How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, From Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More by Nicholas Mirzoeff

Author:Nicholas Mirzoeff [Mirzoeff, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465096008
Amazon: 046509600X
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2016-04-11T22:00:00+00:00

Figure 51. Checkpoint Charlie

The material fact of the wall created a social fact of segregation. This new fact had to be learned and was constantly emphasized by signs. Figure 51 shows the famous sign at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, seen in so many Cold War–era movies like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). It marked the boundary of the American sector of the city with East Berlin. It was one of only two crossing points for foreigners to enter the GDR in Berlin and the only one that members of the armed forces could use. It became mythologized as the location of spy exchanges and other intrigue. There were no such signs on the GDR side because citizens were forbidden to approach the wall.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy spoke at the wall and famously said: “Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’ . . . All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’” (I am a Berliner). His meaning was clear: that Berlin was a symbol of the freedom claimed by the United States in the Cold War, and the United States was willing to defend the city as if it were its own sovereign territory.

There was an obvious contradiction that Kennedy’s Soviet opponents did not fail to point out. Almost all American cities south of the Mason-Dixon Line, which separated former slave-owning states from free states, were still divided in 1963. Signs in the street indicated who could go where and who could do what. Only these were citizens of the same country, divided by the color line (Abel 2010). Across the South, you could see signs indicating that one restroom, water fountain, or entrance was for “whites” and another for “colored.” Such signs, and the law they indicated, divided these towns and cities as precisely as any wall. Crossing the line was often dangerous. The civil rights movement challenged segregation by undertaking highly visible actions in which the unity of the nation was posed against the divided reality of segregation. In the small town of Greensboro, North Carolina, students trained in nonviolent civil disobedience sat in at a lunch counter in Woolworth’s department store on February 2, 1960.

The students concerned were Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Billy Smith, and Clarence Henderson. On the first day, they sat for an hour at the end of the day without being served. On the next day, when this now-famous picture was taken for the local newspaper, they sat for an hour and a half. The students were well dressed and conservatively groomed so that no objection could be raised about their personal appearance. During the sit-in, they sat quietly and often studied (Berger 2010). In the photograph, you can see an African American waiter or busboy studiously ignoring his peers, as did all Woolworth’s staff. The hope was that the sit-ins would simply go away.

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