Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2019 10:40:02 -0500
From: Brad Page
Subject: Re: Chatham Chatlist #6551
Thank you Stephen McGregor and Mark Stinson
Your posts on the statue in the circle bring to me the incomplete tragedy of the American Civil War. I agree with most everything you say.
But, and it’s a big “but”, the memorial simply does not go far enough. What it represents is the loss of those who promulgated this wretched evil on the whole nation for almost 5 years and then, excused themselves from responsibility for their actions by accepting a pardon from Andrew Johnson, probably one of the worst presidents who defeated the aims and policies of Reconstruction. As a result Jim Crow laws were created in the 1870’s and continued until 1965. The misery inflicted on ex-slaves and their descendants right down to this moment is unpardonable.
If a memorial is wanted why not a monument to the whole history of the Civil War: the soldiers who were slaughtered on both sides (600,000), the civilians who were murdered on both sides, the ex-slave Union POWs who were murdered practically to a man by Confederate “heroes”, the Jim Crow era that followed the war’s and, most importantly, a memorial to the Civil Rights movement and the brave blacks and whites who sacrificed their lives to break the grip of southern segregation.
If we’re to truly end the bigotry, hatred and discrimination that has arisen into the open yet again we have to honestly face the Civil War and its consequences for all of us – not just the Klan ,but all of us. My own thinking has been shaped and is still shaped in ways I do not know by that horrific evil spanning centuries. We may want to study the efforts of the Greensboro Truth & Reconciliation Commission, created in 2004, to confront the Greensboro Massacre of Nov. 3, 1979 in which members of the KKK and neo-Nazi groups murdered peaceful demonstrators at Morningside Homes public housing project. The murderers, having been recorded on television, were later acquitted of their crimes. The Commission project continued for two years to open the wounds to public scrutiny and responsibility, to bring the whole history into the light.
http://www.greensborotrc.org/
I think we can do the same in Pittsboro. Mark Stinson points the way. It’s in the details, my friends. *It’s in the details.* We must learn our history, our actual history and how it has unfolded since 1850 and how it has shaped each of us. I am frightened. People wearing guns on their hips have shown up among us. Could Charlottesville or Greensboro be repeated here? Can we ordinary people of Pittsboro let go of fighting the Civil War in the present this way in the interest of the white elites who live among us to this day and who profit from this hatred?
Brad Page
2019-11-19