“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Professor Mark Sawin began his MLK Day presentation with this quote to emphasize the importance of the past.  He then moved into talking about monuments, and about how people represent their support for or learnings from an event with them. It could be as big as building, a whole statue like the Lincoln  Memorial, or naming a school after someone—Turner Ashby or the black knight for instance. 

Sawin, history professor and department chair, talked about the importance of history, how it shapes our lives, and who in history hasn’t been remembered for their work during the Civil War, like John R. Jones. Sawin started by telling the audience about how some people view time: “The past is behind us, we are living in the present, and we are moving towards the future.” Sawin disagrees with that and thinks history is created by who we are today. Sawin also views history as the stories we choose to tell others about and heritage is the way we chose to tell the story. This is familiar in many historical events, for instance the idea of looking at women’s pasts was not as popular in the past as it is today. Sawin defined that as we are adding or changing the stories we tell because we changed our future goals.  “Everything has history,” but it is hard to talk about all the events that occurred; Sawin thinks there are some things that are more important in history which help his students to understand and move towards what he hopes will be a better future.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Mark used the quote from George Orwell’s “1984” to make the statement that people in power are the ones who control how history is told. That’s why it’s easier to find the history of loyalty in the past, and in presidents. “One of the biggest things in the Civil Rights movement is retelling the American history,” Sawin said about the different approaches to understanding why the civil war started. 

One of the claims in the Southern States was fighting for their rights. “They are absolutely right: they were fighting for the right to have slavery,” Sawin said. He said that Confederate history is similar to the rebellion that happened in United States against England. After the Civil War ended, both sides wanted to tell the story of why they lost or why they won. 

Sawin talked about why we do not have any monuments of John R. Jones and why that is odd. Back then, he was celebrated as a future military leader. He also trained as a school teacher and was a principal of male and female education—“for the time period, he was weirdly liberal,” Sawin said. He ran several organizations for the poor and the community which included African Americans. He became a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. After the war, he became a merchant and later served for decades as a commissioner in chancery in Harrisonburg. 

Sawin ended his presentation by answering audience questions about Jones and monuments in Harrisonburg.