Lydia Maria Child: Conscience for Her Generation

The following is an excerpt from a work-in-progress called A Brief History of American Literature.

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was a relentless voice of conscience for readers in 19th century America.  In 1825, she wrote the novel Hobomok, which dealt sympathetically with interracial marriage between a Native American man and a white woman.   In 1833, she was an early voice of the Abolitionist movement, and published the book An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans.  She edited the abolitionist publication National Anti-Slavery Standard.  

She was also concerned with the poor and homeless, and her Letters From New York dealt with issues of urban poverty.  She was an early advocate for women's rights, and published an early feminist text, History of the Condition of Women (1835).  She also wrote her own copiously-researched history of religion, entitled The Progress of Religions Ideas.  Child, like many progressive writers of the 19th century, was Unitarian.  

Lydia Maria Child in 1870

Downtown Fullerton Art Walk Four Year Anniversary!

This Friday, March 7th, 2014 from 6-10pm, the Downtown Fullerton Art Walk will celebrate its four-year anniversary with a massive event at the Fullerton Museum Plaza.  Art venues, artists and the community come together in one place on one night to celebrate one thing: THE ARTS IN FULLERTON...

 

Numerous local galleries, downtown venues and artists invite the Orange County and Los Angeles County communities to partake in this family-friendly, all ages celebration spotlighting the blossoming Fullerton art community.  Highlights such as live stage dance and music, interactive art and theater, live art demonstrations, a beer and wine garden and a gourmet food truck round-up will enhance everyone’s overall art walk experience.

Most venues will be gathered at the Museum Plaza for this one-night art extravaganza! Expected to return this year to join the festivities are other Fullerton arts organizations such as The Muckenthaler Cultural Center, Fullerton College Art Department, The Fox Theater, All the Arts for All the Kids Foundation and various others.

On the main stage, there will be dance performances by:

The Toyaacan Aztec Dance Group!

Live music by:

Deep Sea Madness!
The Moan!
and DJs!

 Here's a short video I made about this amazing event...

Downtown">http://vimeo.com/88099784">Downtown Fullerton Art Walk Four Year Anniversary! from Jesse">http://vimeo.com/user20019737">Jesse La Tour on Vimeo.https://vimeo.com">Vimeo.>

Hope to see you there!

Awesome Vangelis Album Covers

Vangelis is an electronic musician who has composed the soundtracks to many famous movies, like Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire.  He has also released lots of solo albums, most of which have amazing cover art.  Here are some of them:

Vangelis also collaborated with a guy named Jon and they made some albums together.

Viva Vangelis!

William Apess: Racism and Christianity are Incompatible

The following is from a work-in-progress called A Brief History of American Literature.

William Apess (1798-1839) was the first Native American to publish an extensive autobiography, A Son of the Forest (1829).  He was a descendant of Metacomet (aka King Philip), a Wampanoag leader who lost an early conflict between colonists and Native Americans, known as King Philip's War (1678).  Apess was born in Colrain, Massachusetts and had a difficult life.  At a young age, he was sold into indentured servitude, received six years of education, served as a soldier in the War of 1812, converted to Christianity, and ultimately became a traveling preacher, writer, and advocate for Native American rights.  Much of his preaching and writing was aimed at showing the incompatibility of racial prejudice and Christianity, both of which were widespread in the United States of his day.  In 1833, Apess published "An Indian's Looking Glass for the White Man," a powerfully eloquent condemnation of the widespread racism among self-professed Christians in America.

Apess's argument is a simple one: Racism and Christianity are incompatible.  "If black or red skins or any other skin color is disgraceful to God," he writes, "it appears that He has disgraced Himself a great deal--for He has made fifteen colored people to one white and placed them here upon the earth."

Apess quotes the Bible to prove his point: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:37)…"By this shall all men know that they are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:55)…"He who loveth God loveth his brother also" (1 John 4:21)…"If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar" (1 John 4:20).

