The later 20th century Klan emerged gradually in the wake of the racist film “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915, and only became a national phenomenon starting in 1921. In Wisconsin in 1919, when March was inducted into his group, it was possible to have never heard of the Ku Klux Klan that was later so notorious....
Even Madison’s chancellor, Rebecca Blank, has written that March had “fought the persecution of Hollywood artists, many of them Jewish, in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee” and that March “took actions later in life to suggest (he) opposed discrimination.”...
So... it was 4 years after "The Birth of a Nation." And "it was possible to have never heard of the Ku Klux Klan"? But why was it called "the Ku Klux Klan"? McWhorter says there's "no evidence" that it's the same Ku Klux Klan. But the name is some evidence, and the lack of any other explanation of the name, and the fact that "The Birth of a Nation" had been out for 4 years are at least some evidence.
I agree with McWhorter that March shouldn't be tarred as a racist for something he did for a year as a young man and that might have been genuinely racist. But the question is whether his name should be used to name the campus theaters. We have a much more important theater-related alum — Lorraine Hansberry. I'd put her name on the theaters. Update the honoring.
Back to McWhorter:
This witch-burning mentality is something most of us less concur with than fear.... The students who got March’s name taken off those buildings made a mistake, as did the administrators who again caved to weakly justified demands, seemingly too scared of being called racists to take a deep breath and engage in reason. The University of Wisconsin must apologize to March and his survivors. His name should be restored to both of the theaters now denuded of his name, including the Madison building, which he in fact helped bring into being and funded the lighting equipment even before the building was named after him. This must happen in the name of what all involved in this mistake are committed to: social justice — which motivated March throughout his life.
ADDED: As someone who has taught the law school course called Evidence, I rankle at the phrase "no evidence." Evidence is anything that makes a fact of consequence either more likely to be true or less likely to be true. There is clearly some evidence that March affiliated himself with a racist group. It's fine to say there's not enough evidence to justify removing March's name from these buildings, especially when we also have evidence that March was an anti-racist. That's all you need to say.
AND: This isn't a trial of March where his accusers must meet a burden of proof and the question is whether he ought to be convicted of racism. That ought to fail because he has a constitutional right to be a racist. We wouldn't even go to trial. But if it did, there wouldn't be enough evidence to convict him. But the important point here is that the question in issue is whether his name ought to be on campus buildings today. What should the burden of proof be and is it met? That's the way to analyze this controversy.
Posts
63 comments:
Theaters should all be named after women or gay men.
serious question
does Fredric March Have to be memory holed? It's Not like a newspaper called him n*****head
Due process requirement for cancel culture. I like that. How about simple preponderance of evidence?
I literally love this post.
No matter what the building names are changed to, the university students who don't read at the university level now will not read any better afterwards.
I was certain that the first tranche of comments would include multiple references to the late Senator Byrd, and, indeed, the entire sorry history of the Democratic Party as peddlers of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation of the military, majority votes against the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills, the destruction of the black family, the black holocaust that is abortion, and the cynical racism of LBJ and his successors.
But, I was wrong. No mention to this point.
So, consider it mentioned.
Why do these people continue to support the party that did all the above, and demonize the party that freed the slaves, voted in greater proportions in favor of the landmark Civil Rights legislation, and champions the survival of black babies?
Maybe it's all about power and control?
What happens to Lorraine Hansberry when it is discovered that her parents were Republicans? By current standards, sin attaches to all generations. If we're to be North Korea, let's do it properly.
As much as my knee jerk reaction is to be anti-cancel, I think Professor Althouse is right here. As a child in Poland of all places, I had read Doyle's "The Five Orange Pips" and the KKK as a sinister organization was clear. I think it would be difficult to be a university student in the US and be unaware of what the KKK stood for. And, Lorraine Hansberry is a worthy candidate.
Interestingly, Fredric March played the President and coup target in "7 Days in May", a movie which became a "How To" book for the establishment/deep state/left/LLR-left.
The Ku Klux Klan: The Transformation from a Fraternity into a Religious Denomination
More stupid theater for stupid people.
