Poster courtesy New-York Historical Society

 

What do you know about Title IX? The average person might say something about girls and sports or sexual harassment on college campuses. Depending on their politics, perhaps they might describe it as legislation that once served a purpose, but is no longer needed. Yet, as the New-York Historical Society’s new exhibition, Title IX: Activism On and Off the Field—on view at the New-York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History through September 4, 2022— reveals, this couldn’t be further from the case. In the 50 years since its passage, Title IX has played a hand in ushering women into higher levels of education and professional careers, opening doors to new areas of employment from corporate offices to athletic arenas, and remaking school curricula and classroom materials to discard outdated gender stereotypes. These societal shifts relied on this 37-word piece of legislation and on the crucial role of activists who understood the impact that expanding educational access could have for women.

 

Enacted in June 1972, Title IX was the first federal education legislation to specifically address gender when it prohibited sex discrimination in education. Activists lobbied for the original legislation, pushed for clear regulations and enforcement, and protested efforts that would have weakened the law’s scope. Revisiting the law’s history clarifies Title IX’s aims and highlights the fact that although society has changed in many ways, more work remains to ensure that all students have access to an education free of sex discrimination.

The impact of activism can be obscured in hindsight, giving a sense of inevitability to cultural changes. Our exhibition digs into the history of activism and social transformation brought about by Title IX. As lead curator, I worked with a larger curatorial team—Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellows Allison Robinson and Anna Danziger Halperin and Mellon Foundation predoctoral fellows Keren Ben-Horin and Karintha Lowe. Together, we created an exhibition that places activist work within the enduring throughlines of Title IX. The commitment to ensuring access to education free of sex discrimination, long-standing disputes around sports and sexual harassment, and changing definitions of sex discrimination have always been part of the history of Title IX. Contrary to popular understanding, this legislation has never been static: Both the definition of sex discrimination under Title IX and the law’s protections have changed as society has changed.

 

Title IX was passed during a period of feminist legislative activity, when women’s rights activists within and outside the federal government sought to institutionalize the groundswell that had spread across the country since the late 1960s. Educational access was a huge priority for feminist activists who saw the professional opportunities that access to higher education could provide to women. Many of Title IX’s earliest advocates, including key activist Bernice “Bunny” Sandler, had personal experiences of sex discrimination in education.

 

Modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law itself made up a small portion of the Education Acts of 1972. Not until after its passage did battles arise over the legislation’s scope and its application to athletics. A cohort of young women in Washington, D.C., with experience working for federal agencies defended the new legislation. Using their professional experience, connections, and dedication to opening doors for women, they partnered with sympathetic members of Congress to defeat amendments intended to weaken the new law. The newly formed National Coalition for Girls and Women in Education joined more established groups like the League of Women Voters and received funding from the Ford Foundation to lobby in the nation’s Capitol while educating women nationwide on how to combat sex discrimination in their local schools and communities.

 

“Our Helpers” Milton Bradley Company, 1974. Image New-York Historical Society

 

Title IX banned sex discrimination in education, yet left a larger question unanswered: What counts as sex discrimination? Federal regulations provided some initial answers, but when some government and educational institutions attempted to weaken or ignore Title IX, students used the legal system to clarify and enforce it. The exhibition examines key questions and court cases, and recounts the experiences of plaintiffs, many of whom initially knew little about Title IX and educated themselves when faced with instances of sex discrimination.

 

 

Sports remain a perennial battleground in the Title IX story in part because they make inequality visible in a relatable way. Women student–athletes enthusiastically joined intercollegiate teams and engaged in physical competition—some for the first time. But they found that the men’s teams enjoyed better practice times, newer equipment, and more financial support. Despite claims about the value of athletic competition and expressions of support for female athletes, female athletics often receive less institutional support and girls who compete face scrutiny about their femininity and sexuality.

