The limits of master narratives in history textbooks: An analysis of representations of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Teachers College Record

Volumn 108, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 662-686

  Alridge, Derrick P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33645309092     PISSN: 01614681     EISSN: 14679620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00664.x     Document Type: Review

References (112)

1. I use the term master narrative to refer to a dominant and overarching theme or template that presents the literature, history, or culture of a society. For a discussion of the term as used within historical studies, see Jeffrey Cox and Shelton Stromquist (Eds.), Contenting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998).
2. James Banks has argued that textbooks play a major role in presenting history to students, mainly because teachers tend to teach directly from their texts. As a result, textbooks influence tremendously students' views on American history. See James Banks, Teaching Strategies for the Social Studies (New York: Longman, 1990), 236-37.
3. James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 14-15.
4. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 722.
5. It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a detailed account of how teachers might teach about. King in American history. In another essay, however, I extend on this study of high school history textbooks and discuss specifically and in some detail how teachers might rethink teaching about. King and the civil rights movement. In that essay, I also provide specific pedagogical examples of how to move beyond the master narratives found in many history textbooks. See Derrick P. Alridge, "Teaching Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in High School History Courses: Rethinking Content and Pedagogy," in Freedom's Bittersweet Song: Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement, ed. J. B. Armstrong, S. H. Huit, H. B. Roberson, and R. Y. Williams, 3-17 (New York: Routledge, 2002).
6. Ibid., Derrick P. Alridge, Freedom's Bittersweet Song: Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement, 17.
7. David M. Kennedy et al., The American Pageant (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002);
8. th Century and Beyond (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004);
9. Andrew Cayton et al., America: Pathways to the Present (Needham, MA: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005);
10. Gerald A. Danzer et al., The Americans (Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2005);
11. Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty, The American Nation: A History of the United States, vols. 1 & 2 (New York: Longman, 2003);
12. Gary B. Nash et al., The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004).
13. See Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, 17.
14. See Thomas B. Fordham, http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/ publication.cfm?id=329&pubsubid=1020. It should be noted that my study examines the most recent widely used or popular textbooks.
15. For data from the American Textbook Council, see http://www. historytextbooks.org/adoptions.htm. For studies that cite The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society as a popular textbook,
16. see Van Gosse, "Consensus and Contradiction in the Textbook Treatments of the Sixties," The Journal of American History (September, 1995), 668
17. and Sundiata Keita ChaJua and Robert E. Weems, Jr. "Coming into Focus: The Treatment of African Americans in Post-Civil War United States History Texts," The Journal of American History (March 1994), 1418.
18. For information regarding The American Nation, See http://www.ablongman. com/catalog/academic/product/1,4096,0321052870,00.html.
19. Loewen discusses the use of The American Pageant in high level and advanced placement high school courses, see Loewen, 17.
20. Van Gosse, "Consensus and Contradiction in Textbook Treatments of the Sixties," Journal of American History 82 (1995): 658. As a point of clarification, note that Gosse's study is an analysis of contemporary textbooks' information about, the sixties rather than an examination of sixties textbooks. His statement, quoted above, I argue, is therefore applicable to the contemporary textbooks examined in this study. A limitation of my study is perhaps the small sample of textbooks used for analysis. However, as mentioned earlier in the article, the purpose of my analysis is a critique of the representation of King and his ideas in six current textbooks in the United States rather than a full-blown examination of U.S. high school textbooks. My analysis of the six textbooks written by some of the country's leading historians and textbook writers provides some important insights into how King is portrayed in many high school history textbooks. Moreover, a smaller sample allowed me to more critically explore imagery, metaphor, and symbolism that in a larger sample would have received only a surface analysis, given the space limitations imposed by a journal article.
21. The term messiah is derived from the Hebrew massiah, meaning anointed. In the tradition of the ancient Hebrews, it signified the belief in a future great deliverer - a priest, king, or prophet who would come with a special mission from God. Messianic language and imagery are especially prevalent among oppressed groups but also exist among oppressors who at one time in their own history were the oppressed. Americans, many of whom belong to groups that were persecuted either long ago in Europe or more recently in this country, are especially receptive to messianic symbolism and imagery. See The American Heritage College Dictionary, Third edition;
22. Wilson J. Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth (University Park; The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982), 2-16.
23. See also Albert B. Cleage, Jr. The Black Messiah (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968).
24. John Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
25. th Century Thought (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1969), 26-28.
