How Abraham Lincoln Became a Symbol of Racial Equality Author(S): Barry Schwartz Source: the Sociological Quarterly, Vol

Collective Memory and History: How Abraham Lincoln Became a Symbol of Racial Equality Author(s): Barry Schwartz Source: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. 469-496 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Midwest Sociological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121155 Accessed: 14/08/2009 23:23

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http://www.jstor.org COLLECTIVEMEMORY AND HISTORY: How Abraham Lincoln Became a Symbol of Racial Equality

Barry Schwartz* Department of Sociology University of Georgia Athens, CA 30602

AbrahamLincoln's changing relation to the AfricanAmerican community of memoryis a means of addressingunresolved problems in the workof MauriceHalbwachs. Manysoci- ologists, beginningwith Halbwachs,have recognizedthat commemorative symbolism cre- ates new images of the past, but the processby which this occurshas never been closely studied. I draw on a varietyof sources, includingLincoln Day observances,press com- mentary,oratory, cartoons, and prints, in my effort to understandhow commemorative symbolism works. During the past century,no new informationabout Lincoln's racial attitudeshas appeared;yet commemorativepairing and coupling mechanismsand their resultingcommemorative networks have transformedhim from a conservativesymbol of the statusquo duringthe Jim Crowera into the personificationof racialjustice andequality duringthe New Deal and the civil rightsmovement. Since the symbolicdevices employed to depict Lincoln are shaped by the very historical record they transcend,however, Halbwachs'sdistinction between fact-basedhistory and symbol-basedcommemoration must be modified.

At the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial on May 31, 1922, Union Army veterans, dressed in their blue uniforms, stood beside gray-clad Confederate Army veterans. President Warren Harding noted in his address that Abraham Lincoln would have been thrilled to know that "the states of the Southland joined sincerely in honoring him." Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft, the second speaker, emphasized Harding's point. The Lincoln Memo- rial, Taft said, marks the final restoration of "brotherly love" between North and South (New York Age, June 10, 1922, p. 2). Nothing was said about brotherly love between blacks and whites. The U.S. Congress, with the full support of its southern members, built the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate regional, not racial, reconciliation. The dedication organizing committee, however, had invited Dr. Robert R. Moton, president of Tuskeegee Institute, to speak on behalf of Lincoln's African American beneficiaries. Moton's remarks added nothing to the program's unity. After President Harding went out of his way to assert that "the supreme chapter in American history is [union,] not emancipation" (NewYork Age, June 10, 1922, p. 1), Moton (1922) observed: "The claim of greatness for

*Directall correspondenceto BarrySchwartz, Department of Sociology, Universityof Georgia,Athens, Georgia 30602.

The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 38, Number 3, pages 469-496. Copyright ? 1997 by The Midwest SociologicalSociety. All rights reserved. Send requests for permissionto reprint to: Rights and Permissions,University of California Press, Journals Division, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720. ISSN: 0038-0253. 470 THESOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997

AbrahamLincoln lies in this, that amid doubt and distrust. . . he put his trust in God and spoke the wordthat gave freedomto a race." JusticeTaft hadread Moton's previous draft and deleted its strongestpoints, but the final versionwas still forceful. As Moton returnedto his seat, it was clear that contrastingconceptions of Lincoln's motives, policies, and achieve- ments had been representedat the dedicationof his memorial. Did Lincoln emancipatethe slaves for the sole purposeof destroyingthe South's labor force and saving the union,or did he intendall along to makethem full citizens? The impor- tance of this questionbecame clear to me as I researchedAbraham Lincoln in the African Americanmind, 1865 to present. The questionis crucialnot because it bearson Lincolnbut because its answerthrows light on unresolvedproblems in the theoryof collective memory.

COLLECTIVEMEMORY AND HISTORY

Two ways of knowingthe past-collective memoryand history-are distinguishable. His- tory, accordingto MauriceHalbwachs ([1950] 1980, pp. 80-81), is "situatedexternal to and above groups"and developsindependently of theirproblems and concerns. Once established, historyremains stable-its streamof facts and demarcations"fixed once and for all." History is objectivelyconceived, sustained by evidence,and unaffectedby the social contextin which its practitionerswork. In contrast,collective memory,the way ordinarypeople conceive the past, reflects the concernsof the present. Collective memoriesvanish, Halbwachsexplains, when they cease to be relevantto currentexperience. (Forcommentary, see Coser 1992, pp.1- 34.) Only in modem societies does historychallenge collective memory. In traditionalsocieties, there is no history. The early Christians,to take an example from Halbwachs'sLegendary Topographyof the Gospels in the Holy Land ([1941] 1992, p. 222), had no conceptionof "historicalpreoccuptions such as we thinkof them. .. .Theirmemories were tied to rites of commemorationand adoration,to ceremonies, feasts, and processions." Since collective memoryis the "repositoryof tradition,"history must start"when tradition ends and the social memory is fading or breakingup"([1950] 1980, p. 78; see also Plumb 1970; Yerushalmi 1982). PierreNora sharesHalbwachs's belief in "theultimate opposition between collective memory and history"(Halbwachs [1950] 1980, pp. 78, 83), but Nora makes one qualification. Interrogativehistory deconstructsthe sacred past; the lieux de memoire(sites of memory) reconstructit. Not all these sites, as Nora's volumes (1984-1992 ) show, are geographical. Sacred sites are lieux de memoire,but so are the flag and anthem,monument and shrine, sanctuaryand ruin, statueand bust, portraitand historypainting, coin and medallion,holiday and ritual. "Literature,film, and popularvisual imageryin such popularmedia as postcards, cartoons,and posters"-these, too, are importantlieux de memoire(Sherman 1994, p. 186). Nora brings into view two paths leadingto two differentnotions of the past. History dis- enchantsthe past; commemorationand its sites sanctifyit. Historymakes the past an object of analysis;commemoration makes it an objectof commitment.History is a systemof "refer- ential symbols"representing known facts aboutpast events and their sequence;commemoration is a system of "condensationsymbols" (Sapir 1930, pp. 492-493) expressingthe moral sentimentsthese events inspire. History, like science, investigatesthe world by producing models of its permanenceand change. Commemoration,like ideology, promotescommitment to the world by producingsymbols of its values and aspirations(Durkheim [1890] 1973; Geertz 1973, pp. 193-233). CollectiveMemory and History 471

The contrastbetween history and commemorationis not entirelyclear-cut. Historyalways reflectsthe ideals and sentimentsthat commemorationexpresses; commemoration is always rootedin historicalknowledge. Commemorationis intellectuallycompelling, therefore, when it symbolizes values whose past existence historydocuments; history is morallycompelling when it documentsevents thatcan be crediblycommemorated. Large bodies of social science literatureaffirm this relationship;yet the frameworkthat would clarify it theoreticallydoes not exist. Consequently,we recognizethe realityof collective memorywithout knowing how it affects our conceptionsof the past. Collective memory,as I conceive it, is a representationof the past embodiedin both commemorativesymbolism and historicalevidence. My presentconcern is to move beyond an analysisof how commemorationdiffers from history,showing insteadwhat commemoration adds to history. I seek this creativefunction not in the negative light of commemoration's embellishingthe historicalrecord but in the positive light of its articulating,independently of that record,images of the past that never existed before. That commemorativesymbols can affect our imaginationof the past is not a new idea. We know they do so continually,not only on holidays but everyday-every time commemorativesymbols are invoked, visited, or ap- pear in some publiccontext. But we do not know how it happens. Commemorationis said to reflect, correspondto, and emanatefrom the distinctiveexperiences of differenteras (e.g., Peterson1960; 1994; Connelly 1977; Kammen1978; Pelikan 1985), but, as soon as one asks precisely how reflection,correspondence, and emanationactually work, the discussion loses force. Analyses of commemorationgo from conceptionsof eras and generationsto the con- tents of memorywithout showing empiricallyhow that connectionis made. My analysisof this problembegins by recognizingcommemoration as an entityin itself-a system of interlockingsymbols to which people turnto comprehendthe world. I show how commemorativesymbols make sense of the world'sstructures and activities by "keying"them to selected events of the past (Goffman1974, pp. 40-82; Schwartz1996a). However,every new commemorativesymbol "enters a field alreadyoccupied. If it is to gain attention,it must do so by displacingothers or by enteringinto a conversationwith others"(Schudson 1989, p. 166). Thus, the lieux de memoireand reseauxde memoire(networks of memory) must be analyzedsimultaneously. My model is not one of changingimages of AbrahamLincoln "determining," "reflecting," or "corresponding"to the changingrealities of Americanrace relationsor of being joined to these realitiesby some kind of "intervening"variable. Instead,my model focuses on African Americanstalking of, readingabout, and visualizingLincoln in the process of engaging a difficult world. Collective memoryand social actionsappear as constituents,not causes and effects, of one another. Halbwachs'sand Nora's distinctionis, in turn,enfolded into a semiotic theory that centerson the formativepower of commemorativesymbolism and explains how the past is conceived and transmittedapart from the factual record. To explicate and appraisethis theory is the purposeof my article.