 

Collection of Caleb LoSchiavo, courtesy NYHS

 

Society’s growing understanding of gender as a spectrum versus a binary has also changed the definition of sex discrimination and revealed the sometimes tenuous nature of Title IX protections. In the 1970s, Title IX offered an opportunity to free boys and girls from sex stereotypes reinforced in classrooms by giving access to previously sex-segregated courses and pushing back against sexist classroom materials. Present-day efforts in the classroom involve welcoming the broad spectrum of gender identity. In 2016, an Obama administration “Dear Colleague” letter defined limiting transgender students’ access to a restroom, locker room, or sports team as sex discrimination under Title IX. The Trump administration rescinded this letter, reflecting its narrower definition of sex discrimination. Sports remain sex-segregated under Title IX, leaving trans and non-binary students wondering where they can play.

 

Curating an exhibition about a modern piece of legislation, particularly one seen as a political flashpoint, requires consideration of one’s own perspective. What elements of the historical record does one include? What voices are prioritized? We drew extensively on New-York Historical’s Women’s Sports Foundation and Billie Jean King collections to illustrate the rise of women’s professional athletics and the efforts put in place to support female student-athletes. Well-known repositories like the Schlesinger Library and the Library of Congress supplied contemporary images from the collections of some of the women related to this story. Yet some of our richest sources were the individuals we interviewed about their personal experiences with sex discrimination in education and their hand in shaping Title IX.

 

 

Finding objects for exhibitions often involves reading primary and secondary materials with an eye for the physical object. If a text mentions a certain poster or T-shirt related to an event or group, we ask: Does this still exist, and where is it? Some items show up on a quick eBay search. Other times, detective work is needed. When a plaintiff from Alexander v. Yale (1980), the first Title IX lawsuit to argue that sexual harassment was sex discrimination, told me about T-shirts made to fundraise for the suit, I tracked down the designer. She relayed the story of its origins but no longer had a physical shirt. She referred me to a Yale alumna who also no longer had a T-shirt.  But her friend did and was willing to lend it. These items heighten the emotional resonance of the exhibition by illustrating the personal stakes and impact of this legislation.

 

We conducted almost 60 interviews with scholars, activists, and people impacted by Title IX. We combined these narratives with the larger historical context of the legislation and the era. Our interviewees used Title IX not only to benefit themselves, but to aid those who came after them, from 1970s activists who saw themselves setting the building blocks for social change to activists in the 2010s who established organizations such as Know Your IX and End Rape on Campus.

 

Many interviewees viewed Title IX as an imperfect tool, at times insufficient to address the intersections of sex discrimination and race or sexual orientation. Others objected to newer policies for sexual assault hearings on college campuses that make them more like criminal trials. Yet no one believed that in 2022 Title IX is no longer needed.

 

Presidential administrations have differed in their commitment to the ideals of Title IX and its enforcement. Women’s increased visibility in professional athletics has inspired generations of children, yet that visibility can also disguise the inequities that persist within sports. Institutions struggle to ensure the rights of all students on campus and to navigate the  political challenges of reallocating funds to address historic inequities.

 

Yet if we focus on the fundamental promise of Title IX— ensuring that sex discrimination does not impede a student’s access to education—some of the noise falls away. Schools may face painful decisions, angry alumni, and political backlash. But it is hard to deny the value of an education, the damage done when a student cannot access their education, and the inspiring work of activists determined to be treated fairly. Fifty years out, we can look back and say with certainty that the U.S. landscape on gender equity would look very different today without Title IX. And the legislation continues to play an important role in shaping the future.

 

 

Editor’s Note: In May, 1980, a protest movement of students and blue-collar workers was violently suppressed by the South Korean martial law government of General Chun Doo-hwan, which arrested, tortured or killed thousands of participants. Survivors worked to preserve and compile a record of their experiences, frequently in secret as activists remained subject to surveillance. The publication and distribution of the texts as contraband was a key driver of the 1987 “June Struggle” democracy movement.

 

Sporadic and Passive Resistance (Sunday, May 18: Day 1 of the Uprising)

The fuse

The morning of May 18 began with a chill that quickly gave way to warmth. It was a clear spring day; the mood in the city, however, was bleak. Every street and avenue brimmed with silence and tension. Older plainclothes policemen temporarily transferred to Gwangju from police stations and precincts in other communities in the province stood guard in pairs at key locations. Distraught locals came out into the side streets and exchanged news under their breaths. The torchlight demonstrations that lit up the city only two nights earlier were still clear in their minds, and the absence of the flames was keenly felt. People gathered in small groups in the downtown area and the main street of Geumnam-ro, sharing rumors. Even passersby stopped to listen. Citizens clashed with stationed police officers on occasion, but there was no sign of unusual activity.

