Author: cbickert

Looking back at everything we’ve read and discussed this semester, it’s hard for me to pick a favorite text. All the texts we read convey powerful and personal testimonies of the divisive conflicts riddling American and Northern Irish society in 1968. Reading the stories of civil rights leaders, excerpts of court trials of protesters in the US, and the historically-rooted plays about Northern Irish citizens offered me a lens into the deeply emotional effects this traumatic and tense period had on peoples’ personal lives. The witness of these authors enables us, even fifty years later, to feel some of the emotion they felt in the midst of that chaos, and it allows their stories to continue to engage and effect social change in new audiences.

What I think many of these authors give witness to is the need for a personal sense of solidarity to overcome violent divisions. The Troubles, the U.S. civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War protests all grew violent because people refused to build relationships and truly encounter the “other.” When oppressive systems continually deny people their rights, frustration and a loss of hope provoke the oppressed to turn to violence as a last-ditch effort of calling attention to their struggles and prompting an immediate reaction from the larger society. Most of the texts we’ve read, however, affirm that violence is not the answer to violence. From the agape love promoted by MLK to the “Christ in each of us” that Marian recognizes in Pentecost to the revolutionary suicide that Huey P. Newton espoused, an overarching theme of the texts is the call for solidarity–the ability to look beyond yourself and commit to the common good—that enables us to fight injustice while bringing about reconciliation and community in times of conflict.

At the beginning of the semester, I didn’t understand how a whole course could be devoted to two nations’ experiences with a single year. Why learn so much about 1968? Was it really that special of a year? After reading all the texts from this class, I understand the significance of this tumultuous year and can see why it matters today. I think it’s crucial to recognize that remnants of the conflicts of the 60s often still exist in 2020—Northern Ireland is still grappling with its violent past and the wounds left by the Troubles, and this summer woke white America up to the undeniable persistence of systemic racism in our nation. These texts, then, are not just historical literature. They offer us insight into how to deal with modern conflicts, showing us how both violent and nonviolent responses to conflict have played out in the past. The overarching messages of justice and a love that overcomes division by recognizing the humanity of the opposing side, however, are timeless. Drawing on these texts gives us a framework for contextualizing conflict and finding a path forward to reconciliation, even today.

The concept of testimony has stood out to me in reading The Trial of the Catonsville Nine. A testimony isn’t simply a recollection of events but a way to give witness to what one has done and why. These nine protesters gave testimony twice: first by their direct actions of protest against the Vietnam War and the corruption of the U.S. government and then again in the courtroom as they defended their actions as a form of free speech against grave evils in American society. In a sense, Daniel Berrigan even gives testimony a third time in writing the play, thirty-six years after the trial took place. Berrigan’s choice to write the testimonies of the defendants in poetic form instead of prose heightens the sense that they are not just speaking for themselves but for a greater cause. In each of these instances, the nine look beyond themselves to communicate what they believe to be universal truth: that each human person has inherent dignity and deserves to live.

The deeply Christian lens with which the nine view the injustices of the Vietnam War drew them to testify via civil disobedience rather than violent action. Several of the defendants remarked that civil disobedience was a very Christian act, with David Darst citing the biblical passage in which Jesus throws out the money changers in the temple as an example of Christ’s own civil disobedience. George Mische echoed that sentiment by stressing that the nine were not concerned at all with US law when they burned the draft files in napalm; rather, they were following a higher law of Christian love that impelled them to act in this small way to prevent further loss of life in the violence of the Vietnam War. Their protest, then, was a way to give witness to this higher law and remind the American people in a public and dramatic fashion that we ought to treat all people as human beings, not as objects to exploit or attack.

The Christian nonviolence of the Catonsville Nine closely aligns with the message of MLK. In “I See the Promised Land” MLK uses the example of the Good Samaritan to show how we need to “project the ‘I’ into the ‘thou’” and care for each other, no matter how different we may be. The Catonsville Nine modeled this by their willingness to spend several years in jail for giving witness to the thousands of people across the globe and in the US who were chained by various injustices. Their nonviolent protest echoes MLK’s preaching of love over hate.

While the testimonies of the Catonsville Nine and MLK were distinctly Christian, I think all of the works we’ve encountered this semester are different forms of testimony to the turmoil of the 1968 era. It will be interesting to compare the various approaches and motivations for these testimonies as we close out the semester, as they all center around the same volatile time period yet come from different angles to achieve different ends.

Hearing this week from Eamonn McCann, I was struck by the truth of his statement that “history is painted in primary colors.” For example, the Troubles in Northern Ireland is often described as the battle between the orange (unionists) and the green (nationalists). I think this fixation on different colors and this historical framing that pits one against the other reveals the human tendency to reduce complex situations to easily digestible stereotypes of opposing forces. War and an Irish Town demonstrates that the Troubles were not simply a battle of Catholics vs Protestants, and yet most people generally understand the conflict in those simplistic terms. I think part of what makes the Troubles and 68 in general so overwhelming and difficult to comprehend is the inability to reduce the events to a set of clear definitions, and any attempts to explain the events of 68 in terms of “this” vs. “that” runs the risk of obscuring the nuanced stances and shifts that manifested throughout the era.

            The “colour-coding of Northern politics” lamented by McCann is not only an issue in historical analysis today; sectarianism was also very much a reality in 68 itself. In War and an Irish Town, McCann described how the Good Friday Agreement only heightened sectarian divisions between nationalists and unionists, effectively forcing Northern Irish citizens to pick a side and preventing opportunities for a united working class of both Protestants and Catholics to come together and realize its common goals. Similarly, in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement Martin Luther King recognized that a serious obstacle to the movement was the black vs. white division that prevented white moderates from expressing solidarity with their oppressed black neighbors. These sectarian impulses even extended across the Atlantic, such as when McCann lost speaking engagements in the U.S. after showing public support for the Black Panthers. To many Irish Americans, African Americans were an enemy whose experiences were completely separate from their own, whereas McCann viewed the struggle for racial equality and the struggle for Irish civil rights as pieces of the same fundamental struggle against oppression. These constructed boundaries of black and white, orange and green, accentuate people’s differences, causing neighbors to forget their similarities as human beings seeking universal freedoms.

            The “us vs. them” mentality promoted by this sectarianism is often a catalyst for violence, as seen in the films, novel, and memoir we’ve read so far. For example, the Committee in Uptight, modeled on the Black Panthers, barred whites from participating in their meetings or activities because they didn’t believe they could trust any white people to actually help their movement. The Committee also utilized violence to forcefully advocate for racial equality since the nonviolent means promoted by King had resulted in little progress and in King’s assassination. In his memoir, McCann reflects on the blind generalized hatred Catholics and Protestants felt for one another in Derry, a sentiment that facilitated people’s adoption of violence in the fight for Irish civil rights. When people lack a sense of solidarity with their neighbors, the colorful divisions between people become their entire identities, and when one’s identity is attacked, it’s hard not to violently retaliate. Reading War and an Irish Town in light of our discussions on the readings of previous weeks has helped me recognize the polarization that incites violent action and reaction, as well as the importance of solidarity to make nonviolent protest fruitful.

What struck me most from our discussions this week on the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., was the arc of King’s views on nonviolence versus violence as means for social change. Many movements of 68 devolved into violence, with historians today questioning whether any of those movements fully achieved their goals as they fell apart due to factional disputes and as violence obscured their messages. King is unique in his strong advocacy for nonviolence during this tumultuous time. He is often heralded as the “good” civil rights leader, with Malcolm X painted as the “bad” leader often left out of the saccharine civil rights narrative many of us learned in elementary school. However, throughout King’s writings, we can see how his understanding of violence became more nuanced as the civil rights movement progressed. To be sure, he never wavered from his call for nonviolence as the method for social change. In fact, in his final speech I See the Promised Land, he argued that “it is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.” He recognized the need for an approach rooted in love and peaceful protests, with the end goal of reconciliation between races, and he understood the dangers of using violence, which perhaps would have achieved more immediate change but at the risk of fostering separatist ideology and further alienating those moderates on the fence on the issue.

However, as the civil rights movement continued into the late 60s with only slow progress toward racial equality, King’s approach, while never violent, nonetheless grew more militant as frustrations rose. In Black Power Defined, he called for the use of boycotts, strikes, and the power of the vote to destabilize the racist power structures of the United States. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail he advocated for nonviolence as a way to elicit the underlying tensions within the racialized American society, and he vented his frustration with the white moderates who condemned the nonviolence as “unwise and untimely.” He argued that Black Americans could not wait any longer, could not be denied the freedom of speech and assembly anymore, because any further repression of their rights to protest nonviolently would beget “ominous expressions of violence.”  King saw the fine line between accepting blows nonviolently and becoming so consumed with frustration that violence would become the language of the movement. But to him the values of nonviolence outweighed the possible gains from violence. This is something that made him unique among the leaders of 68—that in a time of chaos and bloody conflict, he refused to resort to the tactics wielded against him.

So yes, King was nonviolent, but he was not the flat peace-loving figure that has been romanticized in US history textbooks. He called for a radical change in the structure of American institutions, did not shy away from tension, and advocated for the use of ideological, economic, and political power to defend the rights of the Black community. Death threats constantly loomed over him, and his work was cut short by his violent assassination in 1968. Reading his speeches has shattered my sugarcoated image of the civil rights movement, and his ideas have illuminated more clearly the fine line between nonviolent protest and violence that was so often crossed in 68.

Whenever I encounter a new or unfamiliar term, one of the first things I do is look up its definition. The long 68 is something I had never heard of prior to this class, and its elusive nature and lack of a set definition make understanding the time period and its events more difficult for me. When I’m learning, I like having rules and definitions and order—68 is the exact opposite. Enoch Powell referred to it simply as “The Thing,” and leaders of student, political, and racial protests of the time period often loosely defined their movements by what they opposed rather than what they supported. Even Richard Vinen, as a historian who has extensively studied 68, struggles to define the “what,” “when,” and “where” of this period of rebellion and sustained conflict. While 68 has an incredibly complicated and nuanced history, our discussions in class so far have demonstrated that it can also be somewhat defined by the strong labels that mark its conflicts: anti-Vietnam, student, Black vs. white, Catholic vs. Protestant, the New Left and the counterculture. What I find interesting about 68 is the effect of labels on the conflicts of 68 and on the literature produced during and in response to it. I’m curious about how the polarizing language of these labels, often with ambiguous or shifting meanings, plays into the rise of the memoir and autobiography of young people involved in 68 in the U.S. and Ireland, as they seek to define and redefine themselves amidst the chaos of the time period. I look forward to exploring how the emphasis on personal storytelling by key players of 68—from Huey P. Newton and Bernadette Devlin to the Catonsville Nine and Chicago Eight—is shaped by the confusion and ambiguity surrounding the events and language of 68, and how these memoirs then shape our understanding of 68 and its implications today.