Black History, Our History

February Black History Month. The school children have been
learning about educated and talented and brave African Americans
who, despite the barriers of racism and prejudice, shone brightly in
our past. They have been told about W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman,
Benjamin Banneker, and a host of others.

I wish it had always been so. My memory of the high school history
class is of an endless dull hour when farm boys in overalls stood in the
aisles between the desks, clutching their history books, stumbling
through their assigned reading with long, painful pauses when they
couldn't even guess at the next word.

Columbus discovered America. Washington crossed the Delaware.
Lincoln freed the slaves. White people settled the west, vanquished
the Indians, and made this country great.

Not only Black children, but all children were cheated by not being
taught the complete history of our country and its peoples. Not until I
was in my thirties did I begin to find and read what should have been
made available to me at a much earlier age: the writings of DuBois,
William Still's Underground Railroad, the "colored" troops in the Civil
War, the segregation of troops during WWII, the massacres and
lynchings of Black people.

We were also cheated of the history of workers' struggles for safe
working conditions and a living wage, the successful fight for an eight-
hour day. May Day, the workers' holiday which originated in the U.S.,
not only was not mentioned, but every attempt has been made to
obliterate it.

And, as union was a dirty word in a small Southern town, we were
not only not taught that part of history, we also never learned how,
after they won the right to organize, those who controlled the unions
used them to bar black people from access to jobs in many of the
trades.

However, I was made aware of one African American hero at an early
age. I had heard my mother and my aunt speak of a Dr. Astrapp when
they were reminiscing about the time when my aunt and her children
lived with us in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, during the depression. They
spoke admiringly of the doctor, saying that he was good, meaning by
"good" that he was knowledgeable and competent.

Then, when I was 12 or 13 and my aunt was visiting us in Menlo, she
apparently became angry with my father and, seeking to turn me against
him, drew me aside to tell me that when mother went into labor with me,
my father owed other doctors in the area and they would not come.

"He had to get a colored doctor," she said, "He had to bring in a
colored doctor to deliver you."

That Daddy owed people was old news, never mind the terrible
circumstances of the great depression. He still "drank up" his money
or "lost" it. The depression had never ended for us.

Her efforts to get me to take sides with her backfired. Forever after it
was a part of my own history of myself, the wonder of that doctor who
came when no one else would come, the one whose hands first held me
as I entered the world.

Recently I needed to find my birth certificate, and there was his
signature, Dr. W.J. Astrapp. On an impulse, I decided to search his
name on the internet. One reference, a photo on the South Pittsburg
Historical Society website. Just the photo, scroll down to see it, with
the caption: Doctor W. J. Astrapp worked and treated South
Pittsburg residents and those from outlying communities
for several decades at South Pittsburg, Tennessee. This
well respected African-American doctor .......

What must it have been like for him as a doctor in a small southern
town, population slightly over 4,000 in 1900, but slowly declining since
to 3,295 by the year 2000. Black or white, I'd wager that mine was not
the only family unable to pay. One can be certain he did not become
wealthy from his medical practice. Yet his face shows the character of
one who knows his own self-worth. I learn from the caption under his
photo that he died in 1945, just about the time that my aunt told me
about him.I wrote to the South Pittsburg Historical Society to ask if they
had any other information about him. Carolyn K. Millhiser, Secretary of
the Society, has sent copies of newspaper articles with some information
and referred me to the president of the National African American

Historic Association of Marion County. I will share from these sources
in the future.

Casanova Was a Book Lover

I've been dabbling in a book I recently found in my own boxes of
stored-away books.

Casanova Was a Book Lover and Other Naked Truths and
Provocative Curiosities About the Writing, Selling, and Reading
of Books by John Maxwell Hamilton published in 2000 by the
Louisiana State University Press

The section on politicians who wrote is preceded by a quote from
Dan Qualye's 1989 Christmas Card:
"May our nation continue to be a beakon [sic] of hope"

And H.L. Mencken commenting that Warren G. Harding wrote
"the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a
string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line;
it reminds me of stale beansoup, of college yells, of dogs barking
idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur
creeps into it."

After referring to all the presidential book authors who didn't actually
write their own books, Hamilton notes: "Jimmy Carter is the lone
modern president who may qualify as a legitimate author..... His
campaign biography, however, has all the style of a high school term
paper; his poetry is not poetic; and memoirs such as Keeping Faith
and Living Faith are cloyingly self-righteous......One exception is his
book on fishing. It is almost lyrical, says Leo Ribuffo, a historian
working on a study of the Carter presidency."

He reminds us that when Ronald Reagan's former press secretary,
Larry Speakes, "revealed that he had manufactured quotes for the
Great Communicator and didn't bother to show them to the president
beforehand........Speakes lost his cushy job at Merrill Lynch Pierce
Fenner and Smith as a result. As for Reagan, he said he hadn't noticed
that Speakes was putting words in his mouth."

"Kennedy's authorship of Profiles in Courage is intensely debated,"
Hamilton writes, "Historian Herbert Parmet has made the strongest
case that blue-ribbon historians gave liberal counsel, the Library of
Congress staff and others did substantial research, and various
people drafted chapters. Nevertheless, Kennedy went on to describe
the book as his own work and accepted the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for
biography the way a full-fledged author would. One of the real
authors, Jules David, a Georgetown University professor, received
seven hundred dollars cash and no royalties."

Two of our worst presidents, Grant and Hoover, were two of the best
writers, and they did write their own books.

About Clinton: "remember that [his] troubles over Monica Lewinsky
began with onetime White House staffer Linda Tripp's book idea..."

Hamilton's book was published before he could evaluate the present
occupant of the White House whose one famous connection with a
book was when he continued reading My Pet Goat to school children
after being informed of the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps he found the story
too engrossing to stop.

Other sections include books published after an author is dead, either
by them or written by others: "W.I.P. Write in Peace". The Ten Most
Stolen Books, with the Bible being Number One, book reviewing,
author tours, book contracts, bestseller lists, and so forth. There is
much interesting and solid information as well as all the trivia, and it is
fun to read.

It was the very book to thumb through and read at random while I sat
in a medication - induced stupor - Got over the cold, I thought, but it
relapsed into bronchitis.

Get a copy of this book for reading when you don't feel like
concentrating too hard, or for when you can only read in snatches.

Historians Against the War

During their recent convention held in Atlanta, the American History
Association made history. At the annual Business Meeting, a
proceeding usually featuring dry reports by the organization's leaders,
the members approved an anti-war resolution, the first in the AHA's
existence. It was sponsored by Historians Against the War. To read
the full text of the resolution click here.

This was the convention being attended by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto,
British author of 19 books, who was thrown to the sidewalk and arrested
by an Atlanta policeman for jaywalking. At the link above can be heard
an interview with him. He considered it a valuable experience, saying he
had learned more about America from being locked up 8 hours with
criminals than he would have learned at the convention seminars.

A photo on the AHA site shows 6 Atlanta policemen standing by while
the seventh holds the historian down.

One of the first to speak for the anti-war resolution was Staughton Lynd,
author of several books. He had battled unsuccessfully at the 1969 AHA
convention for a resolution against the Vietnam War.

The AHA's concern seems to be more about the restrictions on free speech
and travel than about how wrong or unjustified is the war in Iraq. But even
those who spoke against the resolution made it clear that they oppose the war.