Guess Who's Coming to Graduation

Randall Stephens

This post originally appeared on the Historical Society blog (April 25, 2011). Randall Stephens

In 2010 Nick Seaton asked in the Guardian: "Should the news that Sex in the City actress Kim Cattrall and Pirates of the Caribbean actor Orlando Bloom have donned funny hats and gowns to collect honorary degrees this week give pause for thought?" Sports heroes, too, had the opportunity to swoosh across stage in billowy regalia. "And yesterday we learned that three golfers – Padraig Harrington, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson – received honorary degrees from, appropriately, the University of St Andrews."

Critics in the academy snap their pencils in disgust. And when politicians and political pundits receive honorary degrees, things can get even more interesting--as when Liberty University bestowed a doctorate on the sage of Fox News and college dropout Glenn Beck (not really surprising).

Barack Obama gave the commencement speech at Notre Dame in 2009 and received an honorary doctorate in law. Salon's Alex Koppelman reported that the "announcement has turned into a PR nightmare, though, as conservative Catholics are up in arms over the choice and are organizing against it. One local bishop has said he'll boycott commencement in protest, as the president's decision on stem cells means the government is 'supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.' The Cardinal Newman Society claims to have 80,000 signatures on a petition asking the university to rescind the invitation."

History helps put things into perspective. At least former presidents did not raise a fiery complaint against Obama, as far as I know. But that was just what happened when Harvard decided to hand an honorary degree to Old Hickory in 1833. Eleven years earlier the college had given one to Jackson's arch-rival John Quincy Adams--the world traveler and bibliophile, who knew Latin and Greek and studied numerous modern languages. Now Adams could not believe that the same revered institution would tarnish its name and legacy by honoring Jackson, vulgarian in chief. Though Adams was a Harvard overseer, he refused to attend the ceremony for his long-time political foe. How could this beacon of learning "confer her highest literary honor," he fumed, "upon a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name"? (On the contrasts between these two towering figures, see David Reynolds's excellent Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson.) Adams, brooding in Quincy, was not alone in his contempt. There were plenty of Jackson despisers in Massachusetts.

The whole affair made Charles Francis Adams, JQ's son, burn with rage. Charles confided to his diary: Jackson "served his Country no more usefully than a thousand others, but he has the prestige of military glory which dazzles all mortal minds. The art of killing is prized higher than the art of vivifying. My father who was his competitor for the Presidency and a man of incomparably superior character, yet carries with him perpetually a load of unpopularity." Argghhh!!

A political doggerel of the day ran:

John Quincy Adams
Who can write,
Andrew Jackson
Who can fight

And the cycle continues. I'm waiting to hear who will be the lucky recipients of honorary degrees this year. (A famous mime? A skilled puppeteer? Macho Man Randy Savage?) We'll see what kinds of denunciations appear in the press and on the Sunday political chat shows.

The Shadow of Selma: Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2015

The programme for the upcoming conference on Selma and the Voting Rights Act is now available. See the panels and plenary session below, or download the full programme here. The Northumbria University website notes that the American Studies programme will host "its own 'Shadow of Selma' initiative with a major international conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma protests and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The conference runs on April 8 and 9 and culminates with a public lecture by celebrated journalist and author Gary Younge at The Sage, Gateshead. Younge’s lecture will also launch the 60th Anniversary Conference of the British Association for American Studies, which is coming to Northumbria for the first time."*

The Shadow of Selma: 

Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2015

Northumbria University American Studies International Conference

April 8-9 2015
Sponsorship: Northumbria University and the US Embassy, London

WED. 8TH APRIL
City Campus East 1 Room 007

9.00-9.20 Coffee & Tea

9.20-9.30 Introduction from Professor Brian Ward

9.30-11.00: PANEL A: Selma and Grassroots Organisation

Chair: Dr. Ashley Riley Sousa (Middle Tennessee State University)

Dr. Ben Houston (Newcastle University)
“Before the Bridge: Grassroots Activism in Selma”

Professor Alma Billingslea-Brown (Spelman College)
“Selma: Bridge, Boundary and Beyond”

11.00-11.30 Coffee & Tea

11.30–1.00 PANEL B: Selma and Media Coverage

Chair: Dr. Joe Street (Northumbria University)

Mark Walmsley (Leeds University)
“‘They Couldn’t Just Write it the Way it Wasn’t Anymore’: Examining Mainstream Coverage of the 1965 Selma Campaign”

Professor Aniko Bodroghkozy (University of Virginia)
“Mediating Selma: 1965, 2015”

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-4.00 PANEL C: Responses to Selma and the Voting Rights Act

Chair: Dr. Randall Stephens (Northumbria University)

Professor Tony Badger (Northumbria University)
“Backlash or Adjustment? The White South responds to Selma”

Professor Clive Webb (University of Sussex)
“‘We cannot escape the same challenge’: Britain, France and the US Voting Rights Act”

Dr. George Lewis (Leicester University)
“Sidelining Selma’s Segregationists: Memory, Strategy, Ideology and Agency”

