CLAS faculty provide context for Charleston shootings

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Following the massacre of nine black worshipers at historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, faculty members from UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been providing context and commentary locally, nationally and internationally. They are drawing upon their extensive expertise and research, including books and other materials they have published on related subjects.

David Goldfield, Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History, has written and spoken on the issue of the Confederate battle flag flying on capitol grounds in South Carolina and its historical symbolism, among other topics. Dylann Roof, who has been arrested in the shootings, has been shown in photographs with the Confederate Flag. Goldfield draws specifically upon the research he conducted when writing two books covering the subject, “Still Fighting the Civil War” and “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation.”

“Historians provide context,” Goldfield said. “Is the flag heritage or hate? The historical record is emphatic that the flag was and is a symbol of first, slavery, then of white supremacy, and, ultimately of resistance to racial equality. Which is why this controversy is less about history — the historical record is settled — than about the advances African Americans have made and the decline of both the law and symbols of white supremacy, with precious few of those symbols remaining. The symbols must remain part of our heritage — but in a museum.”

Karen Cox, a history professor, has spoken with international and national media on the topic of the Confederate flag and Confederate monuments. The Huffington Post published her article that detailed the history of these monuments and their connection to the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the leading organization of southern white women, founded in 1894. “Erecting monuments was one of many ways that these women sought to honor and vindicate the Confederate generation,” Cox wrote.

When writing and commenting on Confederate symbols, Cox draws upon her research on Confederate heritage organizations, especially the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

“I believe it is important that the nation understand the historical context out of which these tragedies have emerged,” Cox said. “The assailant was acting on a racist philosophy that has been around for several decades and goes back to the immediate post-Civil War era when freed men were accused of being a ‘threat’ to white women and potential ‘rapists.’ In other words, this kind of racial terror does not occur in a vacuum. Historians play an important role in bringing historical context and providing facts that can help people move beyond knee-jerk emotional responses to a better understanding of how we got where we are and where we go from here.”

We must remember the victims in this tragedy, she said. “They were victims of racial terror and African Americans have been victims of racial terror for centuries,” she said. “Also, as a Southern historian, I think it’s important to point out that this is not simply a “Southern” problem. It may have occurred in the South, but racism — structural racism — is an American problem.”

Julia Robinson, a religious studies professor and ordained minister, researches the history of the relationship between race and religion in the United States; she has brought insights from that work to the Charleston tragedy.

“Most of my perspectives on the Charleston shooting stem from my research and teaching in African American religion and history,” Robinson said. “My course, ‘Race, Religion and Murder,’ for example, was created to help me better understand how race, religion and acts of violence intersect with each other, often formulating the very foundation of terrorist identities and supremacist culture. Studying the history of anti-black terrorism in America in terms of lynching has especially offered insightful perspectives on why communities, otherwise steeped in Christian traditions, still engage in horrific acts of violence like that of lynching.”

Robinson has described the church as a symbolic structure of what is understood as sacred, and noted that the targeting of this historic church has been felt as a violation. Emanuel is one of the oldest black churches in the United States and has been a flashpoint for abolition, civil rights and other African American equality movements since its beginnings in the 1800s.

“Scholars in religious studies have a unique perspective on racially motivated acts of violence and terrorism,” Robinson said. “They offer a lens to the religious foundations of racism and acts of violence, especially acts of violence that are rooted in solidifying a group’s understanding of the sacred and their communal identity. Historians also offer a crucial lens in that they provide the social-historical contexts, which shaped and reified white supremacist culture in America. Together, both historians and scholars in religious studies can present a broader framework of analysis by which racism and acts of violence can be understood, deconstructed, and eventually eradicated from American society. For if people can become conscious of the roots of racism in their community and even in their own thinking, steps can be taken through dialogue and teaching, to create mechanism of ideological deconstruction of racist sentiments.”

Christopher Cameron, history professor, has played a major role in the creation of #CharlestonSyllabus, which is an educational resource gleaned from thousands of tweets beginning on June 21. Individuals from around the world, including Cameron and Karen Cox, suggested titles of books, articles, films, short stories, novels, plays and other sources that can shed light on the history of slavery, race and religion in South Carolina specifically, but also throughout the United States and African Diaspora. Many from the suggested list of works are now found on the website of the African American Intellectual History organization, of which Cameron is part.

“We hope that this resource will serve as an educational tool for people throughout the world to learn about the history of race and its importance in American society,” Cameron said. “Many people are framing the recent attack in Charleston as a ‘war on Christians,’ and while that is partly true in that the congregation members were Christian, there is also a much longer history of terrorist attacks against black Christians that needs to be taken into account. We hope that increased knowledge about the history of race relations will inspire people to take action and demand policy shifts.”

Gaining an understanding of how racism works and how specific governmental policies at the state and federal level can bolster racism can help citizens take meaningful action to address the issue, he said.

“Historians dating back to the mid-19th century have seen it as their duty to provide the knowledge and context that can assist in social movements ranging from abolitionism to suffrage to civil rights,” he said. “We are seeing this right now, as historians are some of the leading voices calling for removal of the Confederate flag from government property. While many dismiss this is a symbolic move of no value, historians and other academics are well-tuned regarding the power of symbols and language in constructing our reality. So whether it is serving as an expert witness, writing briefs and op-eds, teaching courses on the history of race in America, or crowdsourcing syllabi to share with the world, academics can and should play a leading role in the major controversies of our time.”