The American Soviet Mentality

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

“By changing the names of the streets, the leadership ensured that these people would be forgotten.”— The Reflections of Communist Ideology in the Street Naming Policy in Soviet Tbilisi (1922 - 1939), p. 158

Tonight, I learned the name of Alderman would be removed from Alderman Library. I became a student scholar at Alderman Library. Named after the first President of the University of Virginia (UVA), Edwin Anderson Alderman, the name Alderman for me became synonymous with study for exams, research for papers, blessed breaks in the Reading Room and hours of self-discovery into depths of Black History floors below the ground level. But for the sanctuary and solitude of Alderman, my memories would be less fond of UVA.

And now my beloved name is gone in service of…ideology. I won‘t bore you with details, save busy bodies unearthed dirt on President Alderman. No one was perfect in our American past, so Alderman attracted small minds filled with resentment.

This is not the first time a part of me, my cherished memories, has been “disrupted” by ideologues. I have kept a running tally over the years.

The first time occurred at Harvard. (Again?) More precisely, the Harvard Law School. Some foolish students became obsessed with the coat of arms for the law school. This coat of arms had been around since the Great Depression. No one cared. Indeed, the coat of arms was the emblem of the Royall family whose major donation got the law school up and going in the early days.

The shield is modeled on the coat of arms of the family of Isaac Royall, whose bequest endowed the first professorship of law at Harvard. Royall was the son of an Antiguan slaveholder. In 1936, the Harvard Corporation and Radcliffe Trustees adopted seals for 27 Harvard academic units, naming the Royall crest, with its three sheaths of wheat, as the Law School shield.

Harvard capitulated to the small minds and terminated the Royall Shield. At the time, I felt this loss. I wrote Harvard and argued that I did not have a problem with the Royall Shield. In fact, I associated the shield with my time as a law student, my application to the law school and black giants in the law like William T. Coleman, Jr. who studied at Harvard under the shield with three sheaths of wheat. Only a delusional mind would be afraid at the sight of a shield tied to a son of an 18th century slaveholder in the year 2015. https://hls.harvard.edu/today/harvard-corporation-agrees-to-retire-hls-shield/#:~:text=Because%20of%20its%20ties%20to,family%20crest%20as%20its%20symbol.

I felt the loss of memory due to ideology for the first time in my life. It would not be the last time I felt the imposition of dogma in my self-identity.

While writing my book, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America a few years ago, I discovered by accident that busy bodies had changed the name of my former elementary school, E.S.H. Greene Elementary School. The cardinal sin? Greene was named after a Chesterfield County segregationist. Duh! Before the Spring of 1969, some variant of race segregation was the party line in white and black neighborhoods. Maybe 40% of black high school students chose to attend the all-black George Washington Carver High School under Freedom of Choice as late as the Spring of 1969. Despite the name change of the Richmond City School Board, I will always refer to my 3th grade school as Greene. No school board or name change can strip away my precious memory of my school’s name in the 3rd grade. In fact, it is the better part of nuance and complexity to recognize there were saints and sinners of all strips in our county’s past.https://www.sbballard.com/portfolios/esh-greene-elementary-school/

And then there is Jefferson Davis Highway in Chester, Virginia. As late as 2020, the street name of the President of the Confederate States of America remained on the state highway posting. The name was simply a placeholder, a landmark, when I was growing up. I paid the name no mind, no fidelity as it were. The name made historical sense since I was living…you know…ten miles from the White House of the Confederacy. As surely as the sun sets, I visited my Dad in January. The name was gone. I get it. No argument from me. However, this name change is not a one off and that is what I find concerning.

I am noticing a pattern in my life.

Another punch in the gut was when I heard that the Alexandria, Virginia school board renamed T.C. Williams High School. Why the name change? I gather T.C. Williams was a segregationist back in the day. People, we are talking about Virginia public schools. If one sets the bar that high, nearly all names on public schools and landmarks will come tumbling down. Changing the name of T.C. Williams is particularly ahistorical for this reason. Much of the New South came into existence in the 1960s and 1970s in public schools. Black and white kids learned to study together, to play together, to laugh together, to cry together. T.C. Williams’ transition was so poignant and triumphant that Hollywood created a movie about it starring Denzel Washington. Remember the Titans! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remember_the_Titans

The best of racial history in the New South was made at T.C. Williams High School in the summer of 1971. Why name change this school of all places? It saddens me.

When you change parts of my memory as the vanguard generation for racial desegregation, one is sending a message to my generation. One is signaling the awesome positive race stories of the 1970s and 1980s are less important than dishonoring 18th century slaveholding families in Antigua and segregationists before the Civil Rights Era. One is breaking with the past and my generational memory is collateral damage at best, non-existent at worst.

I did a little research before writing this essay. I wanted to understand how, and why, did the Soviet busy bodies do the same thing. Why were they hell-bent on erasing from memory centuries of grand Russian history? I found my answer.

For the Soviets, changing the names of places and landmarks and memories was about a restart of history. It was a brute force show of propaganda. Names more befitting ideology were slapped onto the side of buildings. The aim was to influence local identity, create a unifying identity and impose a totalitarian regime.

“In most cases, the names of Russian Emperors, Nobleman, Caucasus Governors and Generals of the Russian Army, were replaced by the names of Soviet Statesmen and authors of Communist ideology.”

Conclusion: An American Soviet ideology has appeared in my memory of my individual past. When I gaze upon my law school’s shield, the shield will not be the three sheaths of wheat of my law school days. When I drive to my old neighborhood in Hickory Hill and show my daughter my old elementary school, I will search in vain for the name E.S.H. Greene Elementary School which is airbrushed out of history. This is what Soviets do. When I drive with my daughter to see my Dad, she will not see the same street sign I used to see from the school bus. If I view Remember the Titans with my son, a former football player in high school, he will wonder what happened to T.C. Williams High School. And, if one day, I wanted to share my beloved college experience in the library stacks with grandchildren, they will consider me strange as I refer to the library as Alderman.

The American Soviets are winning. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-soviet-mentality