Richard H. King on Why I Became a Historian

Randall Stephens

Why are some youngsters fascinated by the past while others don't have the slightest interest in the subject?  (Indeed, quite a few run to the hills at the mere mention of "history.")  What makes some of us into historians?

While I was at the British Association of American Studies meeting at the University of Manchester I had some time to sit down with the historian Richard H. King.  I asked King the same question I've put to other historians: "Why

did you become a historian?" 

King is a prolific author (now emeritus professor of American intellectual history, University of Nottingham). While in grad school at the University of Florida I read his engaging book A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955 (Oxford University Press, 1980).  Along with that volume he is also the author of a number other influential books, including: The Party of Eros: Radical Thought and the Realm of Freedom (Delta, 1972); Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (University of Georgia Press, 1996); Race, Culture and the Intellectuals, 1940-1970 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); and he co-edited Dixie Debates (New York University Press, 1995) with Helen Taylor.

In the interview here, King speaks about his undergraduate experience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the early 1960s.  He also talks about the literary and social forces of the day that led him to study the past.

American History TV at the OAH

Randall Stephens

Readers might be interested in the latest from C-Span's American History TV. On C-Span 3, the program offers "event coverage, eyewitness accounts, and discussions with authors, historians and teachers. Click here to learn more about American History TV."  Here are selections from the show's Organization of American Historians conference coverage:

History of Birth Control - NYU Historian Linda Gordon at OAH in Milwaukee

History of Beer and Spirits: Backstory with the American History Guys in Milwaukee

See more OAH interviews here.

And speaking of interviews and C-Span, our very own blogger, Philip White, recently appeared on BookTV to speak about his new book, Our Supreme Task: How Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech Defined the Cold War Alliance.

Beatles History Roundup

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Steve Marinucci, "Beatles' Apple has nothing to fear from 'Strange Fruit' film," Examiner, April 21, 2012

It finally hits the street Tuesday, but the release of "Strange Fruit: The Beatles' Apple Records,” the new unauthorized documentary on the history of the record label founded by the Beatles, has had a few rough spots.

Amazon.com and at least one other dealer stopped selling it, but others continued to take orders. And though a few writers suggested it might not get released, it's been available all along direct from the distributor.>>>

Jon Friedman, "Myth-busting, from The Beatles to Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust," Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2012

Ken Scott has as many great stories to tell as anyone in the rock and roll world. And he isn’t shy about sharing them.

Talk about being a fly on the wall. Scott was the engineer on The Beatles’ White Album, among other sessions by the fabled band, and the producer on David Bowie’s classic 1972 album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”>>>

"Beatles unseen photos to be sold," BBC, April 22, 2012

Unseen photos of the Beatles are to go up for sale after lying in a family album for almost half a century.

The 20 black-and-white images show the band as they made their first film, A Hard Day's Night, in March 1964 at the Scala Theatre in London.>>>

"Sir Peter Blake recreates The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' cover," Uncut, April 2012

The Beatles' iconic 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' album cover has been redesigned by original sleeve designer Peter Blake on his 80th birthday.

Noel Gallagher, Amy Winehouse, late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and Paul Weller all feature in the new collage entitled 'Vintage Blake.'>>>

Standing Desks: Jefferson, Disraeli, Churchill and, Err, Dwight K. Schrute

Philip White

Stand up desks are becoming quite hip, even making it onto an episode of The Office. And speaking of hips (and, indeed, lower backs), I cured a persistent pain issue by standing to type for 2/3 of my day/night work hours. The evidence seems conclusive that sitting all day is terrible for your lumbar spine, increases the risk of heart disease and piles on the pounds like you’ve done on a Kansas City barbecue-only diet.  

One thing that’s also for sure, although often overlooked, is that standing to write is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson designed a six-legged standing desk, the extra pegs adding stability. The great British statesman Benjamin Disraeli, like many of his Victorian age, preferred to be on his feet when writing. And, though he far preferred dictation as his primary composition method, Disraeli’s countryman and fellow prime minister, Winston Churchill, followed suit when he picked up his fountain pen.

And elevated desks have not been confined to the offices of heads of state. Ernest Hemingway considered it soft to sit (OK, I have NO basis for that, but I can imagine him growling something similar) and, before him, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf scrawled away at a standing desk. More recent proponents include Philip Roth.

