COMPLEXITY
With this weekend’s opening of the movie, OPPENHEIMER, timed to coincide with today’s anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Wednesday’s of Nagasaki, we’re hearing about the "Father of the Atomic Bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer's second thoughts.?We’re getting easy bullet point answers (“military necessity” “saving lives”) to easy questions: Was America right to drop the bomb on Japan???Was America wrong to drop the bomb on Japan?
Even in these Post-9/11 days of real-time Russian invasion, we do not discuss the targets of those atomic bombs: innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives―getting up, having breakfast, going off to school and to work―when their world ended at 8:16 on a Monday morning in Hiroshima, August 6, 1945,?and at 10:58 on a Thursday morning in Nagasaki, August 9, 1945.
I first visited Japan in the mid-1970s.?I met people who’d narrowly survived the bombings―some with grotesquely disfigured bodies; their first-hand testimony etched in lesions on their skin.?Others born years after the bombings wore masks; still warding off the after-effects.
?Complexity.
As a journalist and historian, I’m grateful for this space to address complexity.?I also feel an obligation to do so—especially in this summer of book bans; of the re-institutionalization of bigotry and hatred; of the Supreme Court going retrograde; of?Florida’s affront to common decency and common sense in mandating a curriculum cruelly distorted by disinformation.?
With such attacks preying on a general lack of historical memory; with historytelling being less about the past than it is about the values we prize en route to the future,?The Janus Adams Show?is on a summer hiatus with a mission:?
12 Stories THEY Don’t Want You to Know
Here’s the playlist—a "baker's dozen" (13)—in alphabetical order:?
50 BOOKS THAT CHANGED?THE STORY OF AFRICAN AMERICA: a recommended reading list
BOOK #16:?Up From Slavery?by Booker T. Washington (1901)
BOOK #17:?The Souls of Black Folk?by W. E. B. DuBois (1903)
In turn-of-twentieth-century African-America, two men stood diametrically opposed: Booker T. Washington (who’d risen?Up From Slavery?to found Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University), and W. E. B. DuBois (who’d been born and raised in post-Emancipation Massachusetts to become Harvard’s first Black PhD).
With his book, Washington―vilified for his humiliating “Atlanta Compromise” with White supremacists―chronicled his rise to and definition of success as a Black man in America.?With his book,?The Souls of Black Folk,?DuBois―vilified for his elitism―gave rise to the “Talented Tenth,” a Black intellectual class.
And how did their books the story?
Unlike earlier autobiographical and semi-autobiographical African American works primarily published as arguments in the cause of abolition, Washington and DuBois wrote from the unapologetic vantage of men successful in their fields.?Their books were published because a growing Black readership represented a sizeable audience for their titles.
领英推荐
For years the two men vied for Black followers and White funds. Washington garnered support for Tuskegee, which educated thousands in the practical fields of industry and technology.?Du Bois’ Talented Tenth yielded coups in academic scholarship, the arts, and culture.
Then, in 1896, the Supreme Court’s?Plessy v. Ferguson?decision legalized segregation.?State legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws reversing the progress of Reconstruction much the way recent court decisions and state legislatures are dismantling 80-years of civil and human rights advances today.?Constitutional amendments ratified to ensure justice soon had little meaning.?The year 1900 saw 106 reported lynchings and several Black communities stormed by White mobs.
Washington initiated the call to share the stage of Carnegie Hall with his longtime tactical adversary.?However disparate they might have portrayed themselves in print, this much was true in fact:?They came together “for the race,” as it was said in their day because, as it is said in ours, #BlackLivesMatter.
ON THE SHOW & PODCAST
DEAR MIKI: AN ALL-AMERICAN FAMILY SAGAThis week’s episode of?12 Shows THEY Don’t Want You to Hear About?12 Stories THEY Don’t Want You to Know?features LUCAS MAEHARA ROTMAN.?A singer-songwriter, teacher, and descendant of families seized into the whirlwinds of the Jewish Holocaust and the Japanese internment; his very existence is a miracle.??He comes to us bearing letters, artifacts, stories that must be told, and songs that must be sung.
Visit the show page?here.
Download the podcast on Apple?here.
THE JANUS ADAMS SHOW airs and streams live Saturdays at 11:00 AM (ET) on WJFF Radio Catskill. Click 'LISTEN LIVE' on the home page.
AND ONE MORE THING . . .In March, paying tribute to those I’d lost to the pandemic, I recalled happening upon a friend from the States in—of all places—a market in Johannesburg, South Africa.?We made such a joyful scene that fellow shoppers circled us, cheering and encouraging us to dance in celebration.?Thank heavens we did.?It was the last time I’d see him.?“And please, please, dance,” I wrote.
Tragically, this week, a dancer/choreographer was murdered for doing just that: Dancing While Black (and Gay).?The facts of his death cannot be all we know of his life.?To celebrate his artistry as he dances Kamar Jewel’s?SOFT: A Love Letter to Black Queer Men,?click?here.
Learn more about the incident in the?New York Times.?
Donate to the GoFundMe for his family?here.
Harambee!
Janus
*?Harambee is a Ki-Swahili term popularized by the Kenyan Independence Movement meaning "let's all pull together!"
Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, historian, keynote speaker,?
Dr. Janus Adams?is publisher of BackPaxKids.com and host of public radio’s
“The Janus Adams Show” and podcast.