At 7:00 a.m., students attempting to enter Chonnam National University to access the library were beaten by the paratroopers at the main gates. They had been completely oblivious to the political changes sweeping the nation—and the expansion of martial law—and had only focused on studying for employment or civil service examinations. Half a dozen or so injured students were taken to the Noh Jun-chae Clinic for treatment. As time passed, more and more students crowded the main gates. Some had gathered to use the library or meet for group excursions, while others had come for sports. Yet others had come out because of the pact to gather at the main gates at 10:00 a.m. if the school was ordered to close. The students circled the gates, which were defended by the paratroopers, and refused to depart. They had no idea that those who had stayed on campus overnight had been taken into custody.

Lee Gwang-ho (age 21), a third-year student at the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Chonnam, had learned of the expansion of martial law and headed to school early to put away documents detailing the student council’s activities. He arrived at 8:00 a.m. and encountered Student Council President Park Gwan-hyun and his small party walking out from the vicinity of the College of Agriculture. They exchanged glances warning one another to be careful.

At that time, eleven soldiers from the 7th Company of the 9th Field Battalion of the 33rd Battalion of the 7th Brigade stood guard at the gates to Chonnam University. However, as the number of congregating students increased, Lieutenant Colonel Kwon Seung-man—commander of the 33rd—deployed an additional thirty soldiers to the gates. Kwon was anxious to resolve the situation quickly because Brigadier General Shin Woo-sik, commander of the 7th Brigade, was scheduled to visit at 11:00 A.M.

Lee Gwang-ho noted that by 9:00 a.m., the number of students had risen to about 50. They put themselves into a formation and attempted to break through the barricade at the gates with cries of “End martial law now!” However, their attempts were unsuccessful, and they were forced to simply circle the gates from the outside. By 10:00 a.m., their numbers had grown to over 100, and the crowd of onlookers also increased in number. An officer picked up a megaphone to demand that students disperse. In response, the students assembled by the bridge in front of the gates for a sit-down demonstration. Their numbers soon rose to over 200. The demonstrators shouted rallying cries of “End martial law now,” “Down with Chun Doo-hwan,” “Down with martial law troops,” and “Open schools again.”

Lieutenant Colonel Kwon, the highest-ranked officer of the special forces troops stationed at Chonnam, sensed that something was amiss and personally stepped forward. He warned demonstrators, “Disperse immediately, or you will be disbanded by force.” The students simply chanted more loudly.

In response, Kwon roared, “Charge!”

Paratroopers rushed into the crowds with menacing yells, clubbing students indiscriminately; unlike the police, they showed no restraint. Soon many bleeding students fell to the ground. The students wererattled by the violence, fleeing into alleyways to regroup and fighting back by throwing rocks. The 7th rushed the students again without hesitation. They chased down one of the demonstrators, clubbing them in the head until they were unconscious, and dragged them away. The skirmish went on for about thirty minutes, but unarmed university students ultimately stood no chance of defeating special forces who were trained in riot suppression and guerrilla warfare.

At around 10:30 a.m., Kim Han-jung (age 20) cried, “We should relocate to Province Hall instead of staying here to fight a battle we can’t win.” The students accepted the proposal and headed downtown. Fellow Chonnam students Park Monggu (age 25), Lee Don-gyu (age 22), Cheon Yeong-jin (age 20), and Cho Gil- yeong (age 22) and Chosun students Park Chae-yeong (age 21) and Na Jeong-sik (age 21) were also at the scene.

Paratroopers were engaged in violence at the rear gates of Chonnam as well. However, the situation was completely different. Students did not congregate at the rear gates, but the soldiers stationed there indiscriminately attacked postsecondary-aged passersby and took them into custody for no reason. Paratroopers even charged into buses that had stopped to let off passengers, dragging off young people and beating them.