Personally, I believe that beyond banishing my lower back/hip misery, standing to write has enabled me to work late into the night without feeling fatigued or needing the dubious pleasure of a late-night double espresso, a Faustian bargain if ever there was one. It is only in the past 100 years that we’ve been taught that if you’re writing, you should be sitting. Many older British and American universities still have standing desks in their libraries, and pictures of 19th century offices show sit/stand combo desks. Apparently we don’t get smarter over time, at least in this case. 

I’m interested to find out more about the sociological and workplace culture factors behind the move away from standing in the years between then and now. Why has it taken so long to rediscover the truth that hunching over at a desk for 40 hours a week (or, in the case of we few who toil into the wee hours on our books and articles, a lot more) is far from a good idea, and that standing can boost productivity and, arguably, longevity.

David L. Chappell Responds to Ross Douthat on Religion and the Civil Rights Movement

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On April 8 the New York Times published Ross Douthat's op-ed "Divided by God." In part Douthat argued that "religious common ground has all but disappeared" in modern America. (In response, Mark Silk penned a step-by-step rebuttal here.) Toward the end of Douthat's op-ed he discussed the common theological ground that blacks and whites once shared, which he thinks helped end desegregation. In an aside Douthat mentions the work of David L. Chappell, Rothbaum Professor of Modern American History at the University of Oklahoma.

In this guest post Chappell responds to Douthat's reading of Chappell's A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (UNC Press, 2003). Along with that award-winning book, Chappell has written a number of articles and essays (some with the Journal of the Historical Society and Historically Speaking) on religion in modern America, the civil rights movement, politics, and race. He is also the author of Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). His next book, Waking from the Dream: The Battle over Martin Luther King’s Legacy (Random House), will be out in 2013.

Setting the Record Straight
David L. Chappell

I am grateful that Ross Douthat mentioned my book, A Stone of Hope, favorably. ("Divided by God," April 8.) With the best of intentions, however, Mr. Douthat got my story wrong. According to him, I claim that civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s used "moral and theological arguments to effectively shame many [white] southerners into accepting desegregation." That is a familiar version of the story, but the record does not support it.

Civil rights leaders did not shame white southerners but rather undermined their social foundations. The white South's churches could not defend segregation with a straight face, and that hurt the segregationist cause. There is a big difference, however, between being unable to muster a unifying and inspiring defense of an institution and being "shamed" into dismantling it. From beginning to end, I argued in my book, the civil rights movement used political coercion: with boycotts and mass demonstrations, the movement forced white southerners to give up their special privileges against their will.

The civil rights' leaders religious fervor inspired their own black, southern, Christian ranks to rise up out of their despair, fear, and in many cases resignation. But that is as far as the persuasive power of the leaders’ words carried. Rank and filers in the movement earned the respect, and often the awed admiration, of northern black and white liberals, because they were willing to risk their lives, to do jail time, and to endure the clubs, dogs, and fire hoses.

The organized force of black southerners' collective economic power produced the movement's first great victories. Further sustained demonstrations induced the federal government to apply the full force needed to end Jim Crow. The government realized that the only way to restore order and a good investment climate in the South was to enforce the Constitution, nearly a hundred years after it was amended to include black southerners. Thus religion played a key role, but political force carried the day. (So I wrote in my book, at any rate, and I felt I had to correct the record.)

On the Road Again: Dispatches from a Traveling Writer

Philip White

Since the March 6 release of my book about Winston Churchill’s unlikely journey to Fulton, Missouri in March 1946–Our Supreme Task–I’ve been busier than usual on the lecture circuit, not to mention with newspaper, radio and (gulp!) TV interviews. Now we’re not talking a J.K. Rowling schedule here (or indeed royalties), but a fine publicist + the continued fascination in all things Churchill + the local history angle = a few new and formative experiences. And a few terrifying ones.

The first stop was the Big Apple, where I’d never set foot before Saturday, March 3. Fortunately a lifelong friend has lived there for seven years, and proved an informed and gracious host. Within five hours of landing at La Guardia, he’d whisked me to the Met, put up with my sensory overload at Strand Book Store–where I could have happily squandered a year’s wages–and taken me back in time at the Café Sabarsky, with its wood paneling, grand piano and the best chocolat chaud this side of Vienna. Over the next two days, we consumed more spicy, rich Indian food and its buddy, Kingsfisher lager, than I had in the previous two months, and burned it off by traversing Brooklyn, the Garment District and the East Village.

