By: Madison Holt
“Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it” -Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
Silences in historical narratives are everywhere, and unavoidable. As Rolph Trouillot writes in the first chapter of Silencing the Past: Power and Production of History, “the production of traces is always also the creation of silences. Some occurrences are noted from the start; others are not. Some are engraved in individual or collective bodies; others are not. Some leave physical markers; others do not.”1 This “materiality of the sociohistorical process” is often what we think of when we attempt to decipher historical truth from fiction, as Western ideologies have attempted to create as close to an objective, scientific study of history as possible.2 Although helpful in establishing credibility in the study of history, it consequently silences narratives that may not have any “material proof.” Because many silences are simply due to the nature of human memory and perception, searching for this objectivity distracts us from the goal to examine, as Trouillot writes,
how history works. For what history is changes with time and place, or, better said, history reveals itself only through the production of specific narratives. What matters most are the process and conditions of production of such narratives. Only a focus on that process can uncover the ways in which the two sides of historicity intertwine in a particular context. Only through that overlap can we discover the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences others.3
This “differential exercise of power” that Trouillot refers to goes beyond silence due to lack of materiality; as I will illustrate in the subsequent pages, silences in the historical archive are often intentional, damaging, and demonstrative of legacies of colonial power that still exist today. 4
As Trouillot explains, historicity 1 is “what happened,” whereas historicity 2 is “that which is said to have happened.”5 Colonialism, in the past, has taken advantage of this distinction by controlling the public view, passing off its version of historicity 2 as historicity 1. For example, the Haitian Revolution is the first and only successful slave revolt in history, as formerly enslaved people successfully drove out plantation owners and established the country of Haiti. However, as monumental of a moment in history this revolution was, it is not as nearly well known by the global West as, say, the French Revolution, or the American Revolution, even though it is a part of Western history since the French colonized Haiti. This is not coincidental. As class discussion explains, colonialist histories tend to erase, trivialize, or overwrite other views on historical processes for the sake of emphasizing their own narratives, which can be seen through France’s denial of Haitian sovereignty, the media’s downplay of the mistreatment experienced by Haitian enslaved people, and the spinning of the historical process to make it seem like Haiti is a failed “test-case of Black Humanity.”6 In the case of Haiti, if the French empire can control prevailing narratives about what happened during the Haitian Revolution, then it can create the illusion that it still has hegemony over Haiti. Therefore, colonialism seeks to undermine subaltern histories as one tool in the colonial toolbelt.
Who is a subaltern? According to class discussion, subalterns are people that are “excluded from hegemonic power and its systems of representation,” “those who lack voice,” and “those who have been written out of history.”7 In the case of the Haitian Revolution, the enslaved people were subalterns in relation to the plantation owners and the French empire. But how did they become subalterns? At the same time that Europe was colonizing other countries, forcing the inhabitants to contribute to an economy they were not benefitting from, the idea of liberal universality8 emerged in Western thought. Needing a way to justify hegemony over the colonized despite advocating for individual freedom and universal human rights, Europe then perpetuated the idea of the anthropological minimum, which established a threshold of humanity that the colonized needed to achieve in order to deserve human rights.9 Furthermore, the colonial difference went hand in hand with the anthropological minimum as it suggested an absolute difference between the colonizer and the colonized, a difference that justified treating the colonized as less than human.10 As Partha Chaterjee writes in The Nation and Its Fragments,
to the extent this complex of power and knowledge was colonial, the forms of objectification and normalization of the colonized had to reproduce, within the framework of a universal knowledge, the truth of the colonial difference. The difference could be marked by many signs, and varying with the context, one could displace another as the most practical application of the rule. But of all these signs, race was perhaps the most obvious mark of the colonial difference.11
For the enslaved population in Haiti, race did, in fact, become a mark of colonial difference, thus they became the subalterns in the history of the colonization of Haiti. This legacy of using race to subjugate colonized populations then made its way to the United States as the plantation system resulted in the forced migration of millions of Africans. Although Robert F. Williams was not alive when chattel slavery was legal in the United States, as a Black man, he was still excluded from the power and its systems of representation that White people were, and still are, afforded, which is why he fought to dismantle this power during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Therefore, as a subaltern in the history of the United States, Williams is no stranger to silences.
ROBERT WILLIAMS
Going into the research I planned for this essay on Robert F. Williams, I didn’t expect much. A fellow alumnus of Piedmont High School, Kristina Drye, who has also looked into Williams’ life, recounts her experience looking for sources:
In July of 2020 I found myself sheltering from the humidity of a North Carolina summer in the local history room of the Monroe Public Library…The librarian soon arrived with the materials I had asked for. I already knew that the area was a hive of KKK movement. Infamous Grand Wizard Catfish Cole set up shop one county over in Cabarrus, and though Union County had only 11,000 residents in 1961, Klan rallies could reach sizes of an estimated 7,500. Given this, I expected some robust material. Instead I was handed a slim manila folder with only a handful of records, so thin that the entire folder didn’t need so much as a rubber band to keep it closed.
