Article

America

Comment

Politics

Race

8 November 2023

6 min read

Remembering well: journeying through America’s memorials

Ian Hamlin recalls the Civil Rights landmarks and memorials, as he continues his journey in the footsteps of his hero Martin Luther King.

Ian Hamlin

Ian Hamlin has been the minister of a Baptist church since 1994. He previously worked in financial services.

An imposing stone statue of Martin Luther King standing with his arms crossed.

Martin Luther King Memorial at night, Washington DC.

Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash.

Pilgrimage, according to Pete Grieg’s definition at least, is simply ‘a journey with God, in search of God’. In other words, it’s not going from somewhere God isn’t, to where he is, but does recognise the real power of place, that the presence of God, experienced in a specific location, is significant, and worthy of seeking out.

I’ve been reluctant to call this sabbatical trip of mine, to the sites of a variety of events significant in the American journey towards civil rights in the 1950s and 60s, a pilgrimage. It sounds overly grand and to give too strong an emphasis to the geography, rather than either the history, or the biography, of Martin Luther King himself, the inspiration of the whole journey.

Yet, as I’ve been travelling; by plane, train, car and foot, I’ve been powerfully moved, as I’ve stood in places that have carried the weight of real pain, and extreme significance. There is genuine emotion attached to being somewhere where something happened, barely a generation ago, it leaves a legacy hanging in the air which is somehow palpable. That’s true regardless, but it’s often helped, although sometimes hindered, by some sort of maker. Something to let you know that this is where it was. Beyond the purely informational, memorialising has, or can, play a potent part in demanding that attention be continually paid to the past’s relevance to the here and now.

Selma, Alabama

A historic marker at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A history interpration sign stands by the highway approach to a arched bridge.

Those responsible for keeping this particular story alive, across the United States have, it seems to me, done an exceptional job in providing markers and memorials that both focus and amplify the meaning of the events they commemorate. Allow me to take you with me, briefly, to some of the places where I have stood, that you might sense something of what I have felt.

The USA, of course, has some experience of memorialising significant, yet relatively recent events. Coming from the UK, where I’m used to public monuments largely celebrating victory, glorifying generals and affirming a pretty static sense of solid certainty, it’s refreshing to witness commemorations that provoke as many questions as they provide answers, that promote reflection and challenge, as well as inform.

Washington DC is, of course, a city of memorials. Some of the most well known are, strictly speaking, outside of the remit of my trip, but it seems wasteful not to visit nonetheless.

The monuments to Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington himself are famously huge, grand and imposing, yet, to my mind at least, the most moving Presidential memorials are those to Roosevelt and Mason, the forgotten founder. Relatively small, humble even, thoughtful, the small wheelchair bound figure of Roosevelt, almost lost within his own expansive legacy, generously populated with the images of others, especially the poor, they put aside prestige for the sake of the personal.

When it comes to war, there’s a welcome note of ambiguity, whether you are scarred by the gash in the landscape that is the Vietnam memorial or haunted by the staring eyes of the Unnamed soldiers of the Korean war, catching you accusingly with their glance, there’s no place for mere glorification here.

Of course, the one non president remembered on the National Mall, takes me to the heart of my journey. Martin Luther King stands, tall and majestic, emerging, literally, out of the rock face behind him. ‘Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.’ Powerful, in every respect, but I would have to go elsewhere to find his humanity.

Like to his birth home, in Atanta, beside the very dining table where he was told by his father that the reason the inseparable friend of his pre-school years dropped him as soon as school began, was because of the colour of his skin, and that it would happen over and over again. Or, later, at the kitchen table of the parsonage of his first church in Montgomery, where, having cleared up the wreckage from his bombed porch, he wondered, in the middle of the night, if the burden he was carrying was too great to carry, and yet, right there, experienced an encounter with God that fuelled his every succeeding day.

Maybe to Boston, the most recent, abstract yet tender monument to the ‘Embrace’ between him and his wife, a marriage far from perfect, yet powerfully enabling.

