From History to Histories: Reflecting on the March on Washington

So you might be wondering how a chapter on history ended up in your intercultural book? After all, this is a communication, not a history course. But as noted by Martin and Nakayama (2013), "the history that we know and our views of that history are very much influenced by our culture" (p.127).  They went on to discuss how, at times, students in their intercultural communication courses wished to de-emphasize the importance of history in terms of culture, saying "Why do we have to dwell on the past? Can't we all move on?" While other students saw history as vital to their identity. I tend to agree with the latter evoking the old cliche: you don't know where you are going until you understand where you have been.

Roman philosopher Cicero

Philosophers have paid heed to the importance of history in shaping the world around us. Roman philosopher Cicero paid heed to the importance of history, saying "to be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child." While 20th-century Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist George Santayana is credited with the saying "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

For this blog, I choose to explore the relationship between history and intercultural communication by highlighting the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest political rallies for human rights in U.S. history. Last month, we commemorated the 50th anniversary of this historic event. It was during this rally, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his infamous "I Have a Dream" speech

I choose this event to highlight the relationship between history and the communication of culture for a couple of reasons. First, it highlights the movement from history to histories as the event has implications for national history as well as cultural-group histories and shines a light on absent histories. Second, the rally spotlights nonmainstream histories, which are also referred to as hidden histories. These histories are often forgotten by mainstream representations of past events (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). Nonmainstream histories include racial and ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, colonial, socioeconomic, and religious histories. Furthermore, the march has particular implications for spotlighting tensions that may exist between histories, In this case, tensions between national, racial/ethnic, and sexual orientations histories due to the controversial involvement of civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who identified as a gay man.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with Rustin

Rustin was a major player in the civil rights movement. He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King and was put in charge of organizing the March on Washington. Weeks before the march a then young U.S. Senator, Strom Thurmand, publicly exposed Rustin's sexual orientation. After the outing, leadership from the NAACP requested that Rustin's role as march organizer be downplayed in public representations of the march. For decades, Rustin's contributions to the march and the Civil Rights movement was absent from mainstream history, but on the eve of the march's 50th anniversary, President Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom for his work.

Rustin promoting the march

So for this blog post, I would like you to explore cultural-group histories by examining the history of a cultural group that you are unfamiliar with. This can also get you thinking about a cultural group of interest for your reporter project (hmmm maybe even use your cultural group of interest in this blog post, hint, hint). Begin the blog by first explaining the significance of shifting from history singular to histories plural. Then discuss a cultural group that you are unfamiliar with by describing a significant event in its history (e.g. something similar to my above discussion of Rustin and the March on Washington). Finally, discuss how this shift from history to histories helps us develop a richer understanding of intercultural communication.