Then the heat was really on. Any time you have to set three alarms it’s gotta be early, and the 4:15 a.m. EST wakeup call on Tuesday, March 6 (the day after the anniversary of Churchill’s "Iron Curtain" speech, which I explore in my book) was certainly that. The chilly morning air and a vacuumed down double espresso shocked the sleep out of me, and my publicist and I walked from the edge of a still-dormant Times Square to the Fox & Friends studio on 6th Avenue, where the following occurred:

5 mins in "green room," which is not green, but is a room.

2 mins in makeup (hey, don’t judge, they made me do it).

2 mins Ron Burgundy vocal warmup. OK, I made that up.

2 more minutes in green room. See on the wall-mounted TV that Iran’s going to let UN nuclear inspectors into one facility, one time.

Taken to studio by friendly production assistant.

9 minutes in studio. First two: sit there staring at the cameras, lights etc that create a hypnotic effect. Remembering how early it is and wishing I had another doppio in hand.

Next 3: Gretchen Carlson walks over, and is very chipper for such an unholy hour. Asks if I saw the news about the UN inspectors. Confirm I have. Tells me they’re going to ask me about that first. Holy crap. Need more time! Nope, gotta run with it (I had at least known about them wanting me to view Netanyahu and Obama’s tête-à-tête and speeches through the lens of Churchill’s "Iron Curtain" metaphor). Breathe. Get heart rate down. Countdown timer is running. And here . . . we . . . go.

Next 4: Answer questions. Tell Carlson that Iran is bringing down a digital iron curtain. Done.

And that was my first national TV experience.

After returning to Kansas City by air later that day, I had just 24 hours until the next port of call: another television interview at the KCTV 5 studio, just a 20-minute drive north of home. This time my good lady wife came with me, and the questions focused on the local side of the story: "How on earth did the president of Westminster College bring Churchill to his tiny town?" and so on. Then, after free-basing my new on-the-move "meal" of a Clif Builder Bar–the mint chocolate flavor only, the others are nasty–and the afore-mentioned java, it was on to the Kansas City Public Library. There, under the auspices of Mr. Crosby Kemper, who fittingly sponsors the current lecture series at Westminster College, I spoke to more than 150 people, only a handful of whom I’d paid to be here. Not to jinx the possibility, but the cameras of a certain book-focused TV station recorded my waffling, which my wife told me afterward went on for an hour and five minutes. Yikes. You’ll be glad to know I’ve since cut the speech down to a more palatable 35 minutes.

The best part of the evening was meeting a gentleman by the name of Art Whorton, who is now in his nineties. 66 years ago, he bluffed his way past Secret Service agents and into the gym where Churchill spoke in Fulton by putting his military ID on the brim of his fedora, slinging his camera around his neck and joining a line of press photographers. I told his story in my book via an account in the Fulton Sun-Gazette and didn’t even know Art was still around. What a treat to meet him and his family (see pic below).

Since that day, I’ve done four radio interviews, two newspaper ones, and delivered the abbreviated address five times. Through the experience, I’ve learned a few things about myself. First, I can actually drive in a downtown area, if not well, then at least without dying. Second, it helps to have the complete speech on the podium, and to never, ever, EVER rely on technology (curse you, embedded PowerPoint video!). Third, it’s nice to confirm that there are still flourishing independent bookstores–Main Street Books and Left Bank Books in St. Louis and The Book Shelf in Winona, MN., to name just three–that provide bibliophiles with years of the owners’ knowledge and passion.

And finally, there is nothing more gratifying than interacting with people who are genuinely interested in my work. Beyond the ego thing, I appreciate that thousands of hours of research, interviews, writing, editing and more than 3,500 miles mean something to at least a few people outside my home. To me, if not my bank balance, that’s more important than advances, Amazon rankings or Nielson Bookscan reports.

The Titanic and the “Tip of the Iceberg”

Steven Cromack

April 15, 2012 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic. In honor of the centennial, events are taking place across the world—in Belfast, in Southampton, in New York, and even in Branson, Missouri. James Cameron re-released his 1997 blockbuster in IMAX 3-D, and there are a slew of new books appearing on the shelves. What is it about the Titanic that makes it so captivating? The answer, I believe, is that the many stories, all of which compose the master story, have a universal and generational appeal. They resonate with the deepest elements of who we are as human beings, or the “collective unconscious” articulated by Carl Jung, beneath the surface of our iceberg-like minds.