At 10:00 a.m., Beom Jin-yeom (male, 21)—who was on the cusp of starting his mandated military service—was on his way to pick up pesticides on an errand for his father, when the bus he was on stopped briefly at the rear gates of Chonnam University. The doors opened, and soldiers poured inside and started beating passengers around his age. About twenty of them were taken away to Chonnam University for no reason. A female student who was unable to walk because of a leg injury was dragged off bodily. Jang Cheon-su (male, 24), who was in the furniture business, disembarked from the bus at Chonnam’s rear gates for personal business around 10:30 a.m. and was immediately taken to the guardhouse by two soldiers who kicked and clubbed him. Arms locked and helpless to defend himself, Jang sustained heavy injuries to his head and back without so much as an explanation. During the investigation by the Prosecutors’ Office, Lieutenant Colonel Kwon admitted that the 7th had used excessive force at the very beginning of the Gwangju situation:

Captain Ko, commander of the 7th Field Battalion, which was stationed at the rear gates of Chonnam University, said that “There was jeering from the bus, so the sentries dragged out several people, struck them several times, and had them kneel while the field commander re-educated them before sending them away.” Because of the nature of the re-education process, they would have struck those people several times.

Resistance in the Downtown Core

As the 7th Airborne Special Forces Brigade hunted down small groups of students putting up resistance at the main gates of Chonnam University, one of the students proposed heading downtown to inform people that martial law troops had taken control of the campus. With raised voices, students called to regroup at Gwangju Station. They scattered and made the one-kilometer journey to the plaza outside Gwangju Station in groups of twos and threes. With the plaza outside the South Jeolla Province Hall as their destination, the students ran from the station to the Intercity Bus Terminal to the Catholic Center on Geumnam-ro Street with cries of “End martial law now,” “Release Kim Dae-jung,” “Open schools again,” “Down with Chun Doo- hwan,” and “Down with martial law troops.” The majority of citizens at the time had no idea that Kim had been taken into custody. It took only two sentences for them to learn that their hopes for democratization had been cruelly dashed by the remnants of the Yusin regime and the Singunbu forces that composed a large portion of the military:

“Chun Doo-hwan has led a coup d’état.”

“Kim Dae- jung has been taken into custody.”

The students were met with little resistance as they reached the Catholic Center downtown at 11:00 a.m. There, they marched to the YMCA in a large group and were met by riot police. The group changed course and headed to the Chungjang-ro Street Post Office. Riot police had already been stationed at the entrance to Chungjang-ro 1-ga Street, forming a blockade with their shields. The demonstrators split into two groups: one headed straight toward Gwangju River, and the other turned into Chungjang-ro 2-ga Street. The number of students continued to snowball. Around 11:25 a.m., the students threw rocks at Chungjang-ro Street Police Substation, breaking nine windows.

Pushed toward Gwangju River by the police, the students took a break at the Gwangju Park plaza around 11:30 A.M. before heading to the Catholic Center on Geumnam-ro Street via Jungang-ro Street. Two to three hundred staged a sit-down demonstration on Geumnam-ro Street. Hundreds of locals gathered on sidewalks to watch, but no one stepped up to join them. Some time passed, and the number of demonstrators grew to over 500. Police surrounded the students and fired tear gas canisters over their heads.

Students were shocked to find that the police’s attitude had done a full 180 from the torchlight demonstrations only two days earlier. People watching from either end of the road jeered the police and showered them with profanities. The police forces vastly outnumbered the students and arrested many of them, but the students stubbornly dispersed and regrouped again and again.

Geumnam-ro Street and the fountain outside Province Hall remain the most symbolic places in Gwangju today, similarly to Gwanghwamun in Seoul and the plaza in front of Seoul City Hall. News of these events in downtown Gwangju quickly spread across the rest of the city.