“This all?” I asked the attendant, perplexed.
“That’s all we got,” she said. “There’s a drawer back there on Rob Williams, but let me see what I can find for you. Pretty sure that’s it, though.” And by the finality in her voice, I knew it was.12
Because it was so difficult for Drye to find sources on the event that took place in Monroe from the Monroe Public Library, and because, as I’ve gained more experience doing archival research, I’m becoming increasingly aware of the lack of volume at which subalterns get to speak in the archive, I wasn’t hopeful for extensive information on Williams. And yet, as I hit “search” after typing in the keywords “Robert F. Williams” into the search bar on the UNC Libraries page, I found myself rather surprised. There were, in fact, a multitude of newspapers, oral interviews, transcripts, and court documents, all providing details about the life of Robert Williams, his family, and acquaintances. There were even works written about Williams, from articles and books written by Timothy B. Tyson to a PBS documentary, as well as Williams’ own work, Negroes With Guns. Seeing as I grew up in Monroe but knew absolutely nothing about this Monroe native until I read Drye’s article about him my senior year of high school, I was quite shocked to find the amount of information that I did on him, as well as embarrassed. My entire argument throughout this essay was meant to be about the lack of information on Robert Williams, especially from Robert Williams himself, yet there were interviews and newspaper articles staring back at me, almost taunting me with “you look so uneducated right now.” However, this instance reminded me of Trouillot’s explanation of the four points throughout the creation of a history in which a silence may occur:
Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).13
Remembering Trouillot’s typology, it became clear to me that the biggest silencing of Robert F. Williams’ story emerged from the lack of retrospective significance. As demonstrated earlier through the Haitian Revolution, this vast lack of public knowledge can be attributed to colonial pasts that are persistent in attempting hegemony over subaltern populations through controlling historicity. Yet, despite the surprising amount of material I found on Williams in the archive, silences that emerge during fact creation, assembly, and retrieval still remain. For example, the singular scholar that I found to write a narrative about Robert F. Williams, Timothy B. Tyson, provides this telling of the event that resulted in Williams’ exile in Cuba:
Williams welcomed the Freedom Riders warmly but had a similar understanding of the stakes. “I saw it first as a challenge,” he recalled, “but I also saw it as an opportunity to show that what King and them were preaching was bullshit.” Two weeks of picketing at the Union County Courthouse grew progressively more perilous for the Freedom Riders. Crowds of hostile white onlookers grew larger and larger. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, August 28, a mob of several thousand furious white people attacked the approximately thirty demonstrators, badly injuring many of them; local police arrested the bleeding protesters. In his classic memoir, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, James Forman later called this riot his “moment of death,” “a nightmare I shall never forget.” To the consternation of SCLC, the nonviolent crusade swiftly deteriorated into mob violence; throughout the community, white vigilantes attacked black citizens and even fired fifteen shots into the home of the former mayor J. Ray Shute, a white moderate who had befriended Williams. At the height of this violent chaos, a white married couple, for reasons that are unclear, entered the black community and drove straight into an angry black mob milling near Robert Williams’s house. “There was hundreds of niggers there,” the white woman stated, “and they were armed, they were ready for war.” Black residents, under the impression that the demonstrators downtown were being beaten and perhaps slaughtered, threatened to kill the white couple. Williams, though busy preparing to defend his home, rescued the two whites from the mob and led them into his house, where they remained for about two hours. White authorities later charged Williams and several other people with kidnapping, although the white couple met two police officers on their way home and did not report their alleged abduction. The woman later conceded that “at the time, I wasn’t even thinking about being kidnapped . . . the papers, the publicity and all that stuff was what brought in that kidnapping mess.” During a long night of racial terror, Williams slung a machine gun over his shoulder and walked several miles with his wife and two small sons to where Julian Mayfield waited with a car. “I didn’t want those racist dogs to have the satisfaction of legally lynching me,” he explained to Dr. Perry. The Williams family fled first to New York City, then Canada, then on to Cuba to escape the hordes of FBI agents who combed the countryside in search of them. Supporters of Williams gloried in the escape. Some black residents of Monroe still maintain that Fidel Castro sent helicopters for Williams. Others tell of how he got away in a hearse owned by a black funeral director from Charlotte. An agent assigned to search for Williams locally reported his frustrations to FBI director Hoover: “Subject has become something of a ‘John Brown’ to Negroes around Monroe and they will do anything for him.14
Continuing to reference Trouillot’s typology of silences, it is evident that there are a multitude of silences occurring in this narrative, not only as a result of Williams’ experiences in real time, but also as a result of Tyson’s choices for retelling. Examining Tyson’s narrative, one can see that attempts were made by white citizens, the local police department, the media, and the FBI to silence Williams and the Freedom Riders with threats of arrest and death, so much so that Williams had to escape the US to Cuba to avoid false kidnapping charges.15 Williams was also prevented from relaying the way in which he made his escape to Cuba for fear of the harm that would come to the people that helped him if they were revealed.16 Yet, Tyson’s retelling produces its own silences, as there’s no direct mention of the KKK’s role in forcing Williams’ exile in Cuba, nor is there any direct mention of where Williams was or what he was doing when the picketers got attacked by the mob of white residents. These silences, exacerbated by Monroe’s purposeful failure to keep Williams’ public memory alive, have contributed to the persisting legacy of colonialism.
