BOOKS“You have to pay attention to peace andpacifism,” Sharma says. “You have to believethat without peace and pacifism your lives aregoing to be miserable, and nations’ lives aregoing to be miserable, too.”We can see this on a daily basis, he says,as more people and nations take combativeroutes to end their differences.“That may solve the problems partiallyin the short term,” Sharma says. “But in thelong run, those problems keep on emergingagain and again.” Real change comes throughdiscussion, not through aggression, he says.The Gandhi’s Teachers series will addto this discussion. Although much hasalready been written about Gandhi and theother men individually, Sharma says therewasn’t significant work connecting Gandhi’sthinking to those who influenced him.After obtaining degrees at PanjabUniversity and later at the University of Iowaand Ohio State, Sharma continued studyingEastern and Western pacifists, whicheventually led to this series.He began the series in 1999. Of the fourmen, Sharma says, Mehta was the one mostmentioned by Gandhi. Despite that fact,Sharma explains, he was the least known, bothin India and among international scholars.That prompted Sharma to explore Mehta’sinfluence in the first volume of the series.After completing the Mehta volume, Sharmamoved on to Tolstoy, then Ruskin and Thoreau.It has kept him busy for a decade and a half.“You devote 15 years of your life only if youare totally committed to something,” he says.While his research on Thoreau didn’treveal any particular surprises, there werechallenges reconciling Thoreau’s embraceof direct action to end slavery with Gandhi’snonviolence, Sharma says. Thoreau, forexample, was willing to accept violence incertain situations, specifically John Brown’sbungled attempt to incite a slave insurgencyin Virginia.Sharma devotes an entire chapter toThoreau’s writing and statements aboutBrown, the abolitionist militant whose 1859attack on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferrydramatically heightened tensions in a nationalready deeply divided by slavery. Thoreauwrote several essays defending Brown andhis use of violence.Gandhi found this troubling, as doesSharma. “[Thoreau’s] subscription to violenceunder certain circumstances did disappointme,” Sharma says.Still, he adds, Thoreau’s admirable traitsare legion. Sharma was “deeply impressed”by Thoreau’s simplicity, humility, frugality,will power, and forbearance, all virtues thatmirror Gandhi’s fundamental values.Elsewhere in Thoreau, Sharma detailsprominent aspects of the American writer’scontributions, perhaps chief among them,Thoreau’s 1849 essay “Resistance to CivilGovernment” (or “Civil Disobedience”).Gandhi encountered the essay in 1907,after launching the Satyagraha, “soul force,”movement in South Africa on behalf of thatcountry’s Indian immigrants.Sharma says exploring the ideas of Gandhi’sspiritual and intellectual influences was notan obvious choice for scholarly attention.But exploring the antecedents of Gandhi’sthinking is critical to fully appreciate thelasting influence of his ideas.“Ultimately, the world is to be guidednot by political leaders, but by visionaries.Ideas are much stronger than policiesand planning,” says Sharma. “Ideas makethe world go around. And only if they arepeaceful ideas are they going to work.”Pacifism is personal for Sharma. Evenwhile excitedly discussing his latest project— Sharma is currently at work on a booklengthstudy of Quakerism and its effects onGandhian thought — he radiates calm andpeacefulness. A similar peaceful capacityis available to all of us, he says. We simplyneed to learn how to use it.Teachers such as Gandhi and Thoreaucan help.“People know how to obtain peace ona daily basis. They can do the same thingfor the nation,” Sharma says. “This series ismore like awakening the conscience of thepeople. That is what I’m trying to do.”A City Within a City: The BlackFreedom Struggle in GrandRapids, MichiganTodd E. RobinsonTemple University Press, 2013Ferreting out history’s “truths” oftenrequires looking beyond standard,accepted narratives and focusinginstead on telling details that more fullyrepresent the whole. Such is the case withTodd E. Robinson’s A City Within a City:The Black Freedom Struggle in Grand Rapids,Michigan.Robinson, an associate professor of historyat UNLV, says he learned early on that fewscholars were interested in how the civilrightsstruggle played out in “second-tier”cities like Grand Rapids. “I observed that mostof the narratives of the black freedom strugglefocused on the experiences of blacks living inprimary cities such as Chicago, Detroit, NewYork, and Los Angeles,” he says. Robinsonworked to change that while a doctoralstudent at the University of Michigan, wherehis dissertation work eventually led to A CityWithin a City.He says he decided on Grand Rapidsfor a couple reasons. First, there was theaforementioned dearth of information onmidsized cities. Second, he says, the sizeand scope of Grand Rapids was similarto his hometown of Springfield, Mass. “Ifelt strongly that there was a rich narrativeworthy of national attention which could addto the larger understanding,” he says.City Within a City begins by describingthe influx of African-American migrantworkers to Grand Rapids in the early 1900sup until World War II, a fascinating storyof pride and perseverance among womenand men determined to claim their shareof the American dream. It then transitionsinto the main thrust of Robinson’s work:How, after the war, black citizens’ increasingdemands for equality ran headlong into awhite establishment determined to maintaina discriminatory status quo.He identifies “managerial racism,” as a38 / INNOVATION<strong>2014</strong>
Todd Robinson, associateprofessor of historyAARON MAYESkey component in impeding racial progress,a means by which Grand Rapids’ white cityfathers, chiefly through business associations,succeeded in starving predominantlyblack neighborhoods of crucial economicdevelopment opportunities.Robinson next describes how the blackcommunity organized to overcome this andother barriers. He details the formation oforganizations such as the Grand Rapids NationalAssociation for the Advancement ofColored People (GRNAACP) and the GrandRapids Urban League (GRUL); the strugglefor employment and housing; and the hardshipsfaced by black students. He enlivensthese stories with first-person reporting andsecondary sources which, when taken together,provide a picture of the black freedomstruggle more nuanced — and complicated— than the popular narrative suggests.“The traditional view of the civil rightsmovement that circulates through Americanmemory is hotly contested in academia,”Robinson says. “What most might consider thetraditional civil rights movement — framedin the South between the years of 1954 to1968, and presented from an organizationalapproach centered on the actions of men towin political rights — offers only a parochialunderstanding of the civil rights movement.”While the familiar story of Martin LutherKing Jr. may be readily accessible, he adds, “Itconceals as much as it reveals,” he says. “Analyzingthe past of secondary cities will provideinvaluable lessons for understanding the tragedyand triumphs of the black experience duringthat time period and even today.”Robinson adds that he would like to see hisstudy blossom into research on other, similarcities that would “provide comparativeinsights, examine the place of managerialracism in other communities, and analyze“Analyzingthe pastof secondarycitieswill provideinvaluablelessonsfor understandingthe tragedyandtriumphsof theblackexperienceduring thattime periodand eventoday.”research.unlv.edu INNOVATION / 39
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