In the post above this Althouse talks about an article on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. I recall a picture of Prince Harry as a much younger man, dressed as a Nazi for a Halloween party. I don't care about that at all. And anyone who does care about that is evidence that that person is unsuited to make decisions that affect other people. I don't think young people trying to be shocking and provocative is a sufficient reason to try to cancel them, especially many years later. I feel like a a fair amount of this stuff is linked to society's embrace of hate-crime legislation a few decades ago. It made people much more concerned about bad thoughts, rather than bad acts. And I think society's embrace of hate-crime legislation is linked to a burgeoning, pervasive moral inferiority complex. Many people desperately feel the need to feel like they are good, and attacking people that they feel like society can label as racists can sate that moral inferiority complex. And I think that pervasive moral inferiority complex is linked to a decline in religiosity. Not sure what the decline in religiosity is linked to though
"The Best Years of Our Lives"
Speaking of Virginia Mayo, "Black Legion", directed by Archie Mayo and starring Humphrey Bogart, depicts a black-hooded KKK-type group which turned out to be a scam to sell hoods and pistols.
If the UW president had any balls, he would have made those students write a paper on why Marche's name should have been removed. They would then have to public present the paper and defend it against all questioners. If a secret ballot confirmed their desire, then Marche's name would be removed. If not, the group would be suspended for one semester. Make them put some skin the game.
I see the whole cancel and erase movement as "quickie abolition." When white people wearing masks and carrying weapons and gasoline march into the black community and burn down its businesses under black leadership as a means of abolishing racism, we are looking at a "quickie abolition" movement of the 21st Century. When a university moves rocks and makes up history with villain-a-day shows in place of work on history, law or literature, we are looking at quickie abolition. It would be better for university students to study and learn, how, beginning in the Twentieth Century, people began to go along with new quickie abolition movements which promised to quickly, immediately, abolish long-standing problems and injustices. The measures taken by Nazis, Fascists, Communists, eugenicists and BLM quickly, immediately, created new problems and new injustices which their supporters were and are slow to acknowledge and incapable of reforming quickly, immediately or ever. It seems to me that such movements become incapable of reform from within because a belief in the cheap grace of quickie abolitionism makes reform realities, efforts and struggles seem futile and pathetic, a whore's life in comparison with the quickie dream. When we go most wrong as societies these days, this is how we do. We see a man struggling because he is a reformer, he's real, but to the quickie abolitionists a man or woman who must struggle, a limited person, is outside the quickie dream and must be forgotten. Cancelled. At once.
Too bad Fredric March isn't alive today to absolve himself, in the manner that Joe Biden does today, simply by projecting his own history of bigotry on the rest of the nation.
Lillian Gish, the screen's first great actress, was similarly cancelled by Bowling Green State University for the sin of having appeared in THE BIRTH OF A NATION. Their theatre was named for her...until 2019 when the Black Student Union demanded successfully that it be changed, despite protests by by over 50 film industry figures, including actors Helen Mirren and James Earl Jones and directors Bertrand Tavernier and Martin Scorsese.
I appreciate John McWhorter and his endless efforts to call out the bs around these issues. I fear however that ignorance spreads ar a speed much faster than he can address. And about that rock, someone else called it a name, it did nothing wrong. Talk about victim blaming.
Outside of the Frat's name, what's the evidence it was a "racist organization"? Speaking of Mr. March's movies, I've always loved "I Married a Witch".
Fernandinande said...
depicts a black-hooded KKK-type group which turned out to be a scam to sell hoods and pistols
As was the kkk of the 20s.
https://priceonomics.com/when-the-kkk-was-a-pyramid-scheme/
Lots of other more in depth stuff on this if you want.
KKK had about 6 million members in 1925. Us pop was about 115mm.
So 4-5% of Americans were kkk members and March didn't know?
John Henry
Don't pretend to know to much about Lorraine Hansbury's full body of work, but based on the evidence of A Raisin In the Sun, wasn't she on the "pro-life" side of the abortion issue? How long before they come for a sister who failed to support "a woman's right to choose"?
Why do some antiquated people who held some antiquated ideas in some antiquated eras rate cancellation and others get a pass.....When I was young, sodomy had a bad reputation. You got cancelled for being a homosexual. It was considered a marker of sin and decadence. Now you get cancelled for being a homophobe if you're insufficiently militant about the use of pronouns for trans people.....Some years you got cancelled for being a Communist. Then you got cancelled for being too stridently an anti-Communist.....It used to be okay to screw underage girls. Charlie Chaplin's reputation didn't suffer any real damage because of his attraction to fourteen year old girls. He was, however, both exiled and later honored because of his politics.....Posterity doesn't offer much in the way of due process.
