Lasting Firsts

In: American anthropologist: AA, Band 99, Heft 1, S. 23-29

Abstract

Changes taking place in the rural South create opportunities for remembering that encourage pride and power among the downtrodden and dispossessed. Comparing the cultural context of the murder of an African American schoolteacher in 1921 and the suffering that led to the murder of a Mayan farmworker in 1992, this essay explores the question of how celebrations and struggles of everyday existence fit within local histories inspired by martyrdom and death. The author argues that remembering is most effective when the form and content of memory join in the little that remains behind us.