LIVING PAGES OF HISTORY
Of all the literary genres through which human story
has been told, history remains interestingly the most
daring. History tells human story without fear or
favor. And because history survives all the major
actors in the human drama, it records their roles
with the gut and confidence of a man sitting at a
vantage point. So many figures exist in history books
as villains and history has no apology for giving them
such tag. Such names like Hitler, Stalin, Osama Bin
Laden, Idi-Amin of Uganda and a host of others have
all gone down the path of history as enemies of
mankind. This is the way of history. It judges the
follies of men with the scepter of an impartial judge
and hardly does it forgive them. In fact, history is, to
say the least unforgiving. It not only warns the living
but also in extreme cases, disturbs the peace of the
dead, by revisiting their assaults on mankind and
judging them with stiff finality. This was what
happened on 16 October 2008, when France opened
a criminal investigation into atrocities committed
during the Spanish Civil War, under the rule of
General Francisco Franco. Spanish dictator, Francisco
Franco, died in 1975, but in 2008, 33yrs after, Judge
Baltasar Garzón of the National Court declared him
and his cronies guilty of crimes against humanity and
authorized a long-awaited investigation into their
misdeeds. Julian Casanova, a historian at University
of Zaragoza, described the development as a historic
turning point.
Indeed, history has a turning point. It always has. It
was a historic turning point for Rudolf Hess, a top
Nazi commander and one of Hitler’s closest aides,
when after many years of rest in the grave, his bones
were exhumed from their Bavarian resting place,
cremated and the ashes scattered in the sea, to
prevent the memory of such villain from receiving
any posthumous honor or regard. On 16 October
1953, Fidel Castro, a powerful Cuban leader, warned
a courtroom sitting in Santiago, to be mindful of the
power of history to challenge injustice. The now
famous statement “History Will absolve Me” made by
Fidel Castro in defense against the charges brought
against him, after leading an attack on the Moncada
Barracks, has found some justifications in history.
Recently, there is about to be a reversal of the case of
George Stinney, a 14-year old black boy and the
youngest person ever executed in South Carolina.
George Stinney was found guilty in 1944 of killing two
white girls, ages 7 and 11 and was executed, making
him the youngest person executed in the United
States in the past 100 years. Back then in 1944, the
outcry over putting someone so young on the electric
chair was ignored by the segregationist-era justice
system. Now, nearly 70yrs after, the poor teen is
probably getting another day in court. History with its
turning point is about to rewrite the poor boy’s story.
Emerging evidence as reported by Jeffrey Collins of
AP News claimed that racism, common in the Jim
Crow era South, meant deputies in Clarendon County
did little investigation after they decided Stinney was
the prime suspect. They said he was pulled from his
parents and interrogated without a lawyer. History in
its usual way of panning through the ruins of the past
in search of truth, is now getting to a promising
perspective where it can spot, as charade, the legal
melodrama that led to George Stinney tragedy. As
history paces forth to unwind the clogged wheel of
justice, Stinney supporters are already sporting the
optimism that history will in the end, call for a new
trial or at least garner state pardon for him. Such
optimism expressed in Stinney’s case shows that
people have strong belief in the power of history to
redress the errors of the past.
Digging up these facts is not just to highlight such
celebrated turns in history. There is also a bigger
motif to the picture, which is to charge everyone to
take history serious. George Santayana was not out
for sophistry or literary pedantry when he said that
those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to
repeat the same mistakes. His point is that
knowledge of the past is very important. We need the
past to know what made Hitler a villain and Osama
Bin Laden a terrorist. We need the past to know why
Judas is such a terrible name nobody would like to
answer or give to his child. We need the past to know
why in 1977, Idi-Amin of Uganda was featured in the
front page of Time Magazine with the description
‘wild man from Africa’ and Pope John Paul II
described in 1994 as ‘Time’s man of the year’. We
need the past to know why the phrase ‘never again’
has dogged the heels of Rwanda Genocide. Without
the past, we may never get to know why slavery
remains a scar on the conscience of Western
humanity. Without the past, we can never understand
why the memory of Biafran War has continued to dog
the conscience of Nigerian nation or why Nazism is
such an odious word.