First they came for the black rock: And I said nothing.
Democrats are experts on the Klan since all members of one group were also members of the other group.
We should cancel all democrat institutions, as the Klan was.
I couldn't survive in Madison...so many supposedly 'smart' people in that town that are so damned dumb.
It's how I feel when I visit Berkeley. I get neck pains from shaking my head all day...and eye pain from rolling my eyes.
Without reversing causality, we cannot use KKK popularity in the 1920's to infer the attitude of frat boys in 1919. It is quite possible that it struck them as a better name than "The Pirates" or "The Redskins." Something out of history, now churned up in popular culture thanks to the movie, that seemed badass. Dressing up as a Klansman for a college Halloween party might have struck them as another good idea, if Halloween was something any adult gave two second's thought to in 1919.
March most likely did "know." But he may not have been fully "aware."
Suburbanites with "Black Lives Matter" signs "know" about the organization, but they aren't really "aware" of what the core organization stands for.
It's not an exact analogy, and I'm not entirely happy with the white-black turnaround, but people definitely do adopt labels and slogans and causes whose origins and deeper meanings they don't understand.
So basically March's defense is that he wasn't really in the Klan Klan. I'm picturing Whoopi Goldberg with a Mona Lisa smile
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Ku%20Klux%20Klan
"Definition of Ku Klux Klan
1 : a violent secret fraternal society founded in 1915 in Georgia to maintain white Protestant cultural and political power also : any one of more than 20 hate (see hate entry 1 sense 1c) groups that associate themselves with the Ku Klux Klan
2 : a violent post-Civil War secret society founded in Tennessee in 1866 to upend the Black political and social power that was being established during Reconstruction
Note: This Ku Klux Klan had largely dissolved by the end of the 1870s."
The Wikipedia article about Frederic March includes a reference (5) to a Wisconsin Alumni Organization.
https://www.uwalumni.com/news/1924-badger/
I can't tell when the piece was written, but if correct, the collegiate Klan was completely unrelated to the then-small and secret Georgia-founded Klan. In 1923, the collegiate Klan changed its name to Tumas to avoid confusion with the non-collegiate organization.
"No evidence"of March's affiliation with the "bad" Ku Klux Klan might be too strong, but "scant evidence" seems fair to me.
To think that means something awful is to be historically ignorant
This could be a well-used Althouse tag.
Now do Woody Guthrie, his father was a Klan member and is said to have been involved in a lynching. Woody himself was racist as a young man.
Look, the lunatics of Wisconsin have already dumped on "Forward", Abraham Lincoln, Hans Christian Heg, and a large rock. Now they are going after the estimable Frederic March. Next it will be the Lunts because they were white. Lorraine Hansberry will be suspect because she implied in was OK to call her own people "raisins", and she married a white man.
We have to face reality here--either these people are invincibly ignorant and incapable of critical thought, or they are engaged in nonstop trolling of the university's feeble-minded administrators. I am afraid it is number one, but it may be number two. Either way, a sector of the student body and the public in Madison is unwilling to understand or admit that times change and people are complicated. This will not serve either themselves or the rest of us well.
So, here's a test: which of these former Ku Klux Klan members was a better man: Justice Hugo Black or Senate Democratic Caucus Leader (1977-1989) Robert Byrd? Why?
It was back in 1919/1920 and there was an interfraternity group that called itself the Ku Klux Klan
Meaning that members grew up under the influence of the rabidly racist, segregationist, and neo-slaver Woodrow Wilson.
Sorry, you don't get redemption from later anti-discrimination efforts when you don't acknowledge and admit the prior evil acts.
If there is no conclusive evidence about the student group called the Ku Klux Klan, we should consider that the name may have been humorous or even mocking rather than indicating any affiliation with the real KKK. The possiblity does not seem to have occurred to today's humorless university students and administrators.
As for the suggestion that Lorraine Hansberry is more worthy of recognition than Frederic March, consider that March is the only actor other than Helen Hayes to win two Oscars and two Tonys. (Admittedly, his first Oscar performance, for "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde," was terribly hammy. "The Best Years of Our Lives," though, is among the finest American movies ever made.) Hansberry didn't donate any money to the University of Wisconsin theater and already has a theater named after her in San Francisco. Also, she was over serveral years -- perhaps her whole adult life -- a Communist, beginning at at time when Communism was spreading its murderous oppression to Eastern Europe and China. If noxious personal opinions are going to override professional merit in naming things, Hansberry's persistent and well documented support of Communism is far worse than March's possible single, short-lived transgression.