26. The identification of a personal savior-messiah, prophet, or Mahdi is especially prevalent in African American politico-religious literature, as exemplified in such works as David Walker's Appeal (1829),
27. Albert J. Cleage's The Black Messiah (1968),
28. and W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black. Folk (1903). Blacks often applied religious and messianic imagery to their situation, and many thought of themselves as "children of God" to be freed by a great deliverer. Nineteenth-century figures such as Nat Turner, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Abraham Lincoln have historically represented the deliverers of the black race. In addition, some whites attributed messianic symbolism to the black condition during the antebellum and postbellum eras. Historian Wilson Moses pointed out, for instance, that white abolitionists attributed messianic qualities to both the Union armies and the black race.
29. For a thorough examination of King's use of language, see Keith D. Miller, Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Its Sources (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 11-12.
30. Ibid., Keith D. Miller, Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Its Sources, 112-158.
31. For example, religious leaders and politicians such as John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and Benjamin Rush; deists such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine; and 20th-century conservatives such as Ronald Reagan understood the power of merging Christian and patriotic symbols to energize and galvanize the masses. For an interesting discussion of King's use of religious and patriotic secular symbolism, see Charles P. Henry, "Delivering Daniel: The Dialectic of Ideology and Theology in the Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.," Journal of Black Studies 17 (1987): 327-45.
32. Full titles and citations are as follows: David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow, 1986);
33. Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Harper Perennial Edition, 1994);
34. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988),
35. Pillar of fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 (New York: Simon and & Schuster, 1998),
36. and At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006);
37. and Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: The Free Press, 2000).
38. For references to King as Moses and for a discussion of the impact of King's use of biblical narrative and preaching, see Richard Lischer, "The Word that Moves: The Preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.," Theology Today 46 (1989): 169-82.
39. See Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, The American Pageant, 894.
40. Similar portrayals of a young messianic deliverer are found in Nash, American Odyssey, 676;
41. Cayton et al., America: Pathways, 938;
42. Danzer et al., The Americans, 911;
43. and The American Nation, 795.
44. The American People does not emphasize King's youth.
45. Danzer et al., The Americans, 911;
46. Nash, American Odyssey;
47. and Nash and Jeffrey, The American People, 921.
48. Nash, American Odyssey, 675.
49. Nash et al., The American People, 951
50. and Danzer et al, The Americans, 861.
51. Nash, American Odyssey, 685.
52. Cayton et al., American Pathways, 945.
53. See Kennedy et al., The American Pageant, 926;
54. Nash et al., The American People, 974.
55. Nash, American Odyssey, 688.
56. Cayton et al., American Pathways, 953.
57. According to the Bible, Gethsemane was a garden where Jesus prayed and appealed to God about his destiny to die as a savior for humankind.
58. Danzer et al., The Americans, 927.
59. Nash, American Odyssey, 695.
60. Historian Howard Zinn has been a crusader for the presentation of history that is bottom-up rather than top-down. Top-down history is the history of "great men and women," whereas bottom-up history is the history of the common people. See, for example, Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present (New York: HarperPerennial, 1995).
61. Historians James Davidson and Mark Lytle provide a good analysis of these historical viewpoints, using the terms tap-rail and bottom-rail in discussing top-down and bottom-up historical approaches to writing history. See James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 177-211.
62. Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931; repr,. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), v.
63. See Ivan Van Sertima, They Came before Columbia (New York: Random House, 1976).
64. See Peniel E. Joseph, "Waiting till the Midnight Hour: Reconceptualizing the Heroic Period of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965," Souls (Spring 2000): 6-17;
65. Van Gosse, 658-69;
66. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "Mobilizing Memory: Broadening Our View of the Civil-Rights Movement," The Chronicle Review: The Chronicle of Higher Education, sec. 2, July 7, 2001.
67. For a good discussion of the content and periodization of the civil rights movement and African American history in secondary history textbooks, see James Anderson, "Secondary School History Textbooks and the Treatment of Black History," in The State of Afro-American History: Past, Present, and Future, ed. Darlene Clarke Hine (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 253-74.
68. Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, The American Pageant, 891-95, 934.
69. Cayton et al., America: Pathways, 928.
70. Danzer et al., The Americans, 928.
71. See Garraty and Carnes, Nation, 789-805.
72. Robert E. Weems, Jr. "African-American Consumer Boycotts during the Civil Rights Era," The Wettern Journal of Black Studies, 19, no. 1 (1995): 72-79.
73. For additional information about Ella Baker and other women activists in the movement, see Charles Payne, "Ella Baker and Models of Social Change," Signs: Journal of Women and Society 14, no. 4 (1989): 885-99;
74. LaVerne Gyant, "Passing the Torch: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement," in The Civil Rights Movement, ed. Jack E. Davis (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 130-44;
75. Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie, Lou Homer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000);
76. John White, '"Nixon Was the One': Edgar Daniel Nixon, the MIA and the Montgomery Bus Boycott," in The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Brian Ward and Tony Badger (London: Macmillan, 1996), 45-63.
