Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Forgetting and the Forgotten: A Thousand Years of Contested Histories in the Heartland

Forgetting and the Forgotten: A Thousand Years of Contested Histories in the Heartland

Batinski, Michael C.

Paperback

Series: Shawnee Books

General SociologyRegional: Midwest

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0809338378
ISBN13: 9780809338375
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Published: Jan 3 2022
Pages: 268
Weight: 2.30
Height: 0.60 Width: 8.60 Depth: 10.30
Language: English
WINNER, 2023 Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement Award in Books, Scholarly!

Revealing the forgotten in community histories

Histories try to forget, as this evocative study of one community reveals. Forgetting and the Forgotten details the nature of how a community forged its story against outsiders. Historian Michael C. Batinski explores the habits of forgetting that enable communities to create an identity based on silencing competing narratives. The white settlers of Jackson County, Illinois, shouldered the hopes of a community and believed in the justice of their labor as it echoed the national story. The county's pastkeepers, or keepers of the past, emphasizing the white settlers' republican virtue, chose not to record violence against Kaskaskia people and African Americans and to disregard the numerous transient laborers. Instead of erasing the presence of outsiders, the pastkeepers could offer only silence, but it was a silence that could be broken.

Batinski's historiography critically examines local historical thought in a way that illuminates national history. What transpired in Jackson County was repeated in countless places throughout the nation. At the same time, national history writing rarely turns to experiences that can be found in local archives such as court records, genealogical files, archaeological reports, coroner's records, and veterans' pension files. In this archive, juxtaposed with the familiar actors of Jackson County history--Benningsen Boon, John A. Logan, and Daniel Brush--appear the Sky People, Italian immigrant workers, black veterans of the Civil War and later champions of civil rights whose stories challenge the dominant narrative.

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