CORNELL WATSON
As I walked toward Alumni Hall to finish this essay, I became distracted by the large congregation in the Pit protesting Mike Pence’s presence on campus. I stood watching for a few minutes, until someone caught my eye. It was Cornell Watson, the same Cornell Watson whose Tarred Healing exhibit I brought attention to in class however many weeks ago. I’m not typically an outgoing person, so I was fully prepared to let him pass me by and regret it afterwards, but my friend and coworker Abi, who saw how excited I got when I spotted him, urged me to introduce myself. I did, in fact, work up to the courage to talk to him, and I’m so glad I did. He was warm, welcoming, and equally excited that I recognized him. We talked for a little bit, I told him about this class and the paper I was working on, and we parted ways. I then made my way to Alumni Hall, replaying our conversation in my mind like a crazed fangirl the whole way there. I remembered how he said I must be inspired to think about colonialism by the ongoing conflicts between the Pit and the Union, and indeed I was. However, I was more inspired to think about colonialism when I saw Watson taking pictures. As the sounds from the crowd swelled around me, I couldn’t help but notice how Watson slowly snaked through the rows of people, completely silent, looking for scenes to photograph. As I watched, his silence captivated me, distracting me from the rest of the noise. It made me wonder, who else noticed him? Furthermore, who didn’t notice him because they were enthralled by the speakers protesting Mike Pence? I originally brought up Cornell Watson in class to talk about the ways in which the University system censors and silences certain narratives for the sake of maintaining funding, which stems from colonial pasts that destroy subaltern narratives to maintain power. Now, in meeting him and experiencing Watson as one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met, it makes me wonder what, other than certain perspectives on historical processes, do we lose to these silences? Yes, Watson’s art was censored and therefore the alternative narrative about Black life in Chapel Hill that he wanted to convey was lost, which prevents any chance of moving beyond colonial pasts. However, censoring Watson’s art also censors his humanity, as it prevents any chance of visibility. If the institution were successful in their silencing mission, if I never saw Watson’s photography, I would have never gone up to him in the crowd, never experienced his humanity. Seeing Watson and being able to speak with him, being able to experience him for who he is outside of his art, reminded me of what’s missing from Robert F. Williams narrative. I’ve examined how he’s been silenced and prevented from offering an alternative narrative to the archive, but how did he greet his wife when he came home from work? Did he play with his kids in the backyard? What time did he get up for church on Sundays, did he even go? These tidbits of life that detail the simple, day to day routines that all humans experience in one way or another are silenced when we only ask for perspectives, rather than life stories.
