Looking at old photographs and seeing a younger self’s style choices often leads to a horrified “What was I thinking?!” Looking at your old publications can be much the same experience, but I was happily surprised and even proud when I recently reread Protest and Patriotism: A History of Dissent and Reform, which I developed at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies in 1992. Written in collaboration with Lonnie Bunch, then at the National Museum of American History and now the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the guide offered new approaches to the study of the populist, civil rights, and environmental movements and to protest in general. It includes historical case studies that emphasize each movement’s origins or catalysts , the people who created or joined the movement, the tactics they used to effect change, the responses by government and other institutions to the movement, and the movement’s long-term achievements.
So, did we say anything seventeen years ago about “environmentalism” that is still relevant today or, at least, relevant to this conference on climate change? I think so, particularly in illuminating how our society responds to major challenges. One of the things I learned from working with Lonnie Bunch on this project, and that he articulates in the introductory essay, is that successful reform movements in the United States have been peopled and led by members of the middle class. But the very same middle-class composition that leads to success usually ensures that the reform is limited and moderate, because “this class of citizens has much to benefit from and to protect within the current system.”
Reading this in 2009, I couldn’t help but think of Americans’ continued reluctance to give up their big cars in favor of lowering both fuel emissions and consumption of nonrenewable resources. It’s easy to think of many other examples of the limitations we have placed on reforming our profligate (largely middle-class) practices. Will moderate responses be sufficient to address the threats of climate change?
For its terrific images from American History’s collections, its timeline of American protest from 1831 to 1989, and its historical essays, Protest and Patriotism remains a valuable teaching resource. However, while extolling its virtues, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I did come across one statement that seems both hopelessly naïve and bitterly ironic: “By the 1990s, the furs, large cars, and conspicuous consumption once associated with living well are instead often objects of public scorn.”
Michelle Smith is director of publications and electronic media at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies.
