In 1935 W. E. B. Du Bois argued that American segregated society relied on a segregated memory. By “searing” the public memory of African American struggle, white supremacist historiography had “obliterated” the black experience. The tourniquet of racist power that prevented black history from bleeding into the story of America's birth and growth stems from the nation's unmasterable slave past. In 1951 James Baldwin contended that this erasure makes Americans heirs to a “dangerous and reverberating silence” that is “the inevitable result of things unsaid.” When Barack Obama gave his revealing speech on race in America, he juxtaposed what he called “the white immigrant” story with the memories aired in black barbershops and beauty salons.