Manning Marable, RIP

Manning Marable, a prolific historian and essayist, died yesterday. His passing is particularly sad because he did not live to see the publication of his long awaited biography of Malcolm X, which will happen on Monday and will inevitably change the way we think of his subject.

Remembering Alex Chilton

While a huge bummer, the death of Big Star and Box Tops singer/songwriter/guitarist, producer, and postpunk icon Alex Chilton this past week served to remind us what a vital artist he was. It also had the added effect of bringing my favorite group of all time some much-deserved attention. One of the Replacements great songs, "Alex Chilton," is devoted to their hero. Paul Westerberg, the Mats' lead singer and songwriter, wrote a short piece on his "mentor" Chilton in today's New York Times and last week Carrie Brownstein of another of my favorite bands, the late and lamented Sleater Kinney, remembered Chilton (and the Replacements) at NPR.

Howard Zinn, Not a Good Historian, RIP

Perhaps now is not the time. And so I'll gladly time stamp this for any future date that readers find more appropriate. But with Howard Zinn's passing this week I think we need to keep one salient fact in mind: He just was not a very good historian.

Zinn was an incredibly popular historian whose advocates somehow pretended had been overlooked despite the fact that he wrote one of the all-time best-selling works of history in A People's History of the United States. But popular is not the same as good. Bad books sell all the time while good books languish on shelves and in Amazon's warehouse. This is especially the case with works of history, where the best-selling book on a subject has literally nothing to do with its quality as a work of history.

A People's History is not only not very good, it is quite bad (this 2004 takedown by Michael Kazin in Dissent is a pretty damning indictment). It is thesis-driven history that is selective with its evidence and manages to be condescending and to deny agency to the very people it purports to celebrate (essentially: You've all been duped by corporate interests and the elites). It is cartoonish in its shallowness and lack of complexity.

Zinn was a polemicist. He could be a remarkably good reporter. (His insider's account of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is still useful for historians even if it is not in any meaningful way a work of history.) And he wrote well. But as a historian he fell far short. And he could be an incredibly shoddy thinker. His simplistic leftism (and by any measure I am what would have been called in another time "a man of the left") substituted ideology for historiography and agitprop for scholarship.

Ted Kennedy, Rest in Peace

Given the volume of commentary and commemoration I probably do not have much to add to the encomiums flying Ted Kennedy's way. One of the greatest Senators in American history died early today, and I make that statement with no reservations.

Kennedy's biography and legacy will always be shadowed by that terrible event on Chappaquiddick Island, of course, which has more than anything become the zinger line for conservatives who use Kennedy and that event as shorthand for all of the things they consider wrong with liberalism. And Chappaquiddick almost certainly cost Kennedy any hope at the Presidency. Kennedy was a possible contender in 1972, 1976, and did challenge Carter in 1980 and absent the mysteries surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne it is difficult to imagine that Kennedy would not have received the Democratic nomination at some point.

But Chappaquiddick did happen and so Kennedy had to be content with forging one of the most remarkable careers in the history of the Senate. His liberalism came to embody him for critics and supporters alike (is there any honor greater than having one's very name become shorthand for liberalism?), but there is no question that he was formidable as a foe and towering as an ally. Kennedy was profoundly popular and respected among his peers and while he began his career with a reputation for being a lightweight he became one of the most substantial policy-oriented politicians in the Senate's long history even as he played the game of politics as well as any.

I grew up in New Hampshire, so Kennedy was never literally my Senator, but for all intents and purposes he was the Senator who represented me, a liberal, in a state that was during the 1980s as solidly Republican as ever there was. I was stunned when I read about his death even when it was obvious for months that this moment was coming. I had to compose myself for a second, before diving in to read and remember why Ted Kennedy was such a vital figure in American political life for four decades.

Robert Novak, RIP

Robert Novak passed away today. Novak was one of the first conservative pundits whose work I came to know back when I was in high school and shows where people shouted at each other first began to enter the public consciousness. But before he was a talking head he was a columnist. A sometimes dour columnist, but one who knew where he stood and was not afraid to tell you, damn the blowback. He and George Will have always driven me crazy with a certain unguent smugness, but give me them any day over the Glen Becks, Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs, and Bill O'Reillys who have taken over the mantle as the public voices of conservatism.

Chafe on Franklin

The new Organization of American Historians newsletter has a nice "In Memorium" to John Hope Franklin, the legendary historian who passed away in March. The author is Bill Chafe, himself a fine historian and a past president of the OAH.

John Hope Franklin, 1915-2009, Rest in Peace

I only met John Hope Franklin twice. The first time was at the Citadel Conference on the Civil Rights Movement in 2003. He was gracious and spoke with me for a few minutes and I naturally felt blessed just to have gotten him to acknowledge me. The second time was at one of the recent meetings of the Southern Historical Association. I just wanted to say hello, mentioned the Citadel conference, and because he was that kind of man, he fibbed and said he remembered.

Because of these two brief meetings, and because of the monumental nature of his work as the practical founder of African American history, it was with more than ordinary sadness that I learned about Professor Franklin's passing on Wednesday. He was 94.

Franklin holds a remarkable place in American historical scholarship. He is not known for any particular interpretive schools or historiographical debates, largely because he practically established the school and the historiography. His most famous book, From Slavery to Freedom, is still in use after several revisions. His memoir, Mirror to America, is a model of the historian's autobiography, with the added advantage that Franklin was a historian who made history, a thing so rare that you would excuse most people for thinking it nonexistent.

Sportsguy on An Athlete Dying Young

For a reminder of what Sportsguy is like when he is truly on, I would strongly recommend that you take a look at this article on the death of a high school athlete in Los Angeles. This is heartbreaking, essential reading.

George Fredrickson and Stanley Trapido Obituaries

Recently I wrote about the passing of George Fredrickson, emphasizing the role he played in my own intellectual development. Here is his New York Times obituary.

Another leading South African historian, Stanley Trapido, who left South Africa after the Sharpevile Massacre in 1960 and became a lecturer at Oxford, also died recently. You can find his obituary in The Guardian here.

Hamba kahle, gentlemen.

(Crossposted at the South Africa Blog.)

George Fredrickson, Rest in Peace

The incomparable historian George Fredrickson has passed away. Other than advisors and professors and those senior people to whom I owe my career, there are three other historians in whose debt I'll always feel simply because of their presence in the field. One is C. Vann Woodward. Another is John Hope Franklin. And the third is George Fredrickson whose unparalleled contributions to comparative history profoundly shaped my own work.

I am proud and honored to have contributed an essay a couple of years back to a special issue of Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies devoted to Fredrickson, especially since he contributed an article as well. I am at work on the early stages of a book in which I am exploring bus boycotts in the United states and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. My original idea for this project came from an aside in one of Fredrickson's books, several of which I refer to almost religiously.

In the end, historians leave a body of work behind. George Fredrickson's is unsurpassed . We never met in person, but I feel that I owe him a profound debt of gratitude.

RoJo, an Amiable Dunce, On Michael Deaver

Over at Amiable Dunce RoJo has a thoughtful reflection on the passing of Michael Deaver, longtime aide to Ronald Reagan.

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, Rest in Peace

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy passed away last week at the age of 90. Back in 1944 the then-Irene Morgan challenged segregated seating on a bus traveling between Gloucester, Virginia and her home in Baltimore. She was arrested and convicted of violating the state's Jim Crow laws but she challenged her conviction in court. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled in her favor in the case Morgan v. Virginia in 1946, which established (in the realm of Constitutional law, but not in practice) that segregation on interstate transportation violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That decision fueled the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, in which sixteen men, eight black and eight white, boarded buses in order to test whether or not the Morgan decision was recognized on the ground and to educate people about the case.

Irene Morgan has played a real and important role in my development as a historian. In a seminar class as a PhD student I investigated the Morgan decision and Journey of Reconciliation and it was from that work that I began pursuing my dissertation on the fight to desegregate interstate transportation. That project in turn has become my book manuscript, about which I hope to have some long-awaited positive news in the next six weeks. The events of the 1940s occupy three chapters of that manuscript. Without Irene Morgan's brave stand against Jim Crow, my own career might be rather different. And of course that is the least of her contributions.

Oliver Hill, RIP

The Washington Post has the story of the funeral of Oliver Hill, one of the vital lawyers who helped midwife the Civil Rights Movement. Appropriately, the passing of the 100-year-old Hill fueled as much celebration for a life well lived as mourning over his death. The lawyers at the heart of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's challenges to Jim Crow tend to get lost in the shuffle as the plaintiffs, politicians, and activists get the lion's share of the attention. But without the committed cadre of lawyers who challenged the system at mid-century, the rest of it may never have succeeded.

All Politics is Local

Or if all politics are not local, we tend to try to find the local angle because people are, let's face it, solipsistic bastards. And I think it is no surprise that Texans tend to have established a sense of state and regional pride that is legendary even given that everyone thinks their home region is pretty special. Let's face it -- where else might an anti-littering campaign ("Don't Mess With Texas") become a pugnacious state motto ("Don't Mess With Texas").

But because Texas is so big and influential, national stories sometimes legitimately are also state and local stories. take, for example, the passing of Lady Bird Johnson earlier this week. Mrs. Johnson was an admired figure in the state and nation, and it is remarkable to think how she outlived her larger than life husband by more than three decades.

In her role as a member of the University of Texas' Board of Regents she took her commitment not only to UT-Austin, but to the entire system seriously. UTPB archivist Dr. Terry Shults passed the following along to the university community to show us a little local angle to a story that has received a great deal of attention nationally and statewide:

As someone who has only lived in Texas in this century, Lady Bird Johnson was only known to me filtered via national media. As archivist here, I was aware of many photo ops of her on campus and in town including a very interesting one with Mr. and Mrs. LBJ, John Ben Shepperd, and first UTPB President Billy Amstead at the opening of the Presidential Museum room in honor of JBS' son who had just died.

We also have "Lady Bird Johnson, Regent, The University of Texas System, Formally Accepting First Student of U.T.P.B., August 1, 1972."