Methodology

My analysis is based on a varietyof materials,including slave narratives,oratory, prints, photographs,public opinion surveys,biographies, and textbooks. I rely most heavily on the Lincoln'sbirthday issues of threeblack newspapers: the liberalChicago Defender, the moder- ate New YorkAge, and the conservativeAtlanta Daily World. 472 THESOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997

The functionof any holiday is to concentratepeople's thoughtson their common beliefs, traditions,and ancestors(Durkheim [1915] 1965, p. 420). I thereforeinspected the February 9-15 (Lincoln'sbirthday) issues of the Age for every year from 1880 (when it began publishing) to 1925 and every fifth year afterwarduntil 1945 (when it ceased publishing). I ex- aminedall Februaryissues from 1950 to 1960. My coverageof the Defenderincluded every fifth Lincoln's birthdayissue from its foundingyear, 1905, to 1955 and every annualissue from 1960 to 1990. I sampledthe AtlantaDaily Worldevery five yearsfrom 1930 (two years after its founding)to 1980 and every year thereafter.I supplementedthe Age, Defender,and Daily Worldwith othernewspapers, including the Queen's Voice,Amsterdam News, Elevator, NorfolkJournal and Guide, and Chicago Broadax,along with selected popularperiodicals, includingFebruary issues of Ebony and Jet. Any accountof collective memorydrawn from such materialsmust be contestable.No one can be certainwhat most AfricanAmericans at any given time believed and felt aboutAbra- ham Lincoln. One can only study the impressionsof Lincoln that a small numberof people wrotedown for othersto readand drew or paintedfor othersto see. Yet portrayalsof Lincoln reflectedthe publictaste. Some writersand artistsshared that taste; some exploitedit, dealing mainly with featuresof Lincoln's life that would interesta mass audience. Othersbelieved their efforts would be of no significanceif they did not somehow affect as well as represent the public conception of Lincoln. Thus, changing portrayalsof Lincoln in newspapers, magazines,prints, posters, and statuesreflect changes in the way he was generallyconceived. My analysis seeks to distinguishnew images of Lincoln attributableto commemorative symbolismfrom those attributableto new facts. The analysisproceeds in five steps. First, I indicatewhat Lincoln said publiclyabout the properrelation between the races and what he tried to do politically to bring this relationabout. I attendexclusively to Lincoln's public statementsand actions because my concernis to understandwhat people believed his racial views to be, not what they actuallywere. Second, I show successive generationsof African Americansreferring to Lincoln's statementsand actions as they question his motives for emancipation.Since answersto these questionswere basedon a stablebody of facts, the first stages of my studyautomatically control for the effects of historicalinformation. Stable informationabout Lincoln's racial attitudes cannot explain abrupt changes in the way he has been commemoratedor how these commemorationshave shapedhis historicalidentity. The last sections show Lincoln's commemorationaltering as AfricanAmericans come to terms with the changingstructures of power and value thatorganize American society. Part three shows his personifyingthe "separatebut equal"principle of race relationsduring the first three decades of the twentiethcentury. The fourthpart shows him transformedinto a championof racialjustice within a Depression-erasociety of weakeningbut still formidable racial barriers.Part five shows Lincoln transformedinto a symbol of racial equalityduring the civil rightsmovement of the late twentiethcentury. Drawingon what I have learnedfrom Lincoln'scase, I concludeby proposinga revisedconception of commemoration,history, and collective memory.

What LincolnSaid

In the middle decades of the nineteenthcentury, few whites felt more sympathyfor the plight of blacks or treatedthem more decentlyand respectfullythan Abraham Lincoln. Few white politicianswere more willing than Lincolnto aid and protectblack interests. But this does not say much by today's standards,and while the racist culturein which Lincoln was CollectiveMemory and History 473

rearedcan be discountedby standardizinghis attitudesagainst the prevailingmode, interpret- ers have always disagreedon what Lincoln's attitudeswere. Lincoln's politicalspeeches were on the whole unfriendlyto blacks, as were the audiences to whom he spoke. DebatingStephen Douglas duringthe 1858 Illinois senatorialcampaign, Lincoln's greatestfear was thathis oppositionto slavery'sextension might be mistakenfor a radicalview favoringracial equality. He explained:

I will saythen that I amnot, nor ever have been in favorof bringingabout in anyway the socialand political equality of thewhite and black races,-that I amnot nor ever have been in favorof makingvoters or jurors of negroes,nor of qualifyingthem to holdoffice, nor to intermarrywith white people; and I will say in additionto this thatthere is a physical differencebetween the white and black races which I believewill forever forbid the two racesliving together on termsof socialand political equality. And in as muchas they cannotso live, whilethey do remaintogether there must be the positionof superiorand inferior,and I as muchas any otherman am in favorof havingthe superiorposition assigned to the white race. (Lincoln 1953-1955,3:145-146)

Lincoln's antislaverysupporters did not believe that he made this statementin orderto win their votes. He had made many similar statementsin the past and had supportedpolicies consistent with them. In 1858, the year he debatedDouglas, a black abolitionistnamed H. Ford Douglass asked Lincoln to sign a petitionasserting the right of blacks to testify in court. Lincoln refused (Zilversmit1971, pp. 65-67). On June 26, 1857, Lincoln referredto white attitudestoward racial "amalgamation" (intermarriage) as one of "natural[as opposedto culturallylearned] disgust" (Lincoln 1953-1955, 2:405). Threemonths earlier, he had objected to the SupremeCourt's Dred Scott decision, which had deniedthe states power to grantciti- zenshipto blacks. But he was arguingin principle,not substance:"If the Stateof Illinois had thatpower, I would be opposedto the exerciseof it" (3:179). Threeyears earlier, in 1854, he contemplateda society in which whites and blacks were socially equal. "My own feelings," he said, "wouldnever admitthis" (2:256). In 1840, he attackedpresidential candidate Martin Van Burenfor voting in New York to extend the right of suffrageto free blacks (1:210). Lincoln consideredslavery a moralwrong and workedfor its abolition. He opposed slavery's extensionwith equal fervor,but on this matterhis view (like that of most Republicans [Durden1965, pp. 364-365]) seemed to be shapedby economic as well as moral concerns. He wished to protectmidwestern farmers and free laborersfrom southernplanter and slave labor competition.' If slavery crosses its present borders,he said, black workers will be everywhere,"as every white laborerwill have occasionto regretwhen he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave niggers"(Lincoln 1953-1955, 3:78). During the Civil War, the prospectof millions of liberatedslaves enteringnorthern states alarmedtheir inhabitants.This is why Lincoln orderedhis militarycommanders to return escaped slaves to theirowners during the firstyear of the war, why he delayedmaking emancipation a war goal, why, after announcingthe EmancipationProclamation in September 1862, he went out of his way to stress its militarynecessity, and why he favoredcoloniza- tion-a policy of gradualemancipation followed by compensationfor slaveownersand depor- tation of the "captivepeople to their long-lost father-land"(2:256). Time and again, Lincoln publicly avowed his commitmentto colonization. He did not intendto deportblacks againsttheir will, he said, but workedhard nonetheless to realize his 474 THE SOCIOLOGICALQUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997 plan. When Congress abolishedslavery in the District of Columbiain April 1862, he declared: "I am gratifiedthat the two principlesof compensationand colonizationare both recognizedand practically applied in the act."Shortly afterward, he appointeda commissioner of emigration (for detail and context, see Sinkler 1971, pp. 44-53). For the next two years, Lincolntried to colonize newly liberatedslaves but failed in every instance. After a disastrous 1863-1864 experimentin Haiti, he gave up. But Congress,according to BenjaminQuarles (1962, p. 193), "tookno chanceson Lincoln'srecovery from the colonizationbug" and froze the unexpendedcolonization funds. Lincoln may have suspectedall along that his scheme was utterlyimpractical (Zilversmit 1971, pp. 120-121), but this never preventedhim from publiclyasserting his belief in colonization as the ideal solutionto the race problem. That many northernerssupported Lincoln's antislaveryposition because they believed he opposedmaking blacks full membersof society is suggestedby the 1860 New YorkCity electionresults: 32,000 people voted for Lincoln,but only 1,600 voted for the black suffrageamendment on the same ballot (Litwack1961, p. 271). At the startof his secondpresidential term, Lincoln recommended (in a personalletter) that certainclasses of black citizens of Louisianabe allowed to vote. Many admirers,taking this gestureand otherslike it as evidence,2assume that Lincoln's friendly statements reflected his true sentimentswhile his earlierblack-baiting arose from political necessity. Many others, friendsand enemies alike, assumethat Lincoln's call for separationand colonizationreflected his true feelings, while his public recognitionof black rights and interestswas induced by irresistiblepressures from withinhis own party-forces thatgrew strongeras militaryvictory approached(Sinkler 1971). Why were Lincoln's racial attitudesso importantto begin with? Was not his accomplish- ment-emancipation-enough? As far as Lincoln's public identityis concerned,the answer is no. Public identity,Harold Garfinkel observed, rests on intention,not achievement.Public identityrefers "not to what a personmay have done, ... but to what the groupholds to be the ultimategrounds or reasonsfor his performance"(1956, p. 420). No one can be certainabout Lincoln's real goal for writingthe EmancipationProclamation, but everyone can be certain that Lincoln's white supportersaccepted his avowed intention. They believed "HonestAbe" when he said he had no wish to see blacks as full citizens. Blacks believed him, too. This is why the "ultimategrounds" or "reasons"for Lincoln's emancipationpolicy have plagued them over the years.