Helicopters Deployed Against Demonstrators

The students found themselves growing more cornered over time. Although the people of Gwangju were outraged at their treatment, they did not dare to join the demonstrations. Slowly pushed out of Geumnam- ro Street, the students elected to avoid unnecessary con-frontations with the police in favor of collecting stray students in the Geumnam- ro area. By 12:30 p.m., events unfolded similarly in the areas north and south of the street. About 300 of the students who had been scattered from Geumnam- ro regrouped in front of the Municipal Student Hall and made their way to the bridge at Bullo- dong. There, they ran into 300 more demonstrators who had been marching from the Dong- gu district. The two groups had not been aware of one another and raised a cheer at the encounter.Next, the demonstrators went to the Intercity Bus Terminal in the hopes that news of their open opposition to the military coup d’état would spread across the region. Students raised their voices, some speaking directly to passengers in waiting areas and asking them to spread news about the demonstrations in Gwangju to the country-side. In response, the police surrounded the terminal and shot tear gas canisters into the building. The demonstrators desperately fled in the direction of Daein Market.Outside, they were chased past the terminal roundabout and toward the Gwangju Citizens’ Center, at which point an unprecedented event took place—a helicopter joined the chase. It was apparent that personnel on the helicopter were delivering the demonstrators’ locations to the riot police. Chonnam student Im Nak- pyeong (age 22), who was among the crowd, testified that the wind from the helicopter threatened to blow away the demonstrators on the ground.9 The demonstrators scattered into narrow alleyways but were met by police at every turn and dis-persed. The deployment of the helicopter accelerated the riot police’s movements, with police on land and air cooperating to suppress the demonstrations.10Violent police tactics pushed the demonstrators all the way to Gyerim Cinema, located about 1 kilometer from Geumnam- ro Street. Countless students were taken in the process, and the rest dispersed almost entirely. Only about twenty were left remaining. The helicopter continued to circle overhead in search of the main group behind the demonstrations.

 

The first victim Hearing-Impaired Kim Gyeong-cheol

The first recorded loss of life during the Gwangju Uprising was the death of Kim Gyeong-cheol (age 24), who was hearing-impaired and unable to speak. On the morning of May 18, family and relatives gathered at his home to celebrate the 100th day since the birth of his daughter. Kim ran a shoe- shining and crafting business in the Kkachigogae area of Baegun-dong with fellow hearing-impaired friends Hwang Jong-ho (age 22) and Park In-gap (age 25). They would visit cafés and businesses in the city to offer their services. That afternoon, Kim and his friends wandered the downtown core in search of work, when three or four paratroopers appeared out of nowhere at the entrance to the alley by Jeil Cinema on Chungjang-ro Street and struck Kim in the head. Kim fell on the spot, bleeding. Hwang and Park fled in terror and watched from a hiding place in the alley as Kim was beaten. They too were quickly discovered by soldiers coming from the opposite direction and beaten with rifles and kicked. They gestured desperately to explain that they were unable to hear or speak, until blood ran down their hands. But the more they tried to plead, the more the soldiers assaulted them and accused them of pretending to be disabled. The soldiers dragged the half-conscious men away and hauled them into their armored vehicles. It was 11:00 p.m. when the soldiers finally realized that the men were indeed hearing-impaired and released them.

Kim, who was taken to the Red Cross Hospital in the afternoon, was moved to the Korean Armed Forces Hospital and was declared dead at 3:00 a.m. on May 19. According to the autopsy of Kim’s body, conducted jointly by the Gwangju District Prosecutors’ Office and the military, Kim suffered “abrasions and lacerations to the back of the head, lacerations to the superior palpebral region of the left eye, blunt trauma to the upper right forearm, blunt trauma to the left shoulder joint, and blunt trauma to the anterior tibia, buttocks, and femoral region.” In other words, the back of his head was caved in, his left eye was ruptured, his right arm and left shoulder were broken, and his buttocks and thighs were crushed. According to the death certificate, the direct cause of death was cerebral hemorrhaging caused by blunt trauma to the back of the head.

By 5:00 p.m., an hour after paratroopers were deployed to the downtown core, the last of the student demonstrations on Geumnam-ro Street were disbanded in front of Cheongsan Private School. However, the soldiers continued to carry out their violent suppression. They crawled through shops, cafés, barbershops, restaurants, offices, homes, and billiard halls, hunting down students with dogged obstinance. Those still in hiding or who had failed to escape were dragged out like animals.

