History Lesson

From the music of the Beach Boys and mid-20th century movies, such as Beach Blanket Bingo and The Endless Summer, one might assume beach culture was the exclusive domain of white people. In fact, and especially in the American South, it was thanks to longstanding segregation laws and, later, private initiatives to limit access to beaches for people of color. In her poem “History Lesson,” Natasha Trethewey opens the narrative with a photograph of a little girl in her swimsuit, posing for a picture. No big deal, except that she would have been denied access to that beach just two years before. Just two years before, she would have been confined to “a narrow plot” (Line 14) of shore.

The beach is a symbol for many things, including instability. A whale who is beached is in distress. To take the beach is a term derived from the military in relation to an invasion or usurping of territory. People stolen from Africa and forced into slavery arrived by the Middle Passage, and while they may not have landed at a beach, they did come by sea to land. A beach in the South in the 1960s, when central air conditioning was scarce, would have been a relief from the heat if you could get to it.