Historical Dilemmas

If the historicalrecord provides abundantevidence that Lincoln favored racial equality, then to commemoratehim as such would ratify what is alreadyknown. But if the historical recordshows Lincoln to be opposedto racialequality, then commemorativesymbols depict- ing him as its championwould have to be viewed in a formativelight-determinants, not reflections,of what is known abouthim. I cannotprovide an exhaustivehistory of Lincoln's image in the black community'smemory, but I can show that his professed opposition to racial equalityhas been an enduringpoint of public discussionand that the substanceof the point never changedsignificantly. To establishthis claim is essential to my argumentabout commemoration'sautonomy and formativesignificance. Between 1865 and 1900, scores of Lincolnbiographies appeared. Some of the best- known works, like Josiah Holland's (1866) and Isaac Arnold's (1866; 1885), depictedLincoln as a demigod;others, notably Ward Hill Lamon's(1872) and WilliamHerndon's (1889), depicted CollectiveMemory and History 475 him as an intelligentbut slightly crudeproduct of the frontier. In JohnG. Nicolay and John Hay's (1890) ten-volume biography,Lincoln appearsa wise and effective president. Ida Tarbell(1896; 1900) producedthe best-sellingbooks, showing how Lincoln's impoverished frontierdays built his characterand preparedhim for the presidency. Not one of these books hinted, let alone asserted,that Lincoln was inclinedtoward a multiracialsociety. And there was no counterhistory,nothing by either a white or AfricanAmerican author asserting that Lincoln's intentionsextended to the abolitionof racialcaste. What,then, were black commu- nities to make of their emancipator? Lincoln's memory,in the words of one commentator,"will be held in adoration,but one degree inferiorto that which we bestow on the Saviourof all mankind"(Elevator, Apr. 21, 1865). However, the unpleasantside of Lincoln's record,even among liberatedslaves (if there is even slight truthin the 1937 slave narratives)3would not disappear.In one narrative, Lincoln appearsin a drunkenstupor and enactsemancipation by mistake. Anotherstory explains that the crackin the LibertyBell was causedby white people ringingit too vigorously afterlearning that Lincoln hated blacks as muchas they (Wiggins 1987, p. 72). A thirdstory tells of Lincolngoing aroundthe country"a-preachin' about us being his black brothers.... I sure heardhim, but I didn't pay him no mind"(Rawick 1977, pt. 3, ser. 1, 8:562).4 As AfricanAmericans celebrated their emancipationthrough the late nineteenthcentury, many continuedto ask why Lincoln had proclaimedit. FrederickDouglass answeredtheir question. Steppingto the speaker'spodium on April 18, 1879, to dedicateThomas Ball's emancipationstatue (showing Lincoln with arm outstretchedabove the head of a kneeling slave), Douglass honoredLincoln's "exaltedcharacter" and "greatworks" but only afterjar- ring his audienceby candidlyportraying Lincoln's conceptionof black rights:

It mustbe admitted-truthcompels me to admit--evenhere in thepresence of themon- umentwe haveerected to his memory,that Abraham Lincoln was not, in thefullest sense of theword, either our man or ourmodel. In his interests,in his associations,in his habits of thoughtand in his prejudices,he wasa whiteman. He waspreeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to thewelfare of white men. He wasready and willing at anytime during the first years of his administrationto deny,postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanityin thecolored people in orderto pro- motethe welfare of thewhite people of thiscountry. .. .Toprotect, defend and perpetuate slaveryin the stateswhere it existedAbraham Lincoln was not less readythan any other Presidentto drawthe sword of thenation. He was ready to executeall thesupposed consti- tutionalguarantees of theUnited States Constitution in favorof theslave system anywhere insidethe slavestates. He was willingto pursue,recapture, and send back the fugitive slaveto his master,and to suppressa slaverising for liberty, though the guilty master were alreadyin armsagainst the Government. The race to whichwe belongwere [sic] notthe specialobjects of his consideration.(New YorkTimes, Apr. 22, 1876,p. 1)

Douglass explainedthat Lincoln's attitudetoward African Americans was the very key to his success against slavery. If he had professedaffection for blacks and made slavery his main issue, Lincoln would have failed. Slavery could only be abolishedas a war measure designed to save the union for whites. Lincoln's greatnessinhered not in his love for the slave, said Douglass,but in his hatredof slaveryand in his decision to includeits destruction among his war aims. 476 THESOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997

