This week was incredibly formative for me personally. Having done my presentation with Denis and Ryan this week on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his life and writings, I was almost overwhelmed by the way in which the class rallied around the topic at hand. One question from a member of the class that particularly excited me was the question of how history will remember people and why they will be remembered in that way. This question specifically mentioned George Wallace who was the former Governor of Alabama who stood in the door of the University of Alabama to prevent the enrollment of two black students.
This for me raised the important question of how figures of our past, present, and future are remembered and what they are remembered for. In the case of George Wallace, his staunch stand in favor of segregation is what he is remembered for. Since his stand in the doorway of the University of Alabama in 1963, he has since become a born again Christian and has renounced his previous views. Yet despite his reversal of beliefs he is still most commonly remembered for his disgusting acts of racism throughout his political career and especially for that famous photo of him in a doorway. I wondered at this point how we as a society remember individuals and whether we find it much easier to remember the terrible things that people have done over their contributions to society or their changes. Certainly, in the case of George Wallace, this is true; I was born in England and when we were taught about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States this photo comes immediately to the front of my mind alongside the March on Washington. I never knew before this week what had become of him (George Wallace) or even what he had done besides that moment of staunch racism. I believe that it is a combination of factors that lead us to remember what we do as a society, it is education, understanding, and also a smattering of our own beliefs on an issue or individual that determine what we remember or what we choose to remember.
I believe it is very difficult for an individual to change, especially when they have taken hardline views on an issue and have even campaigned on those views and for me I believe that alongside not really being educated on George Wallace has placed this mental block in my own mind of what he as an individual is. I certainly want to explore this more and this only serves to ignite the passion of learning more of history in order to best educate myself on every aspect of people, movements and ideas throughout history
I agree that this week really helped me to see the importance of analyzing how we look at a person’s legacy and how quick can be to celebrate or look down upon their viewpoints and actions. I really enjoyed reading through your post and it made me think about how often, when a person changes their viewpoints, people are often torn between celebrating the switch if they agree with the change, or rejecting the switch. I’ve seen how when someone is being praised for a new opinion they have, people who disagree with this opinion or dislike the person often seek to remind the supporters of this change that at one point in time, the person had vastly different beliefs. This week helped me to be more critical about how we as a society tend to support or reject change and how depending on what our personal beliefs are, that will change our support. For example, for those that praise George Wallace’s change in views, they may always face reproach from those critical over whether George Wallace has truly shifted beliefs. I think this is a very interesting aspect around the way we perceive and support or reject someone’s legacy and how that affects how future people interact with each other.
I really enjoyed this post. The idea of a “legacy” is very fascinating in a historical context. We would, of course, like to find ourselves on the right side of history. But as you mentioned, even if someone were to completely change their ways, all it takes is one period of their lives to be characterized as an irredeemable monster. There is, I think, some sort of quiet pleasure we get today from seeing the reputations of previously evil people get dragged through the mud, but when that’s justified or not it hard to gauge. There are obviously people today that we would love to see vilified in the future, but is that fair to an individual who might change their views completely? I think this is an unfortunate limitation of history, one that we should be aware of when studying it.