September 15

History was never my best subject. Truth to tell, next to phys ed, it was my most challenging. (At least in history class I didn’t have to climb the ropes!)

 History always seemed to me to be a list of dates to be lined up against a list of names or battles. The fact that one event was connected to the next, that there was a story to tell, somehow escaped me. 

Perhaps if I had read Gone With the Wind more carefully, I would have figured that out, but I made my way through that 1000-page tome skipping over the battles and forging ahead to read about Scarlett’s love life.

Fortunately I have grown up and realize now that an understanding of history is essential if we are ever to make sound decisions. Good teachers, good books, and Ken Burns have all helped, but maybe what has helped the most is living through 72 years of history.

When my younger friends read that yesterday marked the day in 1963 when the KKK set off a bomb in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls, they are reading history.

To me, it is a vivid memory. I was a freshman in college when I heard the names Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley read on the evening news. 

Those names were added to a growing list including 14-year-old Emmett Till murdered in 1955 and Medgar Evers murdered in the driveway of his home just three months earlier.  

They would be followed by Andrew Goodman, James Earl Cheney, and Michael Schwerner just a year later, and, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1968, and many others.

As the events in Charlottesville last month have reminded us, the evil of racism is still with us. To quote William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

We may want to skip over the painful parts, but like my experience with GWTW, ignoring them gives us a skewed view of history. We cannot fight evil if we refuse to see it. We cannot avoid repeating painful moments in our history if we look away.

(For more information on this period of history,  here is a link to artist Pamela Chatterton Purdy's inspiring Icons of the Civil Rights Movement. She and her husband David have produced two books about the Icons and the people they represent: Icons of the Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Icons Past and Present. Pam can be reached at pdpurdy@yahoo.com.