Apess spends considerable time discussing the person of Jesus Christ, who was a Palestinian Jew, and likely brown-skinned himself: "If he (Jesus) should appear among us, would he not be shut out of doors by many, very quickly?  And by those too who profess religion?"  Jesus, Apess writes, "never looked at the outward appearances.  Jesus in particular looked at the hearts."

Unfortunately, in Apess's day, racism was widespread among white American Christians.  Slavery was in full swing in the south, and in the more "enlightened" north, Native Americans were continually mistreated, removed from their ancestral lands, and denied equal rights under the law.  Using the language of the Bible, Apess asks these rhetorical questions: "How are you to love your neighbors as yourself?  Is it to cheat them?  Is it to wrong them in anything?  Now, to cheat them out of any of their rights is robbery.  And I ask, can you deny that you are not robbing the Indians daily, and many others?"

Apess ends his piece with a hopeful vision of the future, when "the mantle of prejudice is torn from every American heart--then shall peace pervade the Union."

William Apess

Cherokee Memorials

The following is an excerpt from a work-in-progress called A Brief History of American Literature.

The story of the Cherokee Indian Tribe, as with pretty much all Native American tribes, is one of great tragedy, suffering, and survival.  In 1829, gold was discovered in the Cherokee Nation, which was also in the state of Georgia, and white settlers began pouring in.  This discovery, along with the ever-expanding population of the United States, prompted president Andrew Jackson and the U.S. Congress to pass the infamous Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forcibly moved all Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River.  This included the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee nations.  Thousands of people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, in violation of previous treaties.  The Indian Removal Act directly caused the tragic Trail of Tears, in which tribes were moved, at gunpoint, by U.S. troops.  Thousands of Native Americans died en route. The Indian Removal Act is one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.

In the year before the Indian Removal Act, as the government was preparing to remove them, representatives of the Cherokee Nation delivered written petitions before congress, pleading for justice and humane treatment.  These written documents are known as “The Cherokee Memorials.”  The writings are elegant, thoughtful, and ultimately heartbreaking, as they fell on deaf ears and callous consciences.  Here are some excerpts from The Cherokee Memorials, delivered before the U.S Congress in 1829:

“We, the representatives of the people of the Cherokee nation, in general council convened, compelled by a sense of duty we owe to ourselves and nation, and confiding in the justice of your honorable bodies, address and make known to you the grievances which disturb the quiet repose and harmony of our citizens, and the dangers by which we are surrounded… our safety as individuals, and as a nation, require that we should be heard by the immediate representatives of the people of the United States, whose humanity and magnanimity, by the permission and will of Heaven, may yet preserve us from ruin and extinction.”

…

“It remains to be proved, under a view of all these circumstances, and the knowledge we have of history, how our right to self-government was affected and destroyed by the Declaration of Independence.”

…

“We still adhere to what is right and agreeable to ourselves; and our attachment to the soil of our ancestors is too strong to be shaken.”

…

“We now look with earnest expectation to your humble bodies for redress, and that our national existence may not be extinguished before a prompt and effectual interposition is afforded in our behalf.”

…

“It is with reluctant and painful feelings that circumstances have at length compelled us to seek from you the promised protection, for the preservation of our rights and privileges.  This resort to us is a last one, and nothing short of the threatening evils and dangers that beset us could have forced it upon the nation but it is a right we surely have, and in which we cannot be mistaken—that of appealing for justice and humanity to the United States.”

…

“Will you listen to us?  Will you have pity upon us?  You are great and renowned—the nation which you represent is like a mighty man who stands in his strength.  But we are small—our name is not renowned.  You are wealthy, and have need of nothing; but we are poor in life, and have not the arm and power of the rich.”

…

“As his neighbors increased in numbers, his power became less and less, and now, of the many and powerful tribes who once covered these United States, only a few are to be seen—a few whom a sweeping pestilence has left.  The Northern tribes, who were once so numerous and powerful, are now nearly extinct...Shall we, who are remnants, share the same fate?”

…

“The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from our fathers, who possessed it from time immemorial…This right of inheritance we have never ceded, nor ever forfeited.  Permit us to ask, what better right can the people have to a country, than the right of inheritance and immemorial peacable possession?”