Or perhaps standing in his very footsteps, marked for posterity, at the Lincoln memorial for the March on Washington, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, perhaps the most searingly evocative place of all that I visited, or behind his own beloved pulpit from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery. In each and every place, recalling all the different stories, you get a feel for the man, his pain, and yet his faith.

Then there were the larger museums, interpretive centres and institutes, designed to show the bigger picture still.

Like the enormously impressive National African American Museum of Art and History (NAAMAH), part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, where, I joined, in quick succession, a weeping line of black American visitors, filling past Emmett Till’s open casket, then, the same crowd, cheering the recorded promise of a Dream.

The Civil Rights Museum of Birmingham, charged with overseeing the 16th Street Baptist Church, and the place, just outside the ladies’ rest room, where a bomb exploded. killing 4 young girls, just as a service was about to begin, as well as the pretty little park opposite, with its startling sculptures of snarling police dogs and water cannons.

There was the Legacy Museum, from Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, in Montgomery, where you’re immediately overwhelmed by storm force waves crashing all around the walls and ceiling, enveloping you in the immersive experience of the transatlantic slave trade. Before peering into a tiny cell and seeing a holographic figure come to life before you, a slave waiting their auction, telling you their story. Then, much more up to date, being ushered into a prison visiting room, picking up the telephone to hear the convict’s take on contemporary racial injustice.

Birmingham, Alabama

Freedom Walk, Kelly Ingram Park.

Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

a path passes between two monoliths from which sculpted aggressive dogs emerge.

Or, just down the road, in the Rosa Parks Museum, standing at a bus stop, watching a small, tired lady being hauled off to be arrested for falling to give up her seat, before you move on, another half mile or so, to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and feel the weight of the multitude of great steel blocks, 800 of them, each representing a county in America, bearing the names of the victims of summary lynching.

Finally, there’s the gentle water flowing over Maya Lin’s follow up piece to her Vietnam memorial, the civil rights memorial, also in Montgomery. All of these places, and others; bitter with anger, drenched in tears, seared with hope. Remembered, celebrated, with all their ongoing awkwardness as benchmarks in history and faith.

In an age when the role of statues and memorials is much debated, when history, it’s said, should know its place, and yet be allowed to stand and speak its truth … these places, images, powerful exhibits and presentations, demand that the whole, painful truth shout out its reality, often in the name of the victims and the vanquished. In doing so, they bear good witness to the events that they’re designed to speak of. They inform, but, much more than that, they move and they challenge, they create new and ongoing stories so that history is not only recalled but re-enabled in a needy present, and offered up in hope.

Article

Character

Comment

Politics

Virtues

5 March 2025

5 min read

Are virtues irrelevant in today’s uncertain politics?

We need to exercise the character traits that uphold our values.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson Csorba works in deep tech, following experience in geopolitics and energy.

President Zelensky raises a hand while President Trump talks at him.

MSNBC.

In Oliver O'Donovan's Finding and Seeking, the theologian makes a telling comment about virtue, virtue referring to ‘the goodness the world has already seen and known…. Talk about virtue is always third person talk, observers’ talk about deeds that have already taken determinate form.’

Put differently, virtue is about the past. It is about how others have lived and acted in admirable ways. But it is not about today, in all of its ambiguity and uncertainty.

To put it directly – virtue falls apart when hit with reality. It is easy to talk about what virtuous people have done, much harder to be virtuous in the present. Or so O’Donovan says.

There has been a lot of talk over recent years about the need for virtues and values in politics (and in the world more widely), but what even are these things?

Values are principles or standards that individuals or societies consider important.

Virtues are moral excellences or traits of character, such as courage, patience, or humility.

Virtues are the moral character traits individuals need to uphold values, in practice.

When thinking about virtues and values, I often reflect on a simple but profound point made by Nigel Biggar speaking at Oxford University many years ago:

"If you want pure heroes, you won't have any."

Put differently, people – including the most virtuous at first glance – are complicated.