Signs of Reversal

At 6:00 p.m., about 300 young people clashed with a small number of paratroopers in the Gyerim-dong neighborhood. The demonstrators were armed with pieces of lumber, metal pipes, and kitchen knives. Where other demonstrators scattered helplessly in the face of military might, this group met the soldiers head-on and refused to give in. A fierce struggle ensued with injuries on both sides. Lee Jang-ui (age 30), a blue-collar worker at the Asia Motors factory, had attended the first birthday celebration of a friend’s child in Gwangcheon-dong and was on his way back when he happened to stumble upon the scene. Lee attempted to pass by the paratroopers stationed in front of Gyerim Cinema at 6:00 p.m. when, with a cry of “Get him!” the soldiers swarmed him, beating him with their batons and stabbing him four times.

Demonstrators responded with horror and indignation. They surrounded the paratroopers without care for their own safety. The soldiers were pushed back little by little until suddenly, they broke ranks and fled in the direction of the Sansu-dong five-way intersection with the demonstrators in hot pursuit. It was not long, however, before military reinforcements arrived to strike back, forcing demonstrators to fall back and scatter, taking shelter in local residences.

The paratroopers surrounded the neighborhoods of Sansu-dong and Punghyang-dong and combed the area late into the night, taking away anyone who seemed to be postsecondary student-aged. Rumors spread that martial law forces would search boarding houses and studio apartments in the Chonnam and Chosun University areas at night to take students into custody.

At 6:00 p.m., Jeolla Province martial law authorities moved up curfew time in Gwangju to 9:00 p.m. with Martial Law Command Branch Announcement 4 and urged citizens to return home early. At 7:00 p.m., Lieutenant Colonel Kim Il-ok, commander of the 35th Battalion, reported to Commander Chung Ung of the 31st Division that the demonstrations had been put down. However, demonstrators continued their activities guerrilla-style late into the night. A group of more than 600 amassed in front of the Catholic Center on Geumnam-ro Street downtown at 8:00 p.m. and clashed with martial law troops before being driven off. Dozens were taken into custody and over 2,000 young people were pushed toward the Labor Supervision Office and Hanil Bank until they scattered. Pockets of resistance flared up across the city. Demonstrators were taken away until late that night, and screams continued to echo down the streets. The commotion finally grew quiet at 11:00 p.m. The alleyways were rank with the stench of blood.

That night, Chonnam University students Noh Jun-hyeon (age 24) and Im Nak-pyeong made countless telephone calls in the dark to confirm the safety of their friends and to spread word about what they had seen on the streets that day. Their hushed voices carried across phone lines and over walls from house to house. Word of the military’s brutal actions spread across the city like wildfire. The people of Gwangju spent the night wide awake, simmering with fear and anger.

Officially, 405 people were taken into custody on May 18: 114 university students, 35 college students, 6 high school students, 66 young people studying for university entrance exams, and 184 ordinary civilians. Of them, 68 suffered head injuries, blunt trauma, or puncture wounds, and 12 were in critical condition. However, the real number of injuries and arrests was much higher than reported.

That day, the 31st Infantry Division collected 4,717 firearms and 1.16 million rounds of ammunition from storage locations across the city and the armories of workplace reserve units and moved them onto their base, fearing that they might be seized by civilians. An additional 550,000 rounds of ammunition from local armories were collected to be stored on base or at a police station. The 31st also requested permission from the Singunbu to open fire on anyone who attempted to approach any of the armories in the city.

 

Gathering of the Anti-Chinese Workingmen’s Party near San Francisco City Hall. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 1 1880

 

As we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month this May, it’s important to consider why examining the history of anti-Chinese violence is important to people outside the AAPI communities. Current dialogues about race in the U.S. often minimize Asian experiences with racism as unfortunate incidents involving a successful model minority that does not need “extra” attention or assistance. One state in particular—California—has often been portrayed by public media as a liberal sanctuary, often held up as a model for the rest of the U.S., when it is certainly not the case.

 

In 2020, hate crimes against Asians in California more than doubled; the most common type of anti-Asian hate crime reported was violent crime, with 72 reports in 2020, up from 32 in 2019. This included an assault that left a 76-year-old Asian American grandmother with two black eyes, the death of a 75-year-old man after a robbery in Oakland, and the June 2021 stabbing of a 94-year-old San Francisco woman. Two years later in January 2022, the San Francisco police department reported that hate crime incidents involving anti-Asian bias had jumped from nine in 2020 to 60 in 2021, a 567% increase.