Indeed, history matters because, as the business of
civilization tasks the modern mind, it can offer him
an occasional glimpse into the darkest night of
mankind’s earliest beginnings to see how much light
that glints in. If we must know the sources of our
moral, cultural and spiritual heritages, then the
knowledge of history is ultimately imperative. To
neglect history is to run the risk of repeating the
mistakes of the past. This challenge of history applies
not just to humanity as a whole or to the few
individuals who have shot their way to global
consciousness as famous people.
History has a personal dimension. It challenges the
way we relate with our fellow human beings. It’s
certain that not all of us will make it to the big history
book. Our names may never get to be written in the
Guinness World Book of Record or The World Atlas
for famous people. But that could never mean the
end of history for all of us. The pages of history are
not limited to stacks of books, standing tall in the
known libraries of the world. There are also others,
which I will like to describe as ‘living pages of history’.
They are the ever-beating hearts of humans. While
the big history books root for high-profile state-of-
affairs and names of famous people to record, it is in
the human heart, that the day-to-day details of
human existence, the big and minor dramas of life
are forever engraved. In the hearts of everyday
people we encounter, we write our history not with
the fading ink of history books, but with the gift of
love that makes those hearts bloom or with the bile
of hatred that casts the gloomy shadows over them.
As we pour through the deathless role of fame, in
our attempt to learn of such mighty deeds of valor
and heroism, performed with the sheer gravitas of
power and influence, we must also spare some
thoughts for the unwritten history of our lives,
scattered in the living hearts of people we meet on
daily basis. Jesus knew his place in history not from
the records of academic historians, but from the
living pages of history, the sincere testimonies of the
common people around him. His question: “Who do
people say I am?” befits us to always consider the
people around us as our first and incipient
historians. It will be idyllic then, to hope for any
verdict of history other than the synthesis of all the
slivered threads of impressions left in the life of
people we have met in the journey of life.
History will
definitely locate each one of us, not only through the
accounts of academic historians, but also, and this is
more important, through the sheer act of knitting
together into a single tapestry of meaning, of all the
slivered threads of our life stories, told by people
who either have known or have encountered us.
In this case, no one can escape the sweeping scope
of history. The epic deeds of a poor devoted mother
in the Amazon forest or African savannah might not
be found in any history book of the world, but her
memory is a tale of marvel, forever etched in the
living hearts of her children. There will be no greater
historic turning point for such a mother if her child is
a nuisance because of parental negligence on her
part. The prospect of having to be judged someday
by history should remain for every living man a food
for thought. The reason history has remained kind to
the memory of Socrates is that he was, irrespective
of unpopular detractions against him, outstanding in
virtue. Finding himself at one of life’s most trying
moments, Socrates preferred death to compromising
the laws of the land. Crito, the importunate fellow,
who pleaded with him to escape from prison, was
devastated and could not understand why he has to
drink the poison. The fact is that Socrates has an eye
on history, even if inadvertently. For the sake of
history, a schoolteacher for instance, should always
endeavor to have the felicity and aptness of mind to
mull over some pertinent questions regarding the
core truth of his or her calling. He should not gloss
over such questions as: As a teacher, do I give my
best to my students? Do I take the pain to prepare my
lesson notes for effective teaching? What impression
of myself are my students having? How would they
write my story tomorrow when history remembers
my page? And so on. When a schoolteacher neglects
his duty and students turn into derelicts, he should
not expect a fair judgment from history. This applies
to all other walks of life.
History has a word for all of us, the rich and the
peasant; the employee and the employer; etc.
Therefore, let all and sundry live with an eye on
history, bearing in mind the words of Chinua Achebe,
to the effect that history, which neither personal
wealth nor power can pre-empt, will pass terrible
judgment on us, pronounce anathema on our names
when we have accomplished our betrayal and passed
on. This was also the message that took the poetic
imagination of Shakespeare to task. It will be apt to
wrap up this reflection by peering through the poetic
lens of Shakespeare and seeing how exacting history
can be, when it comes back to reckon with the
legacies of our improvident past.
Time’s (History’s) glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;
To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,
To blot old books and alter their contents,
To spoil antiquities of hammer’d steel,
And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel;
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
