Printer-friendly versionWhat do you do with 4,100 books full of racist nonsense? One solution is to turn them into something that can hang on a museum wall.
That’s how some folks in Montana created “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate.” The story of this unusual art exhibit begins in 2003, when the Montana Human Rights Network landed a small library of white supremacist literature. The books came from a disaffected member of a group called the Church of the Creator (or Creativity Movement) in Montana. For about $300, he led the Network to a storage unit that contained thousands of copies of 13 books. Among them were racist and anti-Semitic volumes with titles like The White Man’s Bible and Nature’s Eternal Religion.
The white supremacists buying these books at $10 a pop were not just harmless cranks. A Washington member of the “Church” firebombed an NAACP office. Another member was arrested for planting a bomb in Maryland. In 1991, a Florida “Reverend” murdered a black Gulf War veteran named Harold Mansfield. That case led the Southern Poverty Law Center to win a $1 million default judgment against the group.
The Montana Human Rights Network deprived the Church of the Creator of its books – and any profit from them. But this coup led to a big question. What do you do with the books? Burning or shredding them wasn’t the Network’s style. So it turned to the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, Mont., with the idea of transforming them into art. The resulting exhibit, which has been touring Montana since 2008, features 60 pieces contributed by artists from around the country. They include a 10-by-10-foot house (made out of nearly 3,000 books) entitled “Hate Begins at Home.”
So far, “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” has played only at Montana venues. They include several small towns of 10,000 or so. But in some cases, those towns also had active white supremacist groups. Carl Deitchman, the Holter’s executive director, says the museum would like to bring the exhibit before a national audience. “It helps [people] to get in touch with that deep-rooted prejudice and that fear of the ‘other’ that resides beneath the surface and erupts so easily,” he said.
Comments
I teach social studies (world
I teach social studies (world cultures) and I would call those books "primary sources". I have a geography book on other cultures that was used as a textbook for New Jersey and Pennsylvania during WWI. It is a primary source of racism that is better for teaching than anything I could say. Letting the material speak for itself is sometimes far more powerful.
Primary sources, indeed. I
Primary sources, indeed. I have used advertising images, sheet music, cartoons, and film and animation images as primary sources many times in teaching American history and literature. Sad thing is that you don't even have to find the literature of hate groups to find racism. It's important to realize that many students these days have no idea of the context in which the art and literature of racism exists. The materials often work as a sort of talisman so that we never forget. Teachers do need to be careful because there will always be those who immediately misunderstand their intention or feel strongly that the best policy is to forget all this stuff and move on.
I feel the only way to start
I feel the only way to start eradicating so much racist
dogma is to get it out of print. There will always be someone to take the torch of hatred and continue the passage as long as it is readable. Books in print that exhibit, discuss, and repeat such negative dogman can only keep that small mind mentality alive. We as a people throughout the world and certainly here in the US need not keep such ignorant and slangerous depictions of racism alive.
Censorship is not the answer
Censorship is not the answer in a country where freedom of speech is cherished.
I disagree. The torch of
I disagree. The torch of hatred burned brightly enough to lead to the writing of these books. With or without them, there can be hatred and there can be love. Let us not eliminate them, as they are such vivid reminders of what should never have been. If we forget the past, as ugly as it may be, we are dangerously susceptible to its repetition.