress show, that as Williams writes, history is inherently complex and should not be reduced to “simple inversions.”   President Barack Obama’s December 15, 2015 speech in the Rotunda of the National Archives provides context for the King Memorial and for the Memorial to Japanese Patriotism.

Williams believes that

“Commemorative sites don’t need new personalities alone but new principles, new plans, new ways of thinking about how to bridge the chasm between history, which is inherently complex, and community values, which require a consensus and clarity that neither history nor politics can supply. This is a moment in which marginalized voices are demanding to be part of the national narrative. This is a sign of national strength, not fracture.”

But Andrew Ferguson’s 2014 critique of the National Archives’s “Records of Rights”–an exhibit which reflects that strength–and his complaints about a diminished, less grand visitor experience, remind us that reassessment can meet resistance.

In 1983, David Bowie was doing the rounds, promoting his hit song, “Let’s Dance.”  When he sat down for an interview with Mark Goodman, a VJ on the MTV cable music channel, Bowie asked a question the host found hard to answer.

“It occurred to me that, having watched MTV over the last few months, that it’s a solid enterprise and it’s got a lot going for it,” Bowie said in the interview. “I’m just floored by the fact that there are … so few black artists featured on it. Why is that?”

I loved “Let’s Dance.”   My twin sister and I danced along in our seats in the arena in Landover, MD in August 1983 when we saw Bowie perform it in concert.

Growing up, I was a fan of classical music and still am.  Although I now almost exclusively stick with classical, I made a foray into popular music for a decade from the 1980s and to the mid-1990s.  As was Eva, pictured left, I was drawn to the androgynous “don’t classify or categorize me” vibe and visual style of many of the New Wave musicians as much as by their music.  (My free-spirited style shows in my still wearing men’s shirts, vests, ties.)

 

I had almost no experience listening to rock, R&B, or other popular music on the radio, except in the mid-1960s when I was in middle school and heard it on my friends’ transistor radios.  (I was fan of the Beatles during 1964-1967, mostly through buying their singles and LPs.  The family radio stayed tuned to classical WGMS, by all of our choice.)

In the early 1980s, I sometimes read Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, and other trade journals.  (Eva, who began her job at the National Archives and Records Administration in 1983, papered the inside wall of her office cube with music magazine pictures.  You see Bowie at the lower right.) But because I hadn’t grown up listening to popular music on radio, I hadn’t focused on the reasons for and depth of the problem to which the British star referred on MTV.

When Bowie challenged Goodman on MTV, the VJ floundered.  Rob Tannenbaum, author of a book about MTV, observed that the video channel grew out of FM rock radio and “perpetuated the segregated playlists they worked with at radio.”  The Washington Post ran a feature on Bowie’s challenge after news broke overnight of the singer’s death on Sunday.

“Bowie’s exchange with Goodman is recounted in R. Serge Denisoff’s “Inside MTV.” According to the book, Bowie asked: ‘Why are there practically no blacks on the network?’

Goodman, who merely introduced the clips and announced the concert dates, explained, ‘We seem to be doing music that fits into what we want to play on MTV. The company is thinking in terms of narrowcasting.’ Bowie pressed on. ‘There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I’m surprised aren’t being used on MTV.’

Goodman, placed in the highly uncomfortable position of defending a format totally beyond his control, echoed the company’s demographic policy: ‘We have to try and do what we think not only New York and Los Angeles will appreciate, but also Poughkeepsie or the Midwest. Pick some town in the Midwest which would be scared to death by … a string of other black faces, or black music.’ He went on, ‘We have to play music we think an entire country is going to like, and certainly we’re a rock-and-roll station.’

The exchange got hotter. Bowie asked: ‘Don’t you think it’s a frightening predicament to be in?’ The intimidated veejay resorted to the radio analogy, ‘Yeah, but no less so here than in radio.’

The British singer pounced on the reply: ‘Don’t say, “Well, it’s not me, it’s them.” Is it not possible it should be a conviction of the station and of the radio stations to be fair … to make the media more integrated?’”

When I heard of Bowie’s death, I took out the Bowie pin I bought at the concert arena in 1983.  (You see me wearing it in the 1980s when I worked at the National Archives.)  I put on my “Rebel Archives” t-shirt to mark Bowie’s song, “Rebel, Rebel.”  And thought about the impact of “narrowcasting.”  And about our obligations, as information professionals and historians.

 

MTV’s launch–the safe, middle ground marketing of videos–reminded me of how Fedland bureaucracies traditionally approach change.  Of the limited embrace of new ways I’ve seen over the decades in “Total Quality Management” and “Business Process Re-Engineering.”  Changing processes or techniques.  But not looking deeply at culture and human nature.  Of reluctance to go where Bowie did:  “C-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange).”

And of being left behind, when bolder, more visionary people ask, “Is it not possible?”

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*If you’re interested in reading more about Southwest Washington, I recommend  James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 and Keith Melder, “Southwest Washington: Where History Stopped,” in Kathryn Schneider Smith, ed., Washington at Home: An Illustrated History of Neighborhoods in the Nation’s Capital.