This is academia collapsing. The college of grievance studies will remain for the ignorant females.
The football team is a real quandary because they actually generate $$$.
There has been significant investment in housing for the Chinese at the UW (Washington). I don't think the Chinese are coming back as students.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe his name was attached to just one theater (and not the largest) of those in the Memorial Union?
In the scope of things, a pretty small change to a place that has had multiple major renovations since first being named (and one since being renamed I think).
The perfect bit of molehill for McWhorter to try to turn into a mountain, all while claiming the other side is blowing things out of proportion.
I have been quite underwhelmed by his NYTimes editorials, clearly not his strong suit.
Hugo Black was an outspoken advocate of the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, popularly known as the court-packing bill, FDR's unsuccessful plan to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court in his favor. . . . in his view, the Court was improperly overturning legislation that had been passed by large majorities in Congress. During his Senate career, Black consistently opposed the passage of anti-lynching legislation, as did all of the white Democrats of the Solid South. In 1935 Black led a filibuster of the Wagner-Costigan anti-lynching bill. . . .
[On the Supreme Court,] Black also tended to favor law and order over civil rights activism. This led him to read the Civil Rights Act narrowly. For example, he dissented in multiple cases reversing convictions of sit-in protesters, arguing to limit the scope of the Civil Rights Act. In 1968 he said, "Unfortunately there are some who think that Negroes should have special privileges under the law." Black felt that actions like protesting, singing, or marching for "good causes" one day could lead to supporting evil causes later on; his sister-in-law explained that Black was "mortally afraid" of protesters. Black opposed the actions of some civil rights and Vietnam War protesters and believed that legislatures first, and courts second, should be responsible for alleviating social wrongs. Black once said he was "vigorously opposed to efforts to extend the First Amendment's freedom of speech beyond speech," to conduct. . .
He dissented from Katz v. United States (1967), in which the Court held that warrantless wiretapping violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. He argued that the Fourth Amendment only protected tangible items from physical searches or seizures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Black
"I'm picturing Whoopi Goldberg with a Mona Lisa smile."
You are good. The best I can do with her is a smug leer or an oafish grin.
OK Bender. Now do Robert Byrd.
Damn for an organization that has been hated and attacked for 75 years, and since 1945 has only a few members, the KKK sure does have a hold on the leftist and Boomer memory. Its still KKK all the time. Can we now talk about Emmitt Till now? Or Bull Connor?
Did you know the KKK were Democrats? Zing! Not as zingy as it was in 1974, when it was first said.
The left never forgives or forgets. But is there any reason the rest of us can't?
But "historically ignorant" is about all they have
I must say, why did it take so long to uncover this most heinous of offence by a man with his name plastered in the schools most venerated auditoriums?
I mean, why did the rock came down before the Klansman? Link to Althouse racist rock post
On the other hand, the pandemic must have slowed down progress. 🤷♂️
Further to the Hugo Black vs. Robert Byrd test, Horace Greeley once said, "Not all Democrats are horse thieves, but all horse thieves are Democrats."
I must acknowledge that Greeley later was the Liberal Republican candidate against Grant in 1872 and got significant Democrat support.
Two-eyed Jack said...
Dressing up as a Klansman for a college Halloween party might have struck them as another good idea, if Halloween was something any adult gave two second's thought to in 1919.
Now do dressing up as a Klansman, with your date in Blackface, while in med school in the 1980's
OK Bender. Now do Robert Byrd.
Ku Kluxer Byrd speaks for itself. Let's not dismiss other Ku Kluxers simply by comparing them to Byrd.
The left never forgives or forgets. But is there any reason the rest of us can't?
Forgive or forget that the Democrats are the Party of Slavery, Secession, and Segregation (not to mention socialism and slaughter of innocents and uncivil violence and seeking destruction of truth and civilization)? Forget that they are the living embodiment of the Klan and Jim Crow?
Yes, there IS reason we cannot and should not ever forget. Forgiveness can come -- when they repent of their evil history (and present) and fix all the destruction they have brought upon the world.