 

These are not the first instances of anti-Asian intolerance in California. The first recorded instances of anti-Chinese violence occurred during the California gold rush in 1850. Along with Black Americans and Native Americans, Chinese were barred from testifying against whites in California’s courts. As a result, assaults on Chinese people in California generally went unpunished from the very beginning of their immigration history.

 

In his campaign for re-election in 1852, California Governor John Bigler urged fellow citizens to “check this tide of Asiatic immigration,” claiming that the Chinese were incapable of becoming American. He baldly asserted that due to racial and cultural reasons, they could not assimilate. That same year, merchant Norman Asing responded thusly, “so far as the history of our race in California goes, it stamps with the test of truth the fact that we are not the degraded race you would make us.”  Unmoved, 10 years later in January 1862, Governor Stanford (founder of Stanford University) stated: “To my mind it is clear, that the settlement among us of an inferior race is to be discouraged by every legitimate means.” What does the term “legitimate means” mean?

 

California history includes massacres, riots, expulsions and other violent actions that were directed at Chinese-American communities during the mid and late 19th century. In the 1880s alone, Chinese communities were attacked in 34 towns in California, subsequent to the 1871 LA Chinatown massacre of 20 Chinese in one night. Less than a decade later, the San Francisco anti-Chinese 3 day pogrom took place in 1877 where Chinatown was burned to the ground, followed by killings in Chico, Weaverville and Yreka; still later, in 1885-1886 Chinese were expelled from Arroyo Grande, Marysville, Merced, Nicolaus, Pasadena, Redding, Red Bluff, Riverside, Truckee and Tulare, where local Chinatowns were razed.

 

Clearly, anti-Asian American hate has not abated in the U.S. since the ratification of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the only federal act targeting a specific nationality by race.  Discrimination has not been limited to Chinese.  During WWII, the first Japanese internment camp was opened in Manzanar in 1942, located in southern California.  No other nationalities were targeted. A total of 11,070 Japanese Americans were processed, and nearly two-thirds of all internees at Manzanar were American citizens by birth. During the 1992 LA riots, 2,280 Korean American-owned stores were looted, burned or damaged; nearly half a billion dollars of damage was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Koreatown became a war-zone, with no police coming to help. Last year in March 2021, a white man disrupted a protest against anti-Asian racism in Diamond Bar, California, by driving through a group of protesters while yelling, “F — China!”  John Lee, a Korean American city councilman who currently represents a district in the San Fernando Valley, shares a common refrain about the Asian American experience, that it is to “perpetually feel like an outsider.” Certain aspects of “the American Dream” manifestly have not applied to Asian Americans.

 

“We cannot allow this effort to die down,” Lee said of the Asian community’s work to highlight anti-Asian violence. “We cannot and will not be silent any longer.”

 

It’s particularly instructive to uphold the mythology of California’s liberal tolerance.  Its history and contemporary politics belie that stereotype. After all, in June 2021, a report from the California state attorney general noted that attacks against Asians rose by 107% the previous year. The total number of hate crimes in California in 2020 was the highest in more than a decade, 1,330. One in three anti-Asian hate crimes took place in Los Angeles County. These are merely the latest in the long list of violence and discrimination against Asians throughout the state’s history.  Surely, California cannot be held up as an unblemished paragon of tolerance and peaceful inclusion. During the COVID pandemic, it’s become obvious that self-evident truths of American democracy have been under attack: equality, unalienable Rights such as Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. In the Golden State, attacks on these values have been specifically directed towards Asian Americans for over a century and a half.

Samuel Eliot Morison, 1953

 

Are historians too subjective? Should we strive to be impartial and objective? Should one of our purposes be to give people perspectives and incentives to shape the future?

These questions are not new. They have been debated in our field before. One of the most interesting perspectives comes from Samuel Eliot Morison’s American Historical Association 1950 presidential address “Faith of a Historian.” He was the author of several maritime histories, studies of New England, and co-author of a popular text.  His AHA Presidential essay is worth considering for his perspectives on the purposes of history, objectivity, and historians’ influence on the public.

A few themes:

*Historians are swayed too much by the desire to cater to and please their readers.