Douglass's speechwas reprintedin every importantnewspaper. Years later, segregationists looking for ways to legitimatethe Jim Crow system produceda Lincoln portraitremarkably similarto Douglass's. The MarylandGovernor Edwin Warfield said in his 1907 LincolnDay address:"It was not the elevationof the Negro to a social or politicalequality with the white man thatLincoln advocated." The New YorkAge editorreplied by affirmingAfrican Ameri- can belief in Lincoln's limitedracial agenda: "Social equality is not the thing:equality under the laws is the thing"(Feb. 21, 1907, p. 1). The New YorkAmsterdam News, on a latermatter, was unwillingeven to take this much for granted. As Lincoln's heart"beat for the South as well as the North,"the News's editor explained,one must wonder whetherhe would have approvedthe Fourteenthand FifteenthAmendments (giving blackscitizenship and the ballot) over southernopposition. "Withall love for AbrahamLincoln, we ponderupon the destiny which took him off so suddenly"(Feb. 12, 1926, p. 6). Given Lincoln's popularityamong Jim Crow ideologues (Pickett 1909), the editor is acknowledgingLincoln's emancipationof the slaves but also wonderingwhether John Wilkes Booth did themand theirposterity a favor. George WashingtonWilliams, ArchibaldH. Grimke,and W. E. B. DuBois, having thought aboutthe same question,believed it necessary,at long last, to "demythicize"the emancipator (Peterson1994, p. 174). The black press's uncertaintyabout Lincoln must not be exaggerated.Most of its articles praisedhim for endingslavery and described him as America'sgreatest president. Most read- ers probablyagreed. Yet questionsabout his motives remainedand the answersalways in- volved compromise: "He may not have had it in mind to make [AfricanAmericans] his spiritualchildren, but he did so make them"through emancipation (New YorkAge, Feb. 13, 1913, p. 4). Invocationof unintendedconsequences was not the best that could be said for Lincoln, but it seemed for many the most credible. By the end of the 1920s, two contradictoryimages of Lincoln had crystallized. These portrayalsdid not necessarilytranslate into ambivalenceat the individuallevel: many people simply embracedone portrayaland ignoredthe other. The two views of Lincoln existed as collective representations."The one," accordingto the AtlantaDaily World,"shows the Im- mortalIllinoisan opposed to slaveryfrom an early age and promisingto strikea body blow at the inhumancustom should the opportunityever be his, while the otherpaints Abe as a friend of slavery and signing the EmancipationProclamation only as a last resort to keep Negro bondsmenfrom helping the Confederacyespouse its cause" (Feb. 12, 1932, p. 8). The firstimage, Lincoln as slavery'senemy, carried far moreweight than the second image of Lincoln as reluctantemancipator. However, this first image must be understoodin an early, not late, twentieth-centurylight. Most black editors, commentators,and spokesmen respectedLincoln, but many doubtedthat his oppositionto slavery was based on a desire to make America a racially integratedsociety. Thus, CarterG. Woodson measuredLincoln againstElijah Lovejoy, JohnBrown, CharlesSumner, and ThaddeusStevens and concluded thatLincoln is "overratedas the saviorof the race. At best Lincolnwas a gradualemancipa- tionist and colonizationist... .He doubtedthat the two races could dwell togetherin peace" (New YorkAmsterdam News, Feb. 8, 1936, p. 8). As pressuresleading to the civil rights movementincreased during the 1940s and 1950s, it seemed more evident thanever thatLin- coln was pulled along by more progressivemen. ThaddeusStevens, in particular,"made Lincoln's mantleof 'the greatEmancipator' and put it upon his shoulders"(New YorkAge, Feb. 12, 1944, p. 6). In 1950, anotherAge commentatorunderscored Lincoln's supportfor CollectiveMemory and History 477

states rights and colonizationby revealinga letter in which Lincoln boasts of being tended hand and foot by his host's slave (Feb. 11, 1950, p. 4). The historian-journalistLerone Bennett has articulatedthe case againstLincoln more effec- tively than anyone. His 1968 Ebony article, "Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?," reveals that Lincoln was always an opportunist. He spoke both for and against slavery throughoutthe 1830s and 1840s. Only as warcrippled slavery did he decide on emancipation, makinga virtueout of a necessity. Bennettwas also impressedby Lincoln'sfondness for the word "nigger."If this "manof the people"changed during the war, he didn't change much; "he was the very essence of the white supremacistwith good intentions,"the embodimentof the Americanracist tradition(1968, pp. 36-37). In black newspaperseverywhere, Bennett's article provokedcomment. Editorsand commentatorscongratulated him for his careful re- searchand sadlyendorsed his conclusions. The ChicagoDefender noted sorrowfully that "the Negro and a largebody of the Americanpeople have been deceived"about Lincoln. Belief in "'FatherAbraham' as a labor sympathizerwith his compassionfor the suffering of black slaves is being wiped out" (Feb. 12, 1968, p. 13; for more anti-Lincolncommentary, see Harding1981; Lester 1968; Gregory1971).

COMMEMORATIONS

From the early slave storiesthrough Bennett's critical article to Louis Farrakhan'sdispar- agementof Lincolnon the occasion of the "MillionMan March"(Washington Post, Oct. 17, 1995, p. A 19), the groundsfor criticism-Lincoln's conservativeracial attitudes and practical motives for emancipation-remain the same. The facts about him were, in Halbwachs's words,"external and situatedabove groups"and unchangeable.The commemoratedLincoln, on the other hand,was "internaland situatedwithin groups."New images of Lincoln, independentlyof the facts, mappeddifferent aspects of AfricanAmerican experience.

Abraham Lincoln and Jim Crow The African Americanexperience has moved back and forth between assertivenessand accommodation.When white society has been in a reformmood, August Meier (1966) observed,black spokespeoplehave demandedfull rightsand total integration.When white society has been in a racistmood, black spokespeoplehave urgedsolidarity and self-help. From the end of Reconstructionto the GreatDepression-a profoundlyracist era-African Ameri- can society was accommodativeand insular. Blacks were excluded from every aspect of nationallife, and theirleaders believed they shouldreplicate the system they could not join by establishingtheir own businessesand trainingschools and employingand serving members of their own race. No single leaderarticulated this enclave ideology moreclearly or persuasivelythan Booker T. Washington.Throughout his publiclife, Washingtonconciliated whites, securedtheir sup- portin the buildingof schools andbusinesses, conceived civil rightsas an ultimaterather than immediate aim, and believed that blacks must advance economically without them. That Washington'sphilosophy summarized the conditionsof AfricanAmerican life is evidentin its consistency with the premisesof the SupremeCourt's Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1892). Althoughnever justly implemented,the "separatebut equal"doctrine reflected a real tension between America'segalitarian and racist ideals. Washingtonaffirmed this in his 1895 "At- lantaCompromise" address. To whites he promised:"In all things that are purely social we can be . . . separate";from blackshe askedfor self-improvementthrough "severe and constant 478 THESOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997 struggle,"for no race "thathas anythingto contributeto the marketsof the world is long in any degree ostracized"(Meier 1963, p. 101; see also Woodward1971). A certainkind of Lincolnwas needed to representthe realitiesthat Booker T. Washington acknowledged.We can gauge Lincoln'scharacteristics from black newspapers,which began extensive coverageof Lincoln Day observancesduring the 1910s.5 On the New YorkAge's February12, 1914, frontpage, to take one example,Lincoln displays a scroll thatconnects the EmancipationProclamation to the ideal of self-reliance:"TO BE REAL CITIZENS,"the proclamationdeclares, "YOU MUST BE SELF-SUPPORTING.THAT IS WHAT YOUR FREEDOMMEANS" (Figure 1). AfricanAmericans paired this cartoonwith Washington's agenda. "Pairing,"according to Alfred Schutz (1970, p. 321), occurs when an object's ap- pearanceis associated with anotherobject that does not appearbut without which one is unableto understandthe firstobject's significance.That this second, "appresented,"object is Washingtonis evidentnot only from commonknowledge of his self-helpand black enterprise philosophybut also from the reprintingof his speechon the same page as the cartoon. Wash- ingtoninvokes Lincoln as he urgesblack men throughoutthe nationto obey the law and work diligentlyto learnskilled trades(NewYork Age, Feb. 12, 1914, p. 1). Proclaimingemancipa- tion throughtraining and investment,Washington becomes the black AbrahamLincoln; pro- claiming self-relianceto be the purposeof emancipation,Lincoln becomes the white Booker T. Washington. Washington'spolitics seem unheroictoday; but in 1914. as "an almostinpenetrable gloom settled over the Negro's politicalprospects" (Franklin 1969, p. 523), his model of politically docile blackspurchasing farms, going into business,and acquiringindustrial skills was practi- cable and noble. One need not underestimatethe assertiveside of the era's black politics to appreciateWashington's appeal. His vision was rejectedby W. E. B. DuBois and the "Tal- ented Tenth"of the black population,but among the masses it was a spirituallyfulfilling vision that "gave dignity and purposeto the lives of daily toil" (Harlan1988, p. 178).6 In 1915, Booker T. Washingtondied a reveredand beloved leader. AlthoughWashington never renouncedhis hope for racialintegration, he and his admirers realized that AfricanAmericans could not claim the rights to which white Americanswere entitled at birth. Uneducatedand untrained,blacks would have to prove their right to full citizenship by hard work and achievement. We know, in hindsight,that Washingtonwas naive to believe this. Excludedfrom the industrialrevolution, blacks were bound to fall far short of Washington'sgoal, and this is perhapswhy theirrepresentations of success were so exaggeratedand ironic. Exaggerationand irony markWorld War I printsshowing Lincoln etherealized,looking down on AfricanAmerican soldiers (who were for the most partdenied combat roles [Cashman1991, p. 27]) defeatingthe Germanfoe (Figure 2). Hyperboleis evident in the awesomenessof the victory;irony, in the makeupof the fightingunit: it is all black, segregatedfrom the rest of the army. Blacks' sacrificefor the nationthat rejectsthem is justified,however, by referenceto the man thatemancipated them. The real war president, WoodrowWilson, believed in segregationand attemptedto enforceit more widely within the federal government. The white man's war was worth fighting, however, when defined as Lincoln's war. ThatWorld War I inflatedAfrican American expectations is evidenteverywhere, from the widespreadand bitter race riots of 1919 to the New YorkAge's front-pagecartoon of February 12, 1922, which shows Uncle Sam leading a paradeof ethnic minoritiesmarching under a single flag towarda "biggerand betterAmerica" based on "law and government."Lincoln, CollectiveMemory and History 479