In terms of maritime history, the Titanic does not hold any special records—it was neither the largest ship to sink, nor did it claim the most lives. Yet, no other maritime disaster in history has captivated the public’s attention more so than the Titanic’s sinking. The academy as a whole does not consider the ship significant in the grand scheme of examining change over time. Indeed, of the many books on the subject published very few come from academic presses. Historians consider the Titanic story merely as “popular history,” or a history in which the “past is mobilized for a wide variety of purposes including . . . profit-making entertainment.”[1]

The tale of the Titanic, however, is more than “popular history” or “profit-making entertainment.” The Titanic endures in the same way that Shakespeare’s works, or even those of Sophocles or Euripides, endure. It lives on, even a century later, because the narrative contains stories of heroes and villains, “what if” scenarios, secrets, mysteries, stories of romance, and of heart-wrenching loss. It warns of the dangers of hubris and is an example of Edward Lorenz’s “Chaos Theory” and “Murphy’s Law.” It is a Petri dish in which historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists can examine and argue over the deepest elements of human nature: what happens when human beings find themselves in a dire scenario.

The story of Titanic is an intricate masterpiece of characters, narratives, and sub plots upon sub plots. There is story that everyone can admire or anguish over. Perhaps it is the character of the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown, who took an oar herself, something undoubtedly Susan B. Anthony would have done, and insisted that her virtually empty lifeboat go back and pull survivors out of the water. Such an act would have put her and others at risk of being capsized. Or, maybe, it is the awesome love which Ida Strauss showed her husband, Isidor Strauss, the co-owner of Macy’s Department Store, when she refused to leave her husband to die on the ship. Another person, at some point during the night, went down below and released the passengers’ dogs from the kennel.

All of these mini stories weave together to form the “big picture,” or the master story. Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the wreck, said that the disaster was “truly a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare himself” because:

Mankind, in all its hubris, designs an unsinkable ship that goes down on its maiden voyage. Where the captain evokes the British ideal and instructs the crew to stand at their station and die while the band plays on even as the owner sneaks into one of the few lifeboats and gets away. Where women and children go first, unless you are third class, and where a rescue ship [the Californian] stands by and does nothing.[2]

The Titanic is also Greek tragedy, in line with those works of Euripides or Sophocles. It recalls a tragic hero, caught between the always-dueling forces of the nomoi and physis (pronounced foo-sys). The nomoi are the human traditions, conventions, and laws created and enforced by humans. Physis is “nature”—those forces and laws that do not originate in human will and are outside of human control (fate, chance, or fortune). The ship was a human creation of greed, avarice, and humankind’s attempt to dominate the ocean. At the same time, so many factors outside the control of those on board conspired, much like the Greek Gods, to seal the vessel’s fate. The sea was dead calm that night, making it nearly impossible to see the base of the iceberg. The binoculars went missing, the steel was not designed for the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, and according to one new astronomy theory, the moon’s position that year affected the ice pattern.

Such a tragedy “worthy of Shakespeare,” or of the Greeks, resonates with the deepest elements of the human psyche. Our minds, ironically, are like icebergs, in that we only use a small portion of our brains. Beneath the surface, beneath the layers of baseball trivia, historical timelines, and mathematical theorems is the “unconscious.” There, anything goes. It is where our feelings, the ones we cannot control, and the ones that shape society—love, passion, desire, etc—reside. In 1934, Carl Jung articulated the idea of a “collective unconscious,” or the thought that thousands of years of human history exists inside of every person. We, as humans, choose to make things sacred (and unsacred), shape and mold society according to these passions and feelings that rise from the unconscious to the surface.[3] Jung wrote in his Psychology of the Unconscious, “This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido toward objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give them.”[4]

The stories of love and loss, mystery and fate, all interwoven together in the Titanic live on in 2012 because they appeal to our deepest emotions. The Titanic story will undoubtedly live on for another century. In many ways, the ship itself was just the “tip of the iceberg.”
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1. Peter Sexias, Theorizing Historical Consciousness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 10.

