We Didn’t Know it Was History until after it Happened: Whites’ Narratives about Desegregation

• In Event: 365 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Culture and Politics

Abstract

This paper explores how whites handle difficult memories of segregation. I have conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 whites who were teens in Birmingham at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In addition I interrogate my own memories. I analyze the narratives that allow whites who were complicitous with segregation to recall the past in a way that does not undermine identity in the present. Interviewees tell stories of the process of integration in Birmingham which center around three themes. In the first, whites recall, with remorse, a personal act of discrimination. The second is the heroic narrative in which whites tell of taking personal risks they took to support blacks. The third centers on recollections about others who were defiant of authority in ways that supported segregation. The paper demonstrates how autobiographical memories are reconstructed around cultural narratives that allow the individual to have a usable past.

Author

• Sandra K. Gill, Gettysburg College