Figure 1. "WhatLincoln Would Say If Alive Today,"cartoon appearing in the New YorkAge, February12, 1914. whose image is explicitly "coupled"(as opposed to being implicitly "paired"[Schutz and Luckmann1983, pp. 133-134]) with Douglass's and Washington's,looks down from glory (Figure3). From this picture,one would never know that the AfricanAmerican is the most despisedof all minorities:it is he, not a white in the cortege,who carriesa carpenter'ssquare and money bag. Below the cartoonappears an excerptfrom BookerT. Washington's (1896) Harvardspeech (cited in New YorkAge, Feb. 12, 1922, p. 1): "The countrydemands that every race shall measureitself by the Americanstandard . . .We are to be tested. . .in our 480 THE SOCIOLOGICALQUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997

Figure 2. CharlesGustrine, True Sons of Freedom,print, 1918. The HuntingtonLibrary, San Marino,California. Courtesyof the HuntingtonLibrary. ability to compete, to succeed in commerce,to disregardthe superficialfor the real, the ap- pearancefor the substance."In this image,as in so manyothers of the period,Lincoln appears in a context of fictionalAfrican American progress. When this cartoonappeared, the Jim Crow system was still expanding,and hopefulblacks moving into northerncities found themselvesenmeshed in segregationpatterns similar to the CollectiveMemory and History 481

WHATLINC.U W4R If AL TO-IAV.

ILOTJCmo

~ ti~

REAIC E.TIZE; THATIS WHAT I YOUR FREEDO,

Figure 3. "MarchingToward a Bigger and Better America,"cartoon appearingin the New YorkAge, February12, 1922. ones they knew in the South. Ku Klux Klanmembership peaked in the mid-1920s,with most growthoccurring in the northernstates (Woodward 1957, p. 101). Lincoln'sRepublican party providedblacks little supportand, prior to 1932, the Democraticparty had not seateda single black delegate at any nationalconvention. Realizing that racialjustice was to most whites unthinkableapart from segregation,Alain L. Lockejustified his call for equal opportunityby explainingthat "raceamalgamation proceeds much more rapidlywhere the races are socially and economicallyunequal" (Washington, DC, Afro-American,Mar. 21, 1925, p. 10). Sharing separatelyin America was the strategyof the "New Negro," as Locke called him (Meier 1963, p. 256). 482 THE SOCIOLOGICALQUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997

The EmancipationProclamation, a print found in black homes and schools during the 1920s (Figure 4), reflectsthe AfricanAmerican predicament. It representsLincoln holding an excerpt from the Declarationof Independence:"All men are createdequal ." When draftedin 1776, this assertionof legal equalityfor white citizens took for granted...their social inequality;but it is identifiedin the printas the 1863 EmancipationProclamation and signed "A. Lincoln." Segregationis thus reconciledwith freedom.Blacks who had grownup believ- ing that self-help and elevationwould make them equal saw themselvesin the Emancipation print. Located next to Lincoln, Booker T. Washingtonholds a diploma in his right hand; beneathhis outstretchedleft arm is a ruralscene and a table full of books and work instru- ments. "We have cleared the land,"he says, and are "buildingrailroads, cities, and great institutions."Beneath, a prosperoushusband and wife, "whose childrenare being educated and will become.. .a powerin all affairsof life," personifyWashington's claim. At the top of the print,cameos of FrederickDouglass and the poet Paul Dunbar,and, at the center, high- rankingblack army officers, exemplify the powers of self-help. On the lower left, black soldiers, "the bravestof the brave,"attack their country'sfoes. Above the battle, America embraces a black child and a white child. The slogan, "Look forward:there is room in Americafor achievementsof both,"implies that, looking backward,even amid idealizations of black progress,the achievementsof only one race, the white, have made any difference. Lincoln thus remainsthe friendof a backwardand separatepeople. African Americanspurchased prints bearingAbraham Lincoln's likeness-and here we touch on the ultimatepurpose of commemoration-becausesomething about those images enrichedtheir lives, renderedtheir experience in a hostile worldmeaningful. To toil endlessly for scantreward, to be at once politicallyaware and politicallyimpotent, to fight a war yet be despised more than the enemy-these experienceswere framedby images of Lincoln that enabledAfrican Americans to finddignity in a situationthat denied it. Not to avoid suffering but to comprehendand cope with it-such was the aim of the politics of accommodation,the functionof AbrahamLincoln's commemoration.

Lincolnand the New Deal

Before the GreatDepression, Lincoln's commemoration reinforced the recordof his public commitmentto a raciallydivided society. He was commemoratedwith symbols that repre- sented segregationuncritically and, by emphasizingthe theme of racial uplift, implicitly acknowledged the inferioritythat had always rationalizedwhites' demands for segregation. Duringthe New Deal, a new Lincolnarticulated new social realities,even while the historical recordremained unchanged. The New Deal Lincolnexemplifies commemoration as an ideological enterprisedifferentiated from history. Outlinesof the new Lincoln were discerniblesoon after the stock marketcrashed. From 1929-1933, the year FranklinRoosevelt assumedoffice, the total volume of Americanbusi- ness fell 50 percent. Wages fell at the same rate,and nationalincome declined from 85 to 37 million dollars. Unemploymentquadrupled. More than five thousandbanks closed. Half a million families lost theirhomes. Slaverymetaphors, popular among suffragists and socialists at the beginning of the century,captured the essense of the new catastrophe. The Penn- sylvaniaGovernor Gifford Pinchot (1932, p. 4471) announced,"Our greatest task is to rid our people of the shacklesof concentratedwealth and power." Liberty,in Lincoln's view, meant thatno man, "blackor white,"should ever have to bow "in personalor economicsubmission" to any otherman. As slavery symbolizedeconomic want, emancipationbecame a precedent c) 03 r.)