7.00 Conference Dinner at Blackfriars Restaurant

THU. 9TH APRIL

9.00-9.30 Coffee & Tea

09.30-11.00 PANEL D: The Supreme Court, Voting Rights, and Economic Citizenship

Chair: Kristine McCusker (Middle Tennessee State University)

J. Douglas Smith (Colburn Music Conservatory)
“The Dirksen Amendment and the Effective Repeal of the Voting Rights Act”

Dr. Lynn Itagaki (Ohio State University)
“Shareholder, Debtor, Voter: Economic Citizenship in the Roberts Court Deregulation of Campaign Finance Reform and The Voting Rights Act”

11.00-11.30 Coffee & Tea

11.30-1.00 PANEL E: Race, Voting, and Wealth in the South Since 1965

Chair: Professor Brian Ward (Northumbria University)

Dr. Devin Fergus (Ohio State University)
"The Third Reconstruction: The Racial Wealth Gap and the Post-Civil Rights US South"

Dr. George Derek Musgrove (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) (co-author with Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ohio State University)
“The decline of ‘freedom politics’ in the midst of the Second Redemption: black voter mobilization and white voter suppression in the Alabama Black Belt, 1965-2010”

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.30 PANEL F: Shelby County vs. Holder (2013) and the South Today

Chair: Dr. Nick Hayward (Northumbria University)

Dr. Barbara Combs (University of Mississippi)
“Purpose Nor Effect: How the Rise of Colorblind Racism Opened the Door For the Supreme Court Decision in Shelby County, Alabama vs. Holder”

Dr. James Hall (Rochester Institute of Technology)
“A Newer New South:  Reading Shelby County v. Holder in Post Racial America”
 
5.00-6.30 Keynote (at the Baltic, with the British Association of American Studies Conference): Gary Younge (The Guardian)

“The tea has been thrown overboard”: The Scottish Independence Referendum and the American Civil War

Brian Langley

The Charleston Mercury was in no doubt about the significance of Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860. As South Carolina law officers resigned their federal posts, symbolically ending the rule of Washington in the state, the newspaper announced: “The tea has been thrown overboard. The Revolution of 1860 has been initiated”. In the weeks that followed, enthusiasts for secession set about the chain of events that would eventually lead eleven states to leave the Union and involve the South in a disastrous war.

BBC coverage of an 11th-hour independence rally.

As British politicians currently debate the nature of the vow made to Scottish voters in the final days of the referendum campaign, it is interesting to reflect on some of the unlikely parallels between the referendum and the secession of eleven southern states over one hundred and fifty years earlier. As the referendum campaign drew to a close over the summer months and polls narrowed, it was striking where the energy and excitement lay in the debate. Faced with a Yes Campaign promising an end to rule by London and a bright new future directed by the creative energy of the Scottish people, the No Campaign struggled to move beyond the cautious assertions of Better Together and grim warnings about uncertain currency arrangements, pensions and jobs. Whilst Alex Salmond skilfully promoted a better and more equitable, small state, version of civic nationalism, the displays of Scottish saltire flags and associated images of ethnic nationality were never far in the background. It all ensured that the Yes Campaign retained a vibrancy and emotional appeal.

Confederate Memorial Monument, Montgomery,
Alabama, photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Carl Degler, the American historian, commented in 1975 on how in the secession debate, defence of the Union always appeared as a defence of the old order. In contrast, secession appeared the more disruptive, daring and radical. As Confederate men marched off to war, cheered on by their womenfolk who also busied themselves sewing uniforms and flags, southerners remaining loyal to the Union—or at least unsympathetic or indifferent to the appeal of new Confederate States of America—had no such tea throwing moments of high excitement. Most had no opportunity to vote for or against secession but rather, in the historian Paul Quigley’s telling phrase , simply found that the ground had shifted beneath their feet as political elites led their states out of the union to make them reluctant citizens of a new republic. 

Southern Claims Commission records, including those from South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina, compiled after the end of the Civil War offer help us understand the experience of such southerners. What is remarkable is how prosaic and understated their expressions of union loyalty appear. Other than immigrants who might proudly proclaim their citizenship of their new nation or southerners tracing family links to the American War of Independence or the War of 1812—both fought, of course, against the British—there are few emotional expressions of attachment. Some told the Commission of their loyalty to the government of the United States which had served them well but many also framed that loyalty as a backward looking allegiance to the Old Government or to the Old Flag.  They wished that things had stayed the same.  They did not believe that there were any legitimate reasons to break up the union and many had real concerns that secession would be the ruin of the country and leave them and their families worse off than before. For a variety of reasons—cultural, economic and personal—they simply believed that they were better together.

Brian Langley is a history PhD student at Northumbria University, working with David Gleeson.  Brian’s thesis, "Dissent and Discontent in the Confederate South, 1861 –1865," examines the Southern Claims Commission records, newspaper reports, diaries and correspondence, investigating the range and nature of dissent and discontent in three Confederate States: North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.