re: #220 HappyWarrior

Speaking of Kirk Douglas turning 100, I saw a neat story the other day about a Holocaust survivor who recently got her citizenship and who is going to vote for HRC. I’ve also been reading a lot about the new African-American history museum in Washington and man it just gets me how many of my fellow whites do not even attempt to empathize. Here’s something to put in perspective though. The 99 year old woman who rang the bell to open the museum yesterday’s father was a slave. A lot of white people want to act like slavery was so long ago but for this woman, she could point to her own father as a former slave and there are plenty of people like her who either had fathers or grandparents that were born slaves that are still with us. I remember about ten years ago when Congress signed an apology for lynching, one of the men on hand when President Bush signed the legislation was a survivor of a lynching. Historical perspective is what we all need.

Last year, my son had to visit a museum that he’d never visited before. We’ve gone to the art and science museums here in the DFW area, so we went to the African American museum. One of the things we learned there was where Lemon Avenue and 75 meet used to be an African American graveyard. When it came time to build a road in the area, it’s pretty obvious the government didn’t have any trouble digging up that area. They did move the graves somewhere else, but all they would have needed to do to avoid the cemetery was move about 50 feet east.