Figure4. F. G. Renesch,The EmancipationProclamation, print, 1919. The Lincoln Museum,Fort Wayne, Indiana. Courtesyof the Lincoln Museum(# 3842). 484 THE SOCIOLOGICALQUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997 for state activism. Two years after Roosevelt's election, Carl Sandburg(1934) defined the New Deal as a second EmancipationProclamation. In 1936, the year Roosevelt won his first landslidereelection, Representative Frank Dorsey of Pennsylvanianoted that "Lincolnwas the progressive,the New Dealer of his day. If he were alive now he would discern that economic peonage is as terriblea thing as the selling of men on the block" (Jones 1974, p .69). Republicansseeking positive alternativesto the New Deal also exploited the slavery metaphor. William Allen White (1940, p. 735) told the Springfield(Illinois) AbrahamLin- coln Association:"How startlingis the parallelof our crisis today: Two million slaves in 1860. Ten million idle men today ... .The decadeof the 1850's, with its slave politics and the decade of the 1930's with its problemof unemployment,present similar, almost parallel, issues in our history." Slaverymetaphors revised Lincoln, transforming him from an emanci- patorof bondsmento a helper of all men. "Trulyenough," Representative Emanuel Celler (1932, p. 4978) explained,"his whole life was dedicatedto an attemptto rescuethe American underdog and to pull the poor and lowly from between the upper and nether stones of oppression." Roosevelt's administrationtransformed Lincoln into a symbol of racialjustice as it used him to expoundits own "emancipation"policy (Jones 1974). This is not to say that the New Deal itself changedor even typifiedthe popularimage of Lincoln,but that particularaspects of this image were partof the era's currentsof thought. Lincoln's commemorationsymbol- ized changingideas about segregation.The New Deal desegregatedno schools or neighbor- hoods, made employers no less biased, and accommodatedthe South on all important legislation-including its oppositionto an antilynchingbill. On the other hand, Roosevelt assertedthe ideal of racialjustice morevigorously than any previouspresident. His supportof equal opportunitylegislation and appointmentof blacks to governmentpositions, along with EleanorRoosevelt's public statements and actionson behalfof racialjustice, led GunnarMyr- dal to conclude,correctly, that "for almost the firsttime in the historyof the nation the state has done somethingsubstantial in a social way withoutexcluding the Negro"([1944] 1962, p. 74; see also Franklin1969, pp. 523-545; Wolters 1970; Lash 1971). Voting trendsindicate the significanceof the change. In 1932, AfricanAmericans gave HerbertHoover his strongest support;in 1936 they gave at least two-thirdsof their votes to FranklinRoosevelt. As political allegiancesshifted, assertiveprotests against racial injusticereplaced accom- modativethemes of self-help and racial betterment.The Chicago Defender's 1934 Lincoln Day cartoon,"A BirthdayReminder" (Figure 5), depicts Uncle Sam at a desk strewn with documentson lynching,social ostracism,peonage, segregation, Jim Crow laws, violation of the Fourteenthand Fifteenth(citizenship and voting rights) Amendments,race hatred,and employmentdiscrimination. As a lynchingparty, visible throughthe window, celebratesits deed, Lincoln's specterconfronts Uncle Sam with a scroll bearingwords from the Gettysburg Address:"All men are createdequal." Earliercartoons (Figure 2) show Lincolnendorsing the ideal of justice;here Lincolnchallenges whites to makejustice a reality. Lincolnhad become a vehicle for black criticismof white society. New Dealers, for their part, portrayedthe new Lincoln in front of white audiences-and they were persuasive. Middle-classwhites, fearfulof losing theirown status,identified with the classes below them (McElvaine1961, pp. 206-223), endorsedRoosevelt's race relations policies (at least so long as they posed no threatto theirown interests),and, as they projected their mellowing attitudesupon Lincoln,convinced themselves that racialjustice was partof his unfinishedbusiness and a fulfillmentrather than repudiation of America'ssocial heritage. CollectiveMemory and History 485

A RE ER

Figure 5. "A BirthdayReminder," cartoon appearing in the Chicago Defender,February 12, 1934.

The strengthof this trendis apparentin the fact that 75 percentof whites outside the South approvedof EleanorRoosevelt's resigning her membershipin the organization(Daughters of the AmericanRevolution) that deniedthe contraltoMarion Anderson the use of their audito- rium(Gallup 1972, p. 142). The LincolnMemorial, a symbolof North-Southreconciliation in 1922, seemedto the black arrangementscommittee and white interiorsecretary the most logical choice among alternativesites for Anderson's1938 concert (Sandage 1993). Lincoln's image was associatedwith manysimilar developments. Contemplating the most effective time and place to demonstrateagainst municipal segregation ordinances, Washing- 486 THE SOCIOLOGICALQUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997 ton, D.C. residentschose the (1938) openingnight of the film, Abe Lincolnin Illinois. After the first convictionof the "ScottsboroBoys" was overturned,an eminentjurist likened their attorney'sachievement to "laying a rose on Lincoln's grave." In 1940, the U.S. Supreme Court overturnedfour black defendants'death sentencesbased on coerced confessions and pairedits decision with Lincolnby announcingit on his birthday(Atlanta Daily World,Feb. 13, 1940, p. 1). Also on Lincoln'sbirthday the U.S. AttorneyGeneral abolished the District of ColumbiaBar Association'sban on black members(New YorkTimes, Feb. 13, 1941, p. 12). Since traditionalcelebrations of racialsolidarity would have been out of place in the context of recedingracial barriers,Booker T. Washington'srenown lessened with each passing year. Political symbols change, accordingto KarenCerulo (1995, pp. 145-166), when their "associativeconnections" become "blocked"by new politicalphilosophies, new leaders,new collective identities. ThatFranklin D. Rooseveltreplaced Booker T. Washingtonas Lincoln's twentieth-centurysuccessor is evident in the couplingof his portrait,not Washington's,with Lincoln's (and Christ's)in millions of AfricanAmerican homes (Weiss 1983, p. 218). That Lincolnbecame in turnRoosevelt's nineteenth-century predecessor is evidentin the New Deal racial attitudesattributed to him. If Lincoln's pro-blackimage emergedfrom revisionistsymbolism, there were no new facts for a revisionisthistory. Throughthe decadeof the thirtiesand beyond,Carl Sandburg set the tone of popularLincoln biography(1926; 1939), and had little or nothingto say about Lin- coln's racialattitudes. History textbooks presented the same image. I drew a randomsample of thirty historytexts from FrancesFitzgerald's (1979) inventoryof books widely used in the United States from 1890-1979, then I drew six additionalbooks (1980-1990) from a current social science educationinventory. Eleven of the texts publishedbefore 1939 markedthe EmancipationProclamation as a definingevent in Americanhistory, but not one even hinted thatLincoln meant it to be a firststep towardracial equality. Lincoln'snew role as symbolof racialjustice was based on new values, not new facts.

CIVILRIGHTS AND CULTURALREVOLUTION

The New Deal was a transitionalperiod wherein racial justice was sought in the context of entrenchedsegregation. White Americans,no less than the administrationthey voted into office, were more receptive to African Americanclaims than any previous generation;yet their tolerancefor racial integrationhad a low threshhold. Most whites who approvedof EleanorRoosevelt's resigningfrom the Daughtersof the AmericanRevolution would have opposed their childrengoing to school with black studentsor laboringbeside blacks in the workplace(Schuman 1995, pp. 80-81). Segregationremained a solid fact of life throughout WorldWar II. The need for wartimeunity, however,led to a significantmellowing of white racial attitudesand a "tidalwave of negative characterizationsof the 'racial bigot'" in the nationalmedia (Conditand Lucaites 1993, p. 172). By the end of the 1940s, race relationsreform had moved into a new phase. Northerncivil rights organizationsstepped up their drive to abolish segregation;blacks were leaving the South at the rate of a quartermillion a year; the SupremeCourt began to strikedown local discriminationordinances; the once compactwhite ethnic populations of the city scatteredinto its suburbs;American presidents, beginning with HarryS. Trumanand aided by expanding television networks,publicly renouncedsegregation and its racial presuppositions.In the South, these developmentsamounted to what C. Vann Woodward(1957, pp. 9-12) called a CollectiveMemory and History 487