…

“To the land, of which we are now in possession, we are attached.  It is our fathers’ gift: it contains their ashes; it is the land of our nativity, and the land of our intellectual birth.  We cannot consent to abandon it for another far inferior, and which holds out to us no inducements.  We do moreover protest against the arbitrary measures of our neighbor, the state of Georgia, in her attempt to extend her laws over us, in surveying our lands without our consent, and in direct opposition to the treaties and the intercourse law of the United States, and interfering with our municipal regulations in such a manner as to derange the regular operation of our own laws.  To deliver and protect them from all these and every encroachment upon their rights, the undersigned memorialists do most earnestly pray your honorable bodies.  Their existence and future happiness are at stake.  Divest them of their liberty and country, and you sink them in degradation…”

…

“Your memorialists humbly conceive that such an act [forced removal] would be in the highest degree oppressive.  From the people of these United States, who, perhaps, of all men under heaven, are the most religious and free, it cannot be expected.  Your memorialists, therefore, cannot anticipate such a result.  You represent a virtuous, intelligent, and Christian nation.  To you they willingly submit their cause for your righteous decision.”

Despite these elegant and passionate words, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, thousands of Cherokee and other tribes were forcibly removed, and thousands died…in “a virtuous, intelligent, and Christian nation.” 

Orange County History vs. Myth

My writing classes this semester are reading Gustavo Arellano's fascinating book Orange County: a Personal History.  The theme of all my courses is "Writing About Local Issues," and this book provides a nice introduction to the strange geographical/cultural/social phenomenon known as Orange County, California.  Today, we discussed a chapter entitled "Our Climate is Faultless": Constructing America's Perpetual Eden, which explores myth vs. reality in Orange County history, particularly how and why historical myths are created.  I asked my students to discuss the following questions.  As they discussed them, I wrote my own answers, and they are as follows:

1.) What is the "Cult of the Orange Crate"? Is it based on myth or reality, or both?

The "Cult of the Orange Crate" is the version of Orange County's past based on orange crate art, which presented an idealized and beautiful past.  There was some truth to this (oranges were grown here), but what the myth hides is the violence, racism, and unjust labor relations that actually existed as part of the citrus industry.

2.) How does Zorro fit into Orange County history (or myth)?

Zorro did not actually exist.  He was a fictional hero created by author Johnston McCulley.  The Zorro stories and films were placed in a real historical setting (San Juan Capistrano, for example), but they are a mix of fact and fantasy.  Like the Cult of the Orange Crate, Zorro presented a romanticized, idealized version of the past, which masked some important realities.  Zorro prompts two questions in my mind: How does popular culture distort our view of the past?  How can we, as academics, separate fact from myth?

3.) Why is Mexican labor usually left out of the Orange County history/myth?

Mexican labor, the citrus workers who picked and packed the oranges and made them such a profitable industry, are left out of the story because they were exploited.  They were paid low wages, lived in segregated housing, and went to segregated schools.  Restoring the Mexican laborer to Orange County's history causes us to seriously re-think our idealzied myths.

4.) What was the 1936 Citrus War, and why is it usually ignored by local historians?

The 1936 Citrus War began as a strike by (mostly) Mexican citrus workers in Orange County, who wanted a union, higher wages, and better working conditions.  Rather than negotiating with the workers and acknowledging their legitimate grievances, the wealthy owners of orange groves and packinghouses violently suppressed the striking workers--arresting many, deploying sheriff's deputies, and basically acting like total fascists.  This story is usually ignored by local historans because many of the well-known Orange County pioneers basically acted like fascists toward their workers, and that (in hindsight) is embarrassing.

And then we discussed these questions together as a class.  What began as a local/regional discussion evolved into a larger philosophical discussion of how we know anything.  In what sense is our sense of reality based on myths?  How do we find the truth?  This, the desire to pluck truth from falsehood, is at the heart of academic reasarch and writing.  While we can never be 100 percent certain that our version of history/reality is correct, there is value in diving into the struggle to understand, and this takes a lot of work and reading.  In the case of local history, it involves reading things most people would find profoundly boring--news paper archives, oral histories, academic theses and dissertations, journals, government records, etc.  That is the task of the researcher.