Ultimately, it is evident through both my experience researching Robert F. Williams and my encounter with Cornell Watson that silences produced by the legacies of colonialism are harmful to subalterns. As the legacies of colonialism silence significant events in subaltern histories, like the Haitian Revolution or the attack on Freedom Riders in Monroe, it maintains the power that institutions continue to gain from subjugating minorities and prevents any chance of moving past these legacies. However, this is not the only harm done to subalterns. The phrase, “history will say they were best friends,” is a popular response on the Internet to any depictions of homosexuality that suggest ambiguity, meant to mock the legacies of colonialism persisting in the archive that erase LGBTQIA+ pasts. Although humorous, this joke also points out the dangers of erasure, trivialization, and overwriting. LGBTQIA+ people have always existed, yet their purposeful erasure from the archive suggests that they have not existed throughout history. This is where the legacies of colonial power come into play, as the erasure of their history is used as an excuse to claim they don’t, or shouldn’t, exist today. The erasure of Black Americans, specifically in the case of Robert F. Williams, plays out similarly. By failing to emphasize any retrospective significance in Williams’ life, Monroe has perpetuated the idea that Black people are of no significance in the town’s present, either. Furthermore, the lack of details on Williams’ personal life in the archive essentially objectifies him, as it perpetuates the idea that he’s only valuable to the archive as a catalyst for the Black Power movement. This objectification is yet another legacy of the colonial past, as colonizers maintained power through the objectification of the colonized.17
FUTURES OF THE ARCHIVE
There’s a certain magic in meeting a figure you’ve only read about on the internet or in history books in real life. In the case of Cornell Watson, meeting him in person brought his story to life, and I find myself more intimately connected with him, more hopeful for his future success. This is what is missing from the archive. Videotaped interviews come close, but when those aren’t possible, creative expressions could serve to foster a similar connection. For example, Rhiannon Giddens is a world-renowned singer and banjo player who commits to writing songs that tell stories about Black history, using as much empirical evidence from the archive as possible. In this way, Giddens brings to life accounts in the archive that would otherwise remain static. However, as Saidiya Harman points out in Venus in Two Acts,
How can narrative embody life in words and at the same time respect what we cannot know? How does one listen for the groans and cries, the undecipherable songs, the crackle of fire in the cane fields, the laments for the dead, and the shouts of victory, and then assign words to all of it? Is it possible to construct a story from “the locus of impossible speech” or resurrect lives from the ruins? Can beauty provide an antidote to dishonor, and love a way to “exhume buried cries” and reanimate the dead?
As a writer committed to telling stories, I have endeavored to represent the lives of the nameless and the forgotten, to reckon with loss, and to respect the limits of what cannot be known. I chose not to tell a story about Venus because to do so would have trespassed the boundaries of the archive. History pledges to be faithful to the limits of fact, evidence, and archive, even as those dead certainties are produced by terror.18
Unfortunately, there are some limitations of the archive that will never be reconcilable, but that doesn’t mean the archive is incapable of change. As anthropologists, historians, folklorists, artists, and storytellers, we can make a commitment to making the archive more dynamic and representative of subaltern pasts. As Chakrabarty suggests, we could eventually create an archive of “‘workable truths’, which would be based on a shared, rational understanding of historical facts and evidence.”19 In this way, maintaining historical credibility while representing all participants of history in dynamic ways would be a step in the right direction toward leaving the legacies of colonialism behind.
Notes
- Trouillot, Rolph. 1997. Silencing the Past : Power and the Production of History. Chapter 1. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, Pp. 1-30.
- Ibid.; Trouillot explains that positivism seeks to distance the sociohistorical process from its knowledge in order to give the study of history objective credibility.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Class Discussion on the ways in which empire tries to change public perception of historical processes (H1) using its own narratives (H2). Lecture on the Problem of History.
- Class Discussion. Lecture on Subaltern Studies: History From Below
- An idea that developed in the 18th century in the Global West that advocated for equality, freedom from institutional oppression, individualism, political representation, citizenship, civic responsibility, and progress.
- Class Discussion. Lecture on the State and Difference.
- Class Discussion on the Anthropological Minimum. Lecture on the State and Difference.
- Chaterjee, Partha. 1993. “The Colonial State” in The Nation and Its Fragments. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 14-34.
- Drye, Kristina. “Forgetting Robert F. Williams: Critical Race Theory’s Long Game.” Medium (blog), November 9, 2022. https://medium.com/@kd719/forgetting-robert-f-williams-critical-race-theorys-long-game-bf43913db327.
- (Trouillot 1997)
- Tyson, Timothy B. “Robert F. Williams, ‘Black Power,’ and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle.” The Journal of American History 85, no. 2 (1998): 540–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/2567750.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- (Chatterjee 1993).
- Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 1-14. muse.jhu.edu/article/241115.
- Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2002. “Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts” in Postcolonial Passages. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 229-242.
Bibliography
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2002. “Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts” in Postcolonial Passages.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 229-242.
Chaterjee, Partha. 1993. “The Colonial State” in The Nation and Its Fragments. Princeton :
Princeton University Press, 14-34.
Drye, Kristina. “Forgetting Robert F. Williams: Critical Race Theory’s Long Game.” Medium
(blog), November 9, 2022. https://medium.com/@kd719/forgetting-robert-f-williams-critical-race-theorys-long-game-bf43913db327.
Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 1-14.
muse.jhu.edu/article/241115.
Trouillot, Rolph. 1997. Silencing the Past : Power and the Production of History. Chapter 1.
Boston, MA: Beacon Press, Pp. 1-30.
Tyson, Timothy B. “Robert F. Williams, ‘Black Power,’ and the Roots of the African American
Freedom Struggle.” The Journal of American History 85, no. 2 (1998): 540–70.