Stephen Whitfield

This chapter explores the gap between national and regional public memory narratives, which influence how Americans build their individual identity. American history was taught in the eleventh grade in the public school that I attended in Jacksonville, Florida, a city just below the Georgia border. We sat in alphabetical order by surname; the student who was placed directly behind me was Terrell Wilson. When the lesson plan reached the topic of the Civil War, Terrell’s normal geniality vanished: such was his indignation in denouncing the Union soldiers, whom he called “the Yankees,” that I felt his spittle on the back

The conclusion to Reframing 1968, by one of the leading historians of the twentieth-century United States, Stephen J. Whitfield, re-examines the historical experiences and cultural myths of the 1968. The chapter argues that many of the defining features of this tumultuous year – from electoral politics, to anti-war protests, to civil rights activism, and other forms of grassroots protest – are often misremembered. The conclusion focuses on how the experience of 1968 is sometimes in tension with how the historical record characterises its key moments and protest activities.