Yet, our world is one in which virtue seems to be in short supply. Some would even say virtue (and values) are non-existent, or on the verge of extinction.

The older I become, the more I am left reflecting on why it is that so few individuals – in political life, but also more generally – seem to live without principle. Integrity – which I define as ‘your word (or principle), and action aligning’ – seems increasingly a thing of the past.

Many seem to think that integrity is ‘old-fashioned,’ acting accordingly, saying one thing and doing another as if there are no repercussions.

This is replaced with an ‘anything goes’ mentality, focused on short-term gratification. It is a “you do you” culture, acting without conscience. People seem to believe there are few if any repercussions for doing bad things. This culture is not only permitted, but even celebrated.

The American situation is, of course, the example par excellence of this. American politicians and diplomats wake up each morning waiting for what their President will write on social media, responding accordingly. Alliances are thrown out the window. Nothing is off the table.

There is seemingly less interest in Western societies in being good persons, doing what is right in hard circumstances, and where few or no people are watching.

Whether in politics or in society more widely, people seem increasingly focused on protecting themselves, doing whatever they need to do to get ahead, rather than looking out for each other.

So where do we draw the line? Is there space for virtue (and values) in a world where growth is slowing, and more people are battling for parts of a shrinking pie?

I believe the answer is yes. My sense is that many people are today yearning for clarity of values and virtues in a world that is becoming much more anchorless.

There does then seem to be interest in values and virtues, but it is perhaps worth remembering that values and virtues are like muscles... It is possible to lose these muscles without practice.

In my home of Canada, where I recently moved back, many value decency, politeness, and a sense of moderation.

In 1955, while serving as Canada’s Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B Pearson put his figure on this pulse, delivering a series of lectures at Princeton University entitled Democracy in the World. Pearson argued that a sense of moderation is a leading value for Canadians.

He described this as a ‘confidence in the ability of the peoples and the leaders of democratic nations to grow into the new situations and to accept the greater self-discipline which the preservation of freedom in an interdependent world requires.’

And he saw Canada as especially emblematic of this ability to grow into new situations, this adaptability in working in an interdependent world.

Many Canadians believe that the thirteen provinces and territories need to adapt and work together in order to respond to the threat of the United States.

The candidate for Leader of the Liberal Party, Mark Carney, seems to agree (and is rising in the polls because of this), whereas his opponent Pierre Poilievre is moving in the opposite direction given his more combative approach. But Poilievre has time and the opportunity to turn this around, channeling Canadians' frustrations into a vision focused on the values and virtues we share in common.

In other words, Canadians value working together when faced with challenges, valuing this solidarity when times are tough. We become more courageous the tougher things become.

The virtue of courage is here a noteworthy virtue, so well proven in the Great War battles of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and The Somme, or the Battle of the Atlantic in World War Two.

We see this Canadian virtue emerge often in times of crisis.

Andrew Davison in previous writing in Seen & Unseen is especially eloquent on courage, writing that this virtue is:

‘both bracing and realistic. It reminds us that all is not well with the world. We will often need courage because doing the right thing can be costly.’

There does then seem to be interest in values and virtues, but it is perhaps worth remembering that values and virtues are like muscles – a point made by Carney in previous writing and speeches. And Poilievre, well-known for his considerable discipline, certainly understands the importance of the exertion that builds muscle."

It is possible to lose these muscles without practice. Over recent years, societies and individuals have become more permissive, rather than encouraging consistent exercise.

The question therefore is less about whether values or virtues will survive in the harsh light of reality. Instead, it is whether societies – their political representatives and citizens – are open to making the short-term investments necessary to uphold what they believe is good in their countries and in the world?

A tall task, to be sure, but one that I believe is both possible and necessary for Canadians and non-Canadians alike. Canada can here be an example for the world.

This task – upholding certain values and virtues, is not third person talk, as O’Donovan suggests. It is rather an imperative for action in the present. We are called to act accordingly today.