I would not be so quick to update honoring. The naming of the building not only preserves the person it was named after (that is, if students ever notice who that was. I don't know anything about the people who many of my dorms and academic buildings were named after. At W&M some are obvious, but who cares about the others?), it reflects the decision of the people in that time. That is also real history. Are only the people at the college this year eventually going to be allowed to name things? That would be the ultimate extension of your idea.
BTW, I was in a production of Hansberry's "What Use Are Flowers?" at W&M almost 50 years ago, and thought it brilliant and significant at the time. I now think it ludicrous in premise and shallow in sentiment. So which version of me gets to name theater buildings? I suggest my earlier self had more skin in the game, but was largely an ass. Why would we listen to students about such matters at all? Thank God no one listened to me.
“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."
https://www.chesterton.org/democracy-of-the-dead/
"First they came for the black rock: And I said nothing."
It wasn't even a black rock. It was light gray.
Climbed a rock and came down a Klansman... or something.
I don't feel like looking up when UW integrated (at my alma mater it was 1959) but if you search out the humor pages of any proper college or U yearbook circa the 19-teens and twenties, you'll find racist jokes and caricatures galore. (Try Archives USA, though they've changed a lot since I went there--your school or one known to you has scanned their old annuals and publications.)
It's possible that those young men chose KKK deliberately to thumb their noses at the fogies--like calling themselves the Taliban, or Qanon, or The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy, Inc., which some friends and I did in high school, complete with little ID cards by our talented friend Bobby.
Sincere preference or smartass gesture, it hardly matters any more.
"It wasn't even a black rock. It was light gray."
It was black inside.
(Seriously, if it was gabbro, as I saw reported, it was black inside. The light gray color was from weathering.)
UW's Van Hise Hall is named after Charles Van Hise, a noted eugenicist.
"It wasn't even a black rock. It was light gray."
I was going by the one drop rule. If Harry Belefonte is black, so is a light grey rock.
Heck, we've smeared once-favored presidents. Who does this March guy think he is?
The theater has been tainted by the application of March's name. It's not enough to call it something else. It must be removed, same as naggerhead rock.
They say faith can move mountains; apparently threats and intimidation can move rocks the size of boulders.
Did Americans of the time really need for the movie to tell them about KKK? was it not taught in history in schools?
I learned about KKK in Frank G Slaughter novel
Why would replacing it with a commie be any better?
I subscribe to Mr. McWhorter's SubStack and enjoyed it quite a bit before he stopped publishing there when he got the NYT gig. He was putting out rough drafts of a book on the new Woke religion of The Elect (his term) and its impact on blacks he is, or maybe was, intending to publish in the near future. It was not clear in his announcement on SubStack whether he was suspending his output there out of courtesy to his new employer or because there was some contractual obligation that would interfere with posting. It will be interesting what becomes of the anticipated book given its subject and his new outlet.
I'm left wondering now if he's in a slow-motion version of the Kevin Williamson-Atlantic affair. Oh to have a tap into the NYT Slack channel now...
I am not a lawyer, and certainly not a law professor, but it does seem to this layman that some pretty serious context is missing if repetition of the KKK name is all you've got. As LA Bob and Kurt pointed out, the original Klan was at best moribund in 1919, and from what I can see there's no suggestion that March's group was affiliated with the then-recent attempted revival or named in actual homage to the nineteenth century original. In 1915 Birth of A Nation would have been about *historical* events, and even in 1919 the actual 1920s Klan revival was still some years in the future. Mr. McWhorter was somewhat unclear to suggest that merely knowing about the Klan was unlikely but I think he's on much firmer ground to assert that there's no evidence the name was taken with malicious intent.
Yes, there is SOME evidence of something. I still do not agree. If a level of absolute purity is needed to get a building named after one, no buildings anywhere could be named. The Lincoln statue should certainly come down, since there is SOME evidence Lincoln might not have been absolutely sure of every single thing needed today to qualify as pure. As for the KKK in the early 1920s, if this is "evidence," every single Progressive of the time who has anything named after him should be investigated and purged, since the Progressive movement from Woodrow Wilson on down was as racist as the day is long. McWhorter is right. It is all thoroughly mad, and it is itself racist as well in that it presumes Blacks and their "Allies" are demented fools and psychically wounded basket cases.
Rename everything, call them all Blank.
Post a Comment