Wondering How I Escaped Becoming a Enduring Enemy of Black Americans
Heather Cox Richardson's Letter from an American has carried me back to one great and horrible event in our history. It's time I examined myself as I was front and center of all that.
Professor HCR takes me back this morning, which is the anniversary of the Sunday in 1963 when four white men murdered four young black girls in a church in Birmingham, Alabama, to a remembrance of my own experiences in those decades that formed my racial sensibility.
I was a young white male who was often amid, and otherwise highly aware of, the savage contempt for the descendants of slaves that festered in the bellies of white southerners. Somehow I escaped those hatreds even though I was typical of my species in most every other way. I owe it to the influences that spared me from becoming such a disgusting specimen of humanity to examine, and write with as much honesty as I can muster, how I got so lucky. I shall do that, and very soon, here in these pages for whatever illumination it can provide.
But for now, I simply recommend today's Letter from an American from the wise Heather Cox Richardson, and her interview with Doug Jones, a white hero of the dark era that has never ended.