History Survives When We Talk About It
I want to share some photos from a recent weekend in Chicago with you.
The first is the location of the infamous St. Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929
The building is gone. There are only a few trees, grass, a fence, and a few parking spaces.
The second is Couch Place, an alley behind the Nederland Theater.
This is also an infamous location. This alley was behind the Iroquois Theater in 1903, when it hosted the only show that occurred in that theater because it burned down on opening night, killing over 600 people. Bodies were piled up in this alley for days.
I’m sharing these photos because if you happen to walk past these locations, you may not notice any indications that they are historic. Couch Place doesn’t even have a marker for all of those deaths. In those days, many people in charge of the city would have preferred not to highlight these awful events because neither made the city look very good. Gang violence and a lack of fire safety codes are not exactly something they would want to be well-known, and yet we know about these events because people still talk about them.
When I think about our society’s history with child sexual abuse, mental health, and violence against women and children (among other things), I see a similar pattern. There are those with power who would prefer we not make these events well-known. They will not be putting up historical markers. They will hurry to build something new in place of the old to hide the history of what went on there.
No matter what our leaders want to include or exclude from the official histories, we know these events happened. We may not be successful in getting large-scale claims of abuse into the history books of the future, though we should try, but we can all continue to talk about them. The mainstream may want us to be quiet about the abuse that happens within the family, the church, etc., but we can tell our stories. We have voices, our own online spaces, connections, and the freedom to speak.
Most of all, we can support the people telling those stories. They are preserving our history and reminding all of us that the survivors are out here, we know what was done, and we will not accept the lies. We can ensure the truth is out there for those who want to learn and do everything we can to ensure that history is shared.
That’s how even a nondescript area like Couch Place can still be identified as the site of a terrible disaster, even without a marker.