New Reconstruction.The issues, however,transcended race. Everywhere,new rightsmove- ments arose:employment rights, Native Americanrights, women's rights,gay rights,prison- ers' rights, animal rights. As power distributionschanged, social boundarieseroded. Men and women, ethnics and WASPs, blacks and whites appearedmore equal than ever before (e.g., Lipset 1981; Bowles and Gintis 1986). Lincoln, it seemed, set everythingin motion. His "workis not yet done," said the New York GovernorMario Cuomo ([1986] 1990, p. 238), for many Americansstill suffer "from the oppressionof a ruthlesseconomic system"and still know racial, religious, ethnic, and genderdiscrimination. In a scene from The Civil War(Ken Burns'spopular television docu- mentary),the historianBarbara Field observes:Union victory"established a standardthat will not mean anythinguntil we have finishedits work. If some citizens live in houses and others live in the street,the Civil War is still going on. It is still to be fought, and...it can still be lost"(quoted in Hayward1991, p. 26). Lincoln'swar aimsincluded neither a poverty-freenor a multiracialsociety, but in the afterglowof the New Deal and the civil rights movementit seemed they did. The commemorativeapparatus had, indeed,reached a stage of development so advancedthat its ideological assertionscould hardlybe distinguishedfrom fact. Almost five years before PresidentLyndon Johnson declared, "Let the world abandonracism," from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial(Chicago Defender, Feb. 13, 1967, p. 1), vandals had markedthe centennialof the EmanipationProclamation by spray-paintingthe words "nigger lover"on the base of Lincoln's statue-an event that reflectedthe strengthof popularbelief in Lincoln's commitmentto racialequality. AfricanAmerican media reinforcedthis new conviction. On the frontpage of the Chicago Defender, a cartoonedLincoln covers his face in despair as RepublicanBarry Goldwater makes known his sympathyfor the John Birch Society (Chicago Defender,Feb. 13, 1964, p. 1). Elsewhere,Coretta King recitesAaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" (Chicago Defender, Feb. 13, 1969, p. 12) while the governorof Kentucky,seated in the presence of Martin LutherKing's brotherand Lincoln's statue,makes Kentucky(Lincoln's birthplace) the first southernstate to pass a civil rights bill (Jet, Feb. 1966, p. 36). At the same time, Martin LutherKing reveals his "dream,"his plea for racial integration,on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As one ceremonyfollowed another,historical events assumednew meanings. Lincoln's contemporariesat Gettysburgunderstood the "propositionthat all men are createdequal" to mean equal opportunityin "therace of life," but for participantsat the 1963 GettysburgAd- dress Centennial,it stood for racialequality (Schwartz 1996a). The meaningof the Emanci- pationProclamation changed accordingly. Lincoln drafted this documentwith colonizationin mind, but when MartinLuther King askedPresident Kennedy to issue a "SecondEmancipa- tion Proclamation"(Branch 1988, p. 589), he was definingracial integration as the purposeof Lincoln's action. PresidentJohnson affirmed King's interpretationwhen he signed the his- toric 1965 Voting RightsAct in the roomwhere Lincoln had signedthe EmancipationProcla- mation (Fleming 1992, p. 59). Lincoln's late twentieth-centuryinterpreters, white and black alike, made him a symbol of minoritycauses by pairingand coupling him with political opinions he probablynever held and with political ideals to which he was probablynever committed. Throughoutthe 1960s, Lincoln's birthdaywas the date chosen for initiatingChicago's GreatSociety programs,in- cludingjob trainingfor young womenand the openingof UrbanOpportunity Centers throughout the city. On this day, the city's annual Youth Service Conferencewas held and its 488 THESOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997 speakersphotographed and featuredby the press. Meanwhile,Negro HistoryWeek celebrations connectedLincoln to FrederickDouglass and W. E. B. DuBois. Directlyor by implica- tion, each ritual event contemporizedLincoln by attributingto him mid-twentieth-century social and politicalsympathies. Each event construedLincoln through symbolic resources- visual and ritualapostrophes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, antitheses-that formed an image to whichAfrican Americans turned to makesense of theirchanging place in society. An analysis of high school historytexts suggests that commemorativesymbolism shaped Lincoln's image independentlyof what historianswere saying. In eight representativetext- books publishedfrom 1940-1959,Lincoln appears as he did in earliertexts-a greatemanci- patorwith no interestin race relationsreform. Severalof the seventeentexts publishedafter 1960 depict Lincoln's sympathyfor the plight of the individualslave and some attributeto Lincolnthe desireto makeAmerica a multiracialsociety, but always by insinuation,never on the basis of evidence. "Revisionist"biographies, on the other hand,directly undermined the integrationistLincoln portrait.James G. Randall(1946), RichardHofstadter (1948), Benja- min Thomas(1952), DonaldW. Riddle (1957), and ReinhardLuthin (1960) recognizedLin- coln's greatness,but they all consideredhim a pragmaticpolitician who had little in common with the radicalreformers of his day. Writingfrom a differentstandpoint, the new psychohis- torians(Wilson 1962; Forgie 1979; Anderson1982; Strozier1982) came to an extremecon- clusion: Lincoln led his countryto war not in responseto radicalpressures from within his partybut in orderto satisfypersonal ambition. There were exceptionsto these portrayals(e.g., Cox 1981), but, on the whole, historiographyand commemorationwere moving in opposite directions. Duringthe Depression,the symbolicLincoln changed while the historicalLincoln remainedintact; after the Depression,the formerremained the same while the latterchanged: as white and black radicals'assaults against Lincoln peaked, he remaineda symbol of racial equality. Lincoln may have been "the GreatEquivocator," as I. F. Stone called him, or the "whitesupremacist" that Lerone Bennett believed him to be; he may have done "moreto trick Negroes thanany otherman in history,"as MalcolmX claimed(Fehrenbacher 1987, pp. 100, 207); but it was his commemorativecult-the icons, shrines,and observances(the lieux de memoire)-that reachedand affected the most people. The cult did not affect everyone. In the late nineteenthand early twentiethcenturies, Afri- can Americansconsidered Lincoln to be America'sgreatest president. In the 1985 and 1991 Gallupratings of America'spresidents, black respondentsassigned Lincoln a distantsecond place behindJohn F. Kennedy. The percentageof blacksnaming Lincoln a greatpresident in these years and of whites namingFranklin Roosevelt were almost identical. Thus, Lincoln's shadow has become smaller,but it remainsthe shadowof a great man.

CONCLUSION

I have tried to advance,in some slight measure,our understandingof commemorationby treatingit as a culturalforce in its own right,identifying its vehicles, and exploringhow the "positionalmeaning" of its objectchanges. "Thepositional meaning of a symbol,"according to Victor Turner(1967, p. 51), "derivesfrom its relationshipto other symbols in a totality,a Gestalt, whose elementsacquire their significancefrom the system as a whole." This article shows that representationsof the past are so interconnectedthat the invocationof one repre- sentationactivates and defines others in the system and is in turn mobilizedand defined by them. Commemorationrefers to the actual working of this system of symbolic representations. CollectiveMemory and History 489

As an object in a commemorativenetwork, Abraham Lincoln never standsalone. He gains attentionby taking a place in a field occupied by others. Rituals and symbols shape the perceptionof Lincolnby incorporatinghim into this field, this commemorativenetwork, this family of past heroes and events that sharetraits that black communitiesvalue. To activate Lincoln'smemory through a newspaperarticle, statue, painting, cartoon, or ceremonialobser- vance is to activatememories that includebut extendbeyond him. Hence the constantcoup- ling and pairingof Lincoln and representativeblack leaders. Lincoln's significancechanges as each new generationplaces him in a commemorativenetwork composed of new members, such as MartinLuther King (Figure6), not presentin previousnetworks. At any given time, the couplingand pairingprocesses fan out broadlynot only withina networkof people whose prestige enhances and is enhancedby Lincoln's but also to networksof events (Supreme Courtdecisions, job programs,Negro HistoryWeek activities). In such mnemonicwebs, such r6seauxde memoire,existing Lincoln memoriesare organized,their institutionalroots deep- ened, and a new and autonomouscollection of beliefs abouthim accumulates.Common featuresof people and events with which Lincolnis rituallyconnected are generalizedto Lincoln himself. In this way, Lincolnhas changedthrough the twentiethcentury from a conservative symbol of the social and economic status quo to a liberal symbol of social and economic reform. Commemoration,as Lincoln'scase suggests,is a structuringprocess that partially overrides the qualitiesof its objects and imposes uponthem its own pattern.The key to this process is not the mere act of pairingor couplingone historicalactor with another;it is the attributionto one actor(in this case Lincoln)of qualitiesof otherindividuals located in the same networkof memory. Commemorationfills in what was lacking in Lincoln by generalizingthe qualities of othersdeemed similarto him. The structuringpower of commemorativesymbols-holiday and ceremonialobservances, printedand oratoricalcommentary, cartoons, statues, paintings-is evident not only in the way AfricanAmericans use Lincoln's image to articulatetheir situations and experiencesbut also in the way Lincoln's image dependson characteristicsgeneralized from his own predecessors. When Lincolnran for the presidency,Republican organizers "campaigned down" to the people by associatinghim with symbols of railsplittingand the frontier;but when he assumedthe presidencyhis supportersportrayed him in a more dignifiedlight. Their prints showed him gazingat a bustof GeorgeWashington, standing beneath or next to Washington's portraitin the presenceof familiarsymbols of state. Lincolnhimself helpedto establishthese representations.He regularlycompared his problemsto those Washingtonhad faced. He launchedmilitary offensives on Washington'sbirthday. And when Lincoln died, eulogists comparedhis characterto George Washington's,mourners placed portraitsof Washington beside his coffin, and citizens purchasedprints showing Washingtonwelcoming him into glory. Thus, Lincoln'snew and ennobledimage resultednot only from his achievementsbut also from new symbolicconnections. It is to the makingand publicizingof these connections that I refer when I use the term "commemorativesymbolism." Such connections,as Emile Durkheim ([1915] 1965, p. 262) said, "do not confine themselves to revealing the mental state with which they are associated:they aid in creatingit." Lincoln's changingimage legitimateschanging social realitiesby makingthem seem con- tinuous with his values and intentions. And this continuity,if I may speculate,results less from conscious design than from what James M. Fields and HowardSchuman (1976-1977, pp. 435-442) call "looking glass perceptions"-the powerful tendency to see our own 490 THE SOCIOLOGICALQUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997