2. Interview with Robert Ballard, University of Rhode Island Department of History, Online at: http://www.uri.edu/news/ballard/quest.htm#2

3. Victor Daniels, Handout on Carl Gustav Jung. Sonoma State University. Online at: http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/Jungsum.html

4. C.G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002), 193.

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History's New Website

Randall Stephens

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History recently rolled out its new website. It's clean, well designed, easy to navigate, and a major improvement over the previous version. (Still, the new format will take regular users some time to master.) I think the "History by Era" section (see below) is far more intuitive than what the site had before. And that goes for other pages as well.

Over the years, I've used the Gilder Lehrman site quite a bit. It's wonderful for gathering material to use in class: ideas for short assignments, summaries of important events, primary sources, bibliographies, and links to all sorts of related items.

So what does the revamped site offer? Gilder Lehrman describes it like this:

An online curriculum and resource center but not a textbook, Gilder Lehrman’s new site presents a chronological and thematic look at American history through a range of different voices, with fifty original essays by renowned historians, including six Pulitzer Prize winners. . . .

Central to the Gilder Lehrman Home for History is “History by Era,” the Institute’s innovative approach to the American history curriculum with a focus on literacy. Through podcasts, interactive features, online exhibitions, timelines and terms, primary sources, teaching tools, and content spanning all of American history, “History by Era” offers a wide range of views of the important people, places, and politics in American history.

Other highlights of the launch will include a special double issue of the quarterly journal History Now on military history; and Gilder Lehrman’s first online course for graduate credit, “Civil War and Reconstruction.” The new site also offers improved search capabilities and more transcripts and digital images than ever for the catalog of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, a holding of more than 60,000 historical documents.

“Our aim is to support history education in every classroom in America,” declared Gilder Lehrman President James G. Basker. “We’re bringing the past to life while stepping into the future.”

“We’ve combined rich resources with advanced digital technology to create a framework that’s both easy to use and designed for growth,” said Executive Director Lesley Herrmann. “Created by a team of master teachers, renowned historians, education professionals, and technical consultants, Gilder Lehrman’s new site is great for teachers, students, and lovers of American history.”

Learn more about the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and find out about events, activities, and prize competitions here.

April Issue of Historically Speaking

Randall Stephens

The April 2012 issue of Historically Speaking should arrive in mail boxes in the next couple of weeks. Readers will find plenty to enjoy in this one. It includes essays on political and religious history, interviews with Jeremy Black and David Hempton (the latter recently named the new dean of Harvard Divinity School), and a forum on American Revolutionary Era history. I'll post excerpts with links when the issue is available on Project Muse.

Not a subscriber? Have a look at this free sample issue from last year.

Historically Speaking (April 2012)

"The Roots of Democratic Self Government"
James Muldoon

"The Church in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Interview with David Hempton"
Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

Bridging the Gap between the Political and the Cultural Histories of the American Revolution: A Forum

"Rethinking the American Revolution: Politics and the Symbolic Foundations of Reality"
Michal Jan Rozbicki

"An Infatuation with Titles: Hereditary Privilege and Liberty in the Ear of the American Revolution"
Trevor Burnard

"A New History of Liberty"
Peter S. Onuf

"Scraping Rust from the Rebar of Early American History"
Alan Tully

"Conceptual Bridges and Antibodies: A Response"
Michal Jan Rozbicki

"'Responsible to God and Not to Man': Lottie Moon and Southern History"
Regina D. Sullivan

"Kennan’s Boswell? A Review Essay"
William Stueck

"Challenging Historiographical Orthodoxy Many Times Over: An Interview with Jeremy Black"
Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

"If Not Progress, What?"
Glenn W. Olsen

"Three Muslim Empires"
Stephen Dale

Brief Hiatus this Week

Randall Stephens

In the interests of getting some research and writing done, the blog will take a short break this week.

In the meantime, have a look at some of these posts on grading . . . the favorite pastime of all history profs and GTAs!

"'Will this be on the test?' Rough Seas Ahead," April 30, 2011
Randall Stephens

"Historians Teaching Grammar," February 7, 2011
Heather Cox Richardson

"Where Should the Thesis Go in a College Essay?" March 29, 2011
Jonathan Rees

"The Plagiarism Gamble and Theory of Mind," August 31, 2011
Randall Stephens

"History’s Tests," June 28, 2011
Chris Beneke