Hy Kuritz, with a PhD from Columbia, is Professor Emeritus of History at SUNY Albany, and a longtime CDHS member. His topic was “What is an Historical Event?” But he modestly claimed to provide only a partial answer.

            He began with the premise that people are unequal, some having more access to power and decision-making, and the ability to make – and interpret – history. Due to shifting sands in these regards, an historical event’s meaning is always unstable. Kuritz further held that history always has its “silences” – things not talked about.

            Hy’s first example was Veteran’s Day, the meaning of which had seemed to be fixed. The first time a group called “Veterans for Peace” wanted to march in the parade, permission was refused, because that group was seen as out-of-step with the event’s meaning. But with the upsurge of antiwar sentiment in the Vietnam War era, society changed, to incorporate new perspectives on the event’s meaning, and Veterans for Peace were now allowed in the parade.

            Kuritz also discussed our interpretation of Martin Luther King’s legacy, dominated by his “I have a dream” speech and advocacy of nonviolence. However, in his life’s latter phases, his approach encountered much criticism from more militant activists, and King actually had begun to be responsive to those ideas.

            According to Kuritz, “history” generally says that the Atom Bomb ended WWII. But he sees a more nuanced story, in which the bomb was only one factor, and maybe not the main one, which might have been Japanese fears of Soviet influence. [FSR note: Hiroshima was August 6. The USSR (opportunistically) entered the war against Japan on August 8.] Kuritz also discussed the (1995) contretemps surrounding a Smithsonian exhibit on the a Hiroshima bombing; originally planned to illuminate the nuances of the event, outcries from veterans groups and others caused the Smithsonian to rethink and simplify the presentation to embody the more orthodox interpretation.

            Then there was 1492. In that year, Columbus’s voyage was not seen as the main event; rather it was the final conquest of Spain by its Catholic monarchy. Only in later decades did the Columbus story’s importance come to be appreciated. And in the earlier centuries, the point of view of New World natives was disregarded; they were dismissed as noncivilized. Which, at the time, meant non-Christian. That of course has changed.

            Kuritz’s final example was Appomattox. In 1865, the idea of emancipation, and the democratization of the southern states, loomed large in the event’s meaning. But the Reconstruction period’s further events altered that, and the idea of reconciliation grew to be its larger meaning. This culminated in 1913’s Fiftieth Anniversary reunion of Gettysburg veterans, both North and South, with the war’s divisions consigned firmly to the past – but black people were invisible. It would take another half century before the South’s democratization would finally be realized.