The task of the writer is to take all that raw material and fashion it, like an artist, into something meaningful, coherent, and (hopefully) not boring, and (hopefully) truer than popular myths.  This is a difficult and ongoing endeavor, but (in my experience) it has the power to radically change the way people think about their past, present, and future.

James Fenimore Cooper and the Vanishing Frontier

The following is an excerpt from a work-in-progress called A Brief History of American Literature.

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is a controversial figure in American literature, who is perhaps most famous for his novel The Last of the Mohicans.  I wrote a poem about him.  I call it "The Last of the Mohicans":

In a lot of American 
literature by white people
like The Last of the Mohicans
by James Fenimore Cooper,

Native Americans are presented
as a race whose time has ended.
despite the fact that there were, and are,
thousands of living Native Americans.

Their persistant, longsuffering patience,
their continued reality,
has no place
in our imaginations.

James Fenimore Cooper

Despite his inaccurate, and sometimes offensive, portrayal of Native Americans, Cooper did have some good things to say.  Writing on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, he dramatized, quite movingly, the conflict between nature (the wilderness/frontier) and the encroachment of "civilization" and industry.  A good example of this exists in his novel The Pioneers, in a section entitled "The Slaughter of the Pigeons."

The scene is set in central New York, in the fictional town of Templeton.  Many local inhabitants have gathered for a mass execution of pigeons who are migrating over their town.  This pigeon slaughter is considered a great sport, as thousands of the poor creatures are blasted from the sky.  One prominent citizen even brings out a small cannon, which he loads with duck-shot, and fires into the migrating flock.  The ground is littered with dead and dying pigeons.

Aside from pure sport, the supposed reason for this pigeon genocide is that the birds eat the wheat from the farmers' fields.  But the planting of wheat necessitated another genocide--a mass clearing of trees.  Many thousands of acres of trees had to be cut down to make way for people, agriculture, and industry.  In this area, many trees were also burned to make potash, which is still used to make fertilizer and other industrial products.  The overall vibe of the story is one of horror--the horror of desolation that the American settlers have inflicted on the natural landscape.  This devastation would continue unabated, and continues today.

Rather than lamenting the destruction of nature, however, the townspeople make a great sport of it.  They are almost giddy.  Young boys join in the sport of death.

Into this scene of death and carnage walks the hero of Cooper's novel, Natty Bumppo (aka Leatherstocking, aka Daniel Day Lewis from The Last of the Mohicans).  Natty Bumppo was the hero of Cooper's five-novel epic known as The Leatherstocking Tales (which included The Last of the Mohicans).  In this novel, he is in his 70s, but is still an able hunter and tracker.  Leatherstocking is a man of the wilderness, and he is appalled by the callous and wasteful behavior of the people of Templeton.  Natty gives a speech on the proper use of nature, which he learned from his native American friends:

"This comes of settling a country," he says, "Here I have long known the pigeons to fly for forty long years, and till you made your clearings, there was nobody to scare or to hurt them.  I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body; hurting nothing; being, as it was, as harmless as a garter snake.  But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air, for I know it's only a motion to bring out all the brats in the village at them.  Well, the Lord won't see the waste of his creatures for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by and by."

Natty explains how it is wasteful to kill for sport, and that people should only kill what they need to live.  To prove his point, he raises his long rifle and shoots a single pigeon, which his dog fetches, and then he walks away, leaving the townspeople to their orgy of death and waste.

After the mass killing, an old Judge reflects mournfully on the slaughter of the pigeons: "Judge Temple retired towards his dwelling with that kind of feeling that many a man has experienced before him, who discovers, after the excitement of the moment has passed, that he has purchased pleasure at the price of misery to others."

This last sentiment is particularly profound, and could be applied to Native Americans as well as the whole of the natural world.  Much was lost when this land was settled and "civilized."  The advance of the white man came at great cost and misery to others.  This violation is one of America's great national sins.

Natty Bumppo