Historians need to stay objective. But the “legitimate desire of the historian to interest, to instruct, and to please, is at once a leading motive for his labors, a challenge to present his work in artistic form, and a danger to his professional integrity. It tempts him to deviate from the truth in order to satisfy school committees on whom he depends for ‘adoptions’; or the prejudices of reviewers and the emotions of the public to whom he looks for circulation,” Morison wrote.

*Historians trying to write “popular” history face competition from “amateurs.”

Historians may want to consider writing “popular” history – books that appeal to a broad reading public. But, Morison cautioned, popular history is a field mostly occupied by less-than-qualified  non-historians. “Most writers of pseudo-history…are gifted amateurs seeking to bolster some pet theory with carefully screened facts, or people trained in journalism or some similar calling in which the story’s the thing. If it accords with the facts, fine; if not, so much the worse for the facts.”

*Historians should stick with the facts, not twist them to fit preconceived theses or patterns.

Morison endorsed an oft-quoted recommendation from 19th century historian Leopold von Ranke: historians should just “explain the event exactly as it happened.” That had been an often-expressed goal in the  19th century but the history community in the 20th had mostly regarded it as simplistic. For one thing, it was historians who selected which facts to emphasize. That depended on research into evidence, which might change over time as more sources became available or historians looked at old evidence with new insights. But Morison held to the older view: just the facts.

*Too many contemporary historians think they need to insert their own viewpoint.

Too many historians think their work is about interpretation, said Morison. “Somewhere along the assembly-line of their education, these students have had inserted in them a bolt called ‘points of view,’ secured with a nut called ‘trends,’ and they imagine that the historian’s problem is simply to compare points of view and describe trends. It is not. The fundamental question is,’What actually happened, and why?’”

*Historians understand, illuminate, and explain the past.

“The positive task for the honest historian…is to illuminate the past. He will inevitably try to answer some of the questions that contemporary society asks of the past, such as the causes of and prevention of war, the working of democracy under different sets of conditions and by various peoples, and the part that personality, climate, and environment play in determining events,” Morison went on. But “these considerations should be secondary in the historian’s mind. After his main object of describing events ‘simply as they happened,’ his principal task is to understand the motives and objects of individuals and groups, even those that he personally dislikes, and to point out mistakes as well as achievements by persons and movements, even by those that he loves. In a word, he must preserve balance.”

*Charles A Beard is an example of where too much “interpretation” can lead to problems.

Morison spent much of his essay attacking a predecessor AHA president Charles A Beard. His 1933 presidential address “Written History as an Act of Faith” had asserted that all history is relative in a sense because a historian’s experience and frame of reference determines how they interpret history.

Morison pointed out that early in his career, Beard had a progressive or liberal bent. His famous 1913 book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States had argued that the Founding Fathers were motivated by personal financial interests. That influenced how people thought about the Constitution and the government structure it created.  “The book had an immense success, promptly becoming the Progressives’ Bible. Through it, Beard probably contributed more than any other writer, except [journalist and satirist] Henry L. Mencken, to the scornful attitude of intellectuals toward American institutions, that followed World War I.”

Later, though,  Morison went on, Beard became more positive about the founders, particularly in his book The Enduring Federalist. Beard was a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal early on. But he became an isolationist and his 1948 book President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War,1941, contended that  FDR’s policies got the U.S. into World War II.

“Thus Beard came full circle. His 1913 book was received with greatest acclaim in the camp of  [socialist] Eugene Debs; his 1948 book evoked the wild enthusiasm of the [conservative, anti-Roosevelt] Hearst press and the Chicago Tribune.”

This is an example of the fact that “frames of reference constantly shift,” said Morison.  “Fashions in history are constantly changing.”

Of course, not all historians agreed with Morison, and probably fewer would now. Morison might not like to hear it, but his own “frames of reference” shifted over the years. On the other hand,  he might counter that yes, they did, and that bears out what he was saying.

Morison’s views may seem quaint now, the discussion dated. But studying past historians can shed light on our own times. Many historians these days are involved with social causes. Their books are cited in support of, or in opposition to, non-historians’ positions on issues related to race, gender, social justice, and other issues. Morison’s essay gives us reason to revisit our purpose, mission in society, and role in shaping how people understand their world and try to shape the future.