Figure 6. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, print, Ebony, February, 1971, p. 10. Courtesyof JohnsonPublishing Company. thoughtsand values in others(see also Schuman1995). Appliedto our predecessors,looking glass perceptionsexaggerate consensus over time. It is hardfor most Americansto imagine AbrahamLincoln referring to the slaves he emancipatedas "niggers"or deliberatelyplanning to ship them to other continents. It is easier to imagine his thinkingof slaves as we do: ordinarymen and women who have been wrongedand must be welcomedinto society as full citizens. It is easierto thinkthis way of Lincolnbecause our sense of who we are as a nation presupposesa sense of who he was as a person. If constructionis the essence of memory,however, it is not enoughto attributenew qualities to Lincoln in orderto transformhis image;the entirefield in which Lincolnresides must be recreated.As KarenCerulo (1991, pp. 114, 125) puts it: "Thecombination of a symbol's elements conveys a meaningthat may differ from that of any single element of the symbol. CollectiveMemory and History 491

Meaning,then, is largelycontingent on the syntacticstructure of the symbol." Historians,it is true,also combinepreviously discrete units of knowledgeto producenew understandings;but they do so within a methodologicalframework that defines properand improperuses of evidence. In many places (mainly but not only in non-Westernnations), historians trained in criticalhistoriography still accede to pressuresto producegratifying images of the past (Shils 1981, pp. 54-62), but even in these nations history and commemoration,like science and ideology, are differentlines of work (Geertz 1973, p. 231): the formercombines evidence, however selective or biased, to justify belief; the lattercombines symbols to sanctify belief. Commemorationand history, however, are not separate lines of work. This is why it is necessary to amend MauriceHalbwachs's radical differentiation of collective memory and history. My findingsjustify his belief thatcollective memory"requires the supportof groups delimited in time and space" while historyremains relatively autonomous ([1950] 1980, p. 84). Collective memory,however, cannot always be dismissedas a distortionof history.The remakingof AbrahamLincoln is based on some inventionand much exaggeration,but it is also constrainedby the historicalrecord. Lincolnand his supportersmay have seen no necessary connectionbetween freeing slaves and assimilatingthem as equals, but dedicationto racial equalityis inferablefrom the crisis of emancipation. If Lincoln's historicalrole had been less decisive, his place in the black community's memorywould not now be what it is. AfricanAmericans made Lincoln a symbol of racial equalityby startingwith the real manand improving him: "omittingthe inessentialand adding whateverwas necessaryto roundout the ideal"(Cooley 1918, p. 116). Theircommemorative networksfabricated a racialequality champion out of a "colonizationist"because that colonizationist did somethingto make the transformationplausible. The materialsof the "con- structed"past, after all, includefacts as well as biases and interests. In democraticsocieties, where all historicalinterpretations are open to criticism,constructions of the past must be undertakenwithin the limits of obduratereality-limits that no one can ignore withoutcost (Schudson1992, pp. 205-221; Fine 1991). In this sense, Lincoln'scommemorative networks, which celebratethe liberationof the slave, do not distorthistory. These networksvaluate history;they identifyand lift the morallysignificant events out of the historicalchronicle and set them apartfrom and above the mundane. Whites and blacks have situatedLincoln in separatecommemorative networks, but the re- sulting images have not been utterlydifferent. As Lincoln has symbolizedthe relationbe- tween the races, white images of him have reinforcedand ultimatelyshaped ratherthan contradictedblack images. Both images are rootedin the realitythey interpret.For African Americans,therefore, the "good Lincoln"never replacedthe "bad"but was only superim- posed uponhim. To be simultaneouslyinterrogated and commemorated,condemned and can- onized-such has been the fate of the GreatEmancipator. AbrahamLincoln's fate, however,cannot be separatedfrom the commemorativestructures in which his image is encased. This is becausethe symbolismof commemorationdoes more than idealize the past; it makes the past conceivable. Like certainforms of art, commemoration's primarypower is the power of "formulatingexperience, and presentingit objectively for contemplation"(Langer 1957, p. 133). Yet this process has been little researched. The agenda of collective memory studies, focusing mainly on generationalworldviews and the politics of memory,has representedthe past as a model of the presentsociety: a mirrorof its collective needs, fears, and aspirations,a reflectionof its structuresof privilege and power (e.g., Gillis 1994; Bodnar 1992). But there are other problemsto be addressed,including 492 THE SOCIOLOGICALQUARTERLY Vol. 38/No. 3/1997 commemoration's framing of current conditions and events. To approach this problem, commemoration must be understood as a model for the present society, a "program"that articu- lates collective values and provides cognitive, affective, and moral orientation for realizing them. This semiotic conception of culture (Schwartz 1996b) is based on a simple but strong premise: that "every conscious perception is. ..an act of recognition, a pairing in which an object (or an event, an act, an emotion) is identified by placing it against the background of an appropriate symbol" (Geertz 1973, p. 215; 1983). Commemorative objects are "appropriate symbols" because they transform collective memory into a framework on which people rely to make sense of their experience. African American conceptions of Abraham Lincoln exemplify the changing contours of this framework, but the process must be examined in other times and contexts: in mass entertainment as well as politics, in marking evil as well as virtue, in creating as well as maintaining and reshaping celebrity, in opposing as well as affirming political order, in the failure as well as success of ritual. Until tasks like these are undertaken, the semiotics of commemoration will remain an undeveloped field.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges support from the National Humanities Center, Delta Delta Delta, the Smithsonian Institution Museum of National History, and the University of Georgia Humanities Center. The expertise of Bernice Barnett, University of Illinois, greatly facilitated the early stages of work. The final version of the paper benefited from Howard Schuman's comments.

NOTES 1. For a discussionof publicopinion on this matter,including an accountof the Illinoisexclusion law forbiddingblack immigrationand providingpenalties for bringingblacks into the state, see Strickland (1963). 2. The most elaboratecase for Lincolnas a prophetof racialequality is presentedby Cox (1981). She believes there was "considerableconsistency" between Lincoln's pre-presidentialand presidentialatti- tudes, which included"an active commitmentto equalitybeyond freedomfrom bondage"(pp.20, 22). The most widely held pro-Lincolnview, however, is that he did not outgrow his prejudiceuntil he became president. See also Lightner(1982) and Cain (1964). 3. The largestcollection of Americanslave narrativeswas assembledby the WorksProgress Admin- istrationin 1937. For a discussionof the methodologicalpitfalls attending the narratives,see Escott 1979. 4. Emancipationitself was a majorsource of blacks'dissatisfactionwith Lincoln. Since most freed- men were excludedfrom the postwarindustrial revolution, the end of slaverybrought decades of uncer- tainty and want. This problemwas mentionedby more than 20 percentof former slaves answering questionsabout Lincoln in 1937. 5. From 1885-1905,the New YorkAge, like otherblack newspapers, reported few LincolnDay festiv- ities; however,from 1905-1909,the Age published36 entries,mostly on the 1909 centennialof Lincoln's birth,then 54 entriesfrom 1910-1914,and 73 entriesfrom 1915-1920(Schwartz 1990, pp.89). 6. Booker T. Washingtonsubsidized and exerted a strong influenceover many African American newspapers,including the New YorkAge. Washington,in fact, assumedfinancial control of the Age in 1907. CollectiveMemory and History 493

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