Letter from Jyri (Finland)

Thanks for a good and apt post, Jyri. And, as you of course, know -- that's why I wrote my very detailed book on the Jackson situation. I've had the satisfaction of seeing it wind up with both the critically important grassroots dimension and also in a whole raft of libraries in the academic groves.  I promise a real letter very soon -- with a few updates from this end of the Earth. We here are doing OK.  Fire danger has been replaced by some snow and plenty of cold rain.  We'll take that! And you sound just fine. Best, H

Hunter,
Minor though they may be, sins of omission are still sins, despite your generous view of the matter. Your post reminded me of what the Germans call Vergangenheitsverwaltung, which could be translated as 'management of the past'.  It has various meanings, many definitely positive in the sense of addressing,  owning up to and dealing with  the horrors of  German history in particular, but the term also entails a more general  aspect of maintenance of historical facts and details, for the purpose of  constructing politically suitable narratives. And as we know, any good story can benefit from a bit of editing. Hence, air-brushing and sanitization, actors ignored or forgotten and inconvenient agendas set aside or buried in footnotes.  Naively put, history as recalled and recounted  is just as political as when it happened.

Even more naively, I would nonetheless  place my faith in research and scholarship. There are still serious historians out there  in the salt mines of academe addressing subjects of major importance such as the American civil rights movement.  The machinated popular versions may obscure and overshadow many things but the truth, or truths if you like, will out in the course of time. We may never quite know "what actually happened", as my old positivist church father of historiography Leopold von Ranke put it, but that shouldn't be for want of trying.
Best,
Jyri


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

Key pieces from our big Jackson Mississippi Movement 
scrapbook.  Three consecutive and full pages beginning with
this Link:  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
See my personal reflections on Medgar Evers:
http://hunterbear.org/medgar_w.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded, and with more photos in Fall 2012. Material on our Native
background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement
of 1962-63:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm