The nine-word problem of civil rights discoursePublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Its MLK Jr. Day and Inauguration Day today here in the U.S. so were off today, but we have a brief issue for you while were out.Issue #249: autofiction, Carters legacy, and making good memoriesMatthew Teutsch, director of the Lillian E. Smith Center at Georgias Piedmont University, teaches college students about the U.S. civil rights movement. His courses have taken various forms, and hes posted several syllabi on Medium: Theres a general survey featuring essays by James Baldwin and speeches by activist Fannie Lou Hamer; another course specifically focused on memoirs by women in the civil rights movement; and a third course (which I personally would love to take) on comic book monsters created by Black and Indigenous authors, and the ways those monsters express various forms of protest, progress, and resistance.Teutschs goal is to solve the nine-word problem of civil rights discourse:via the graphic novel MarchThis isnt just a problem for civil rights education. Its a problem for all of history. Over time, political and cultural movements are flattened until they become stories that lack nuance, inner conflict, and humanity. Three-dimensional people become avatars for ideologies. And lesser-known figures vanish from the narrative entirely.I asked Teutsch to recommend just one primary source, out of all his syllabi, for anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of U.S. history. He emailed me back: I would recommend Lillian Smiths Killers of the Dream, which influenced King and which was reissued during the movement. Here is something I [wrote] about their friendship at the African American Intellectual History Society.Lillian E. Smith, if youre unaware, was a close friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. The friendship started when Smith sent King an unsolicited letter praising his efforts at peaceful protest, the mid-20th-centurys version of a cold email. By that point, Smith had written the novel Strange Fruit (published in 1944, it was briefly banned from the U.S. postal service because it features an interracial romance). At the time, she was one of the first white women in the South vehemently and vocally opposing racial segregation.Their friendship lasted until Smiths death in 1966. King wrote to her family to say: She was one of the brightest stars in the human firmament. Probably no southerner seared the conscience of white southerners on the question of racial injustice than Lillian Smith. Harris Sockel Also todayIf youre a fiction reader (or writer), I recommend this essay by Brandon Taylor examining a popular subgenre of contemporary first-person novels: tales told by coolly removed, internet-addicted narrators who seem to feel nothing but witness everything. (Sweater Weather)One of the late Jimmy Carters oft-overlooked career milestones: signing a 1980 executive order to fund historically Black colleges and universities. (Quintessa L. Williams) Some practical wisdomOne question to ask yourself if youre feeling vaguely dissatisfied with life: What memories do I want to make? Am I making them? (Miyah Byrd)