But evidence that she was involved in UTPB in more than ceremonially, literally came across my desk just recently from the thirteen boxes of papers of late business and civic leader Dan Hemphill:

[A2004/05 Dan Hemphill Papers, Box 10, Folder #26 Item 9]:

Presidential Associates UTPB Development Committee from UTPB President V. R. Cardozier [cover letter for paper in answer to a question from Mrs. Lady Bird Johnson on what is being done to recruit students], May 21, 1976.

R.I.P. Lady Bird Johnson.

Larry Whiteside, RIP

Longtime Boston Globe baseball scribe Larry Whiteside passed away yesterday. He was 69. Dan Shaughnessy has a touching tribute to a first-rate baseball beat-man who also was a vital influence for a generation of African American sportswriters. I grew up reading Larry Whiteside's work on the Red Sox during the Golden Age of the Globe sports section when it was so far and away the best in America that there was no viable second place. Just off the top of my head I can recall that the paper had Whiteside, Peter Gammons, Nick Cafardo, Dan Shaughnessy when he had his fastball, Will McDonough, Ron Borges, Peter May, Jackie MacMullen, Bob Ryan, Bud Collins, Kevin Paul DuPont, Leigh Montville, Joe Giuliotti, Ray Fitzgerald, and Clif Keane writing regularly. I'm sure I'm missing several others who had national reputations. Some of them still write for the Globe, but I'm not sure that any American newspaper will ever be able to have that sort of staff again. Whiteside came from another era. He will be sorely missed.

A Bit Too Soon?

It's a fairly familiar conundrum. A famous, and generally liked, figure dies, and of course the obituaries and tributes flow, often sanding the rough parts and presenting a generally positive, if not hagiographic, picture of the dearly departed. We are seeing it now with David Halberstam. And in general, why not? After all, when the ledger sheet is added up, there will be a lot more checks in Halberstam's good column than in his bad. He was a vital, vibrant, active writer who left a legacy most reporters and historians would envy.

So I found something a bit untoward in this Jack Shafer rip job of Halberstam. But why? Surely we need to consider the good and the bad and debunk mytholigizing of even the most fundamentally praiseworthy figures? After all, people are buried with their warts intact, aren't they? Halberstam was a fine reporter who reached rarified air among American writers. But in the midst of the celebration maybe there is something wise, even brave, of tackling the hagiography as it is being written. Halberstam was, after all, not flawless. He was a much better journalist than he was a historian (his book The Children, on the Nashville Movement and the civil rights era surrounding it, was execrably bad, which makes one wonder whether other among his work was as sloppy; His prose could be flatulent; His productivity sometimes meant that some of his work seemed half considered; Shafer makes a compelling, if for the moment unseemly, case for his well-known ego, and so forth).

I had been thinking these issues for days while not even wanting to. A good, even great, man had just died tragically and it seems to me that there is a proper time to mourn, or at least to honor. Unless we are dealing with a person who, on balance, is more bad than good when considered in history's harsh light, isn't it fundamentally ok to provide a grace period of uncritical, even fawning, assessment? After all, Halberstam was an often graceful writer with a great deal of curiosity and the capacity to get inside of a story. His work on Vietnam will probably long stand the test of time and he surely elevated the art of writing thoughtfully, seriously, and intelligently about sports. He was an honest writer but a fair one. He loved to work, which fueled his productivity. His missteps were never a function of meannness or gratuitousness -- his book was a mess, but there is no doubting Halberstam's seriousness and commitment to civil rights and his profound respect for the movement's activists -- and oftentimes his level of commitment lead to his finest work.

There is time for thorough criticism of even the noblest of men. But maybe that time has not arrived just yet. RIP David Halberstam.

Hamby on Schlesinger

Alonzo Hamby weighs in on the life, career, and death of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. over at POTUS. Hamby has done more to shape my intellectual and scholarly development than any other individual. This sensitive and smart reflection should give you a pretty good sense of why I so admire him and his work.

Arthur Schlesinger. Jr., RIP

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. passed away last night. He was 89 years old and one of the most significant of all American historians. Yesterday and this morning I used A Thousand Days for an article I am writing and I wondered when the second volume of his memoirs might see publication. I hope I do not come across as selfish or insensitive when I say that I hope that he had finished that volume before his passing.

Neville Curtis, 1947-2007

Long-time anti-apartheid activist and former president of the National Union of South African Students has passed away at his home in Australia. During Curtis' tenure he helped transform NUSAS into a formidable political organization during a relatively quiescent time for black politics in the interregnum between the Sharpeville-Rivonia years and the Soweto Uprising. Hamba Kahle, Neville Curtis.

Dennis Johnson, RIP

Dennis Johnson, one of the overlooked great players of the 1980s and a vital cog in the Celtics teams of the 1980s died of a heart attack today while coaching the Celts' Development League team. Sportsguy's tribute sums up much of what I feel. Like Simmons, I'll forever remember him taking Bird's pass off of his steal from Isiah and making that famous clinching layup in game 5 of the conference finals in 1987 with Johnny Most's gravelly voice as the backdrop.

Mortality really hits home when sports stars from your teens pass away. Red Aurbach, cigar clenched between his teeth, will probably be the first to meet him with open arms in that great sports Valhalla up above.