Forgetting and the Forgotten

A Thousand Years of Contested Histories in the Heartland
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8093-3837-5
Verlag: Southern Illinois University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Shawnee Books

Revealing the forgotten in community histories

Histories try to forget, as this evocative study of one community reveals. Forgetting and the Forgotten details the nature of how a community forged its story against outsiders. Historian Michael C. Batinski explores the habits of forgetting that enable communities to create an identity based on silencing competing narratives. The white settlers of Jackson County, Illinois, shouldered the hopes of a community and believed in the justice of their labor as it echoed the national story. The county's pastkeepers, or keepers of the past, emphasizing the white settlers' republican virtue, chose not to record violence against Kaskaskia people and African Americans and to disregard the numerous transient laborers. Instead of erasing the presence of outsiders, the pastkeepers could offer only silence, but it was a silence that could be broken.

Batinski's historiography critically examines local historical thought in a way that illuminates national history. What transpired in Jackson County was repeated in countless places throughout the nation. At the same time, national history writing rarely turns to experiences that can be found in local archives such as court records, genealogical files, archaeological reports, coroner's records, and veterans' pension files. In this archive, juxtaposed with the familiar actors of Jackson County history—Benningsen Boon, John A. Logan, and Daniel Brush—appear the Sky People, Italian immigrant workers, black veterans of the Civil War and later champions of civil rights whose stories challenge the dominant narrative.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Fragen & Probleme
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Regional- & Stadtgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One: Forgetting Habits
- 1. Dispossessing: Land and Past
- 2. Squaring the Circles, Filling the Squares
- 3. Settlers and Transients
- 4. Civil Wars and Silences
- 5. Gilding the Past
- Part Two: Habits Kept, Habits Questioned
- 6. Passersby, Rich and Penniless
- 7. Reconstruction and Race
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments

Über Autor(innen)

Michael C. Batinski, a professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, first expressed his interest in historical consciousness in small places by writing Pastkeepers in a Small Place: Five Centuries in Deerfield, Massachusetts. He is also the author of two books on early American politics, The New Jersey Assembly, 1738–1775: The Making of a Legislative Community and Jonathan Belcher: Colonial Governor.