Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America

The telling of American history has always been fraught with myth-making, sentimentality, and, controversy. As historians and writers in the postwar era shifted their attention from elite to popular audiences, the political stakes grew. Christiansen, an assistant professor of history at Rhode Island College, uses five case histories to document how elites, from corporations to the news media, have subtly infused historical narratives with their own distinctive philosophies for consumption by middle America. The chemical giant Du Pont, no fans of labor-sympathizer FDR, trumpeted American achievement through its Cavalcade radio broadcasts with sanitized tales of historical figures like Susan B. Anthony, Sacajawea, and even the Du Pont family itself, while burnishing the image of business and capitalism. By the time the program moved to television, it had a devoted following and had earned the respect of a generation of viewers. The CBS production You Are There approached American history from a different angle, employing blacklisted Hollywood writers who imbued the episodes with left-of-center perspectives and subtle anti-communist commentaries on current events. This is meaty fare for a discerning audience willing to wade into meticulously researched case-studies to better understand how Americans have "cherry-picked" the past in service of contemporary aims. (Mar.)