As I have told you my loyal readers I’m starting a new book about An African American Cowboy in the old west. Last night on PBS I watched an episode about a symbol of the Confederacy called Stone Mountain that both enlightened me because I do enjoy watching historical stuff like this and disheartened me because I abhor racism in all its shapes and sizes.
The reality is that Stone Mountain which depicts two southern Confederate generals and