77. Maternal frame of reference refers to the tendency of males in the civil rights movement to relegate women to stereotypical roles as mother and child-bearer. In addition, some women involved in the CRM, for instance, have argued that male leaders did not allow them to take place in leadership roles, but rather relegated them to subsidiary roles. For discussion of this idea, see M. Bahati Kuumba, Gender and Social Movements (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000), 1-19.
78. Myra Sadker, David Sadker, and Lynette Long, "Gender and Educational Equality," in Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives, ed. James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993), 111-28. The authors in this essay pointed out that "studies show that bias free materials can have a positive influence and can encourage students at various grade levels to change attitudes and behaviors as a result of their reading materials" (114).
79. Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981), xviii-xix.
80. Ibid., Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, xi-xxvi.
81. See Paul Rockwell, "Ward Connerly Perverts the Teachings of Dr. King," The Daily Califoenian, October 31, 1999.
82. For a discussion of King's views pertaining to affirmative action programs for African Americans, see Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
83. Also see Mary Francis Berry, "Vindicating Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Road to a Color-Blind Society," Journal of Negro History 81 (1996): 137-44.
84. See Lentz. Richard Lentz, Symbols, the News Magazines, and Martin Luther King (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 31.
85. Ibid., Lentz. Richard Lentz, Symbols, the News Magazines, and Martin Luther King, 35.
86. Young states that King stated the following to him, "I depend on you to bring a certain kind of common sense to staff meetings ... I need you to take as conservative a position as possible, then I can have plenty of room to come down in the middle wherever I want to." See Andrew Young, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 285.
87. See Michael Friedly and David Gallen, Martin Luther King, Jr.: The FBI File (New York: Carroll & Graft' Publishers, 1993), 37-58.
88. August Meier, "On the Role of Martin Luther King," in Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. David J. Garrow (New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 52-59.
89. Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, The American Pageant, The American Pageant, 926.
90. Cayton et al., America: Pathways, 974.
91. Many historians use King's "Dream" speech as an example of King's appeal to the "moderate center" and identify his shift of ideas to the left as beginning after the march on Selma in 1965. However, James Farmer, founder of the Congress for Racial Equality, argued that the March on Washington marked the beginning of the end of the civil rights movement. While I am not willing to go that far, I do believe that the March on Washington was the beginning of a shift in King's thought to an open discussion, on a national level, of black civil rights and issues of poverty. In fact, one can go back even further to some of King's early speeches at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to find these connections. For a discussion of Farmer's position, see James Farmer, "The March on Washington: The Zenith of the Southern Movement," in New Directions in Civil Rights Studies, ed. Armstead L. Robinson and Patricia Sullivan (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991), 30-37.
92. Nash et al., The American People, 217.
93. Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, The American Pageant, The American Pageant, 932.
94. Nash et al., The American People, 955-58.
95. Ibid., Nash et al., The American People, 981.
96. Nash, American Odyssey, 695.
97. See Frontline: The Two Nations of Black America, prod. June Cross, 60 min., PBS video, 1998, videocassette.
98. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from, Here, 36.
99. Also see Derrick P. Alridge, "Teaching Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement," 11.
100. See Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, The American Pageant, 932-934.
101. Ibid. Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, The American Pageant, 932-934.
102. Ibid. Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, The American Pageant, 932-934.
103. Nash, American Odyssey, 692.
104. Ibid. Nash, American Odyssey, 692.
105. Garraty and Carnes, The American Nation, 839.
106. Cayton et al., America,: Pathways, 837.
107. See photo and discussion in Clayborne Carson, "A 'Common Solution': Martin and Malcolm's Gulf was Closing but the Debate Lives On," Emerge, February 1998, 44-53.
108. Presentism is the historian's error of making generalizations based on events taken out of historical context. For a discussion of this concept, see Derrick P. Alridge, "The Dilemmas, Challenges, and Duality of an African-American Educational Historian," Educational Researcher 32, no. 9 (December 2003): 25-34.
109. Michael Friedly and David Gallen, Martin Luther King, Jr.: The FBI File (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993), 20-65.
110. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Casualties of the Vietnam War: An Address by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Nation Institute." Los Angeles, California, February 25, 1967. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers, King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.
111. Primary source materials on King may be retrieved from the National Archives Web site at http://www.archives.gov/research_room/jfk/ house_select_comittee_report_references_mlk. html and
112. from the FBI's Web site at http://foia.Ibi.gov/foiaindex/king.htm.