Fists of Time

George Wallace and Laurel Mall

Forty years ago last week, George Wallace was shot at the Laurel shopping mall.  Last week, my local community newspaper read, "Laurel Mall officially closed."  Along with an anniversary, an era has ended.

Growing up about twenty miles away in Anne Arundel County, I always thought it was just a historical oddity that Wallace was shot at a local mall.  Laurel Mall was just an aging commercial relic, the kind that seemed to exist in just about every town.  As Chris Rock once quipped, each town has "got the white mall, and the mall white people used to go to."  Only when I was in college did I study and discover Wallace's dark connection to Maryland.

In each of his presidential runs - 1964, 1968, and 1972 - George Wallace garnered significant support in Maryland.  (The first of these runs, I should point out, was just a year after his infamous "segregation forever" remarks.)  The Alabama governor drew support from a certain portion of (but not a majority of) blue-collar whites.  Many of them were concentrated in the Baltimore area but also in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.  And if there was a blue-collar suburb of Washington, D.C., it was Laurel.

But like many of the original blue-collar white suburbs, they didn't stay white forever.  When my mother worked at Laurel High School in the mid-1990s, the school was a mix of Asian, Latino, black and white students.  And Laurel Mall was on a downward spiral, still anchored by some department stores (and a movie theater that featured the occasional Bollywood film), but rusted and outdated.

Likewise, other Laurel landmarks like the race tracks (apparently a haunt of the original New Dealers) started to lose money.  It eventually closed down a few years ago.  And now, Laurel Mall has finally gasped its dying breath.

Growing up and learning about your state's legacy of racism, you start to notice the remaining traces of white racism.  The Laurel Mall will not be white racism's tombstone but continue to be its landmark.  I'll be glad to see it razed.

Fact Checking, Presidential Research, and Rick Santorum

This one goes out to reliable reader Laszlo, who asked that I not shy away from the political debates that might already occupy the blogosphere.

I do not have much to add about Rick Santorum's comments about JFK's 1960 speech on religion and government.  Because I have experience conducting research at Presidential Libraries, though, I do have some thoughts to offer on the response to Santorum's remarks.

Joan Walsh - a Catholic liberal and fervent Santorum critic - turned the tables on the former Pennsylvania senator yesterday.  In her Salon.com blog, she posted his remarks back to back with JFK's.  Looking at then-Senator Kennedy's words, you may believe, as I do, that Santorum's reaction was overblown and paranoid.

Holding political pseudo-history accountable should be easy.  That is why, this morning, Walsh expressed both thanks and dismay at the reaction to her own post:

This is one of those rare times when I’d rather not be recognized, because – don’t tell my editors – what I did was easy. It took me exactly 10 seconds to Google JFK’s speech and another few minutes to read it. Then I cut and pasted Santorum’s comments next to JFK’s and voila, kids, I had a story. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart credited me with a “deep-dive,” and I appreciate the praise, but really, I barely got my feet wet.

The Atlantic did Walsh one better today and posted a YouTube video of Kennedy's speech.

Although I am basing my reaction almost solely on Walsh's critique, I am inclined to believe with her; major media organizations do not appear to have gone straight to the source of Kennedy's words to challenge Santorum's assessment of them.

Researching the public statements of U.S. presidents should not be difficult in this day and age.  The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has an exhaustive speech file of Kennedy's presidential speeches, and even has a version of the 1960 address in text and audio.  The Atlantic actually posted from a third party, but cspan.org has a full version on its site here.  C-SPAN and the Kennedy Presidential Library are authoritative, trustworthy, and accessible sources.  Contacting them or browsing their online holdings shouldn't be considered 'digging deep.'

The reference librarians at the Presidential Library are amazingly easy to reach; from their main page, click on "Contact Us" and the Research Room phone number is in plain view.  Even the reference desk staff can field questions about detailed events such as the Sept. 12, 1960 Houston speech.

Fact-checking Santorum's other distortions of presidential history might require a couple hours at the library; but when it comes to televised presidential remarks, it can be quite easy.

Bill O'Reilly and the Lavender Scare

Politicians and political commentators seem to provide a wealth of history-blogging fodder because they always seem to simplify or distort the past.  I'm trying to avoid blogging about these sorts of things, but the latest news about Bill O'Reilly's comments about gay rights and McCarthyism have me knocking my head against the desk.

Yesterday, O'Reilly (perhaps improbably) defended Ellen DeGeneres from attacks by social conservatives who want to boycott JC Penney for signing a business agreement with DeGeneres.  (Perhaps more accurately, O'Reilly may in fact be defending JC Penney, not exactly DeGeneres herself, subtly allowing himself to emphasize business rights as much as civil rights.)  In doing so, he compares would-be boycotters to McCarthy supporters who blacklisted Communists.

What a fascinating argument.  Perhaps O'Reilly has never heard of the "Lavender Scare"?  McCarthy and the hard-line anti-communists did more than blacklist suspected Reds.  They actually engaged directly in the persecution of homosexuals, coordinating their purge from federal government employment.  Comparing the persecution of DeGeneres to McCarthyism is quite appropriate - until you, ironically, leave out the part about McCarthy's actual persecution of homosexuals.  (Let's not even get started on Roy Cohn.)

We have already heard that Bill O'Reilly is not exactly the best historian.  I don't expect him to be a great historian, but I would like our society to have an improved perspective about history and sexuality.  This doesn't just extend back to the Lavender Scare.  Social conservatives (like a headline-making one from the next neighborhood over from mine) make claims about how marriage has "always" been.

Skepticism towards cheap, passing claims about the way things have "always" been is the fruit of a good education.  We might not need a 'gay history law' like California's, but acknowledging that both family and sexuality is historically fluid is a sound start.  As the Lavender Scare demonstrates, the history of sexuality, politics, and even foreign policy can be intimately intertwined.  After we acknowledge the diversity of sexuality, and the right to love one another, maybe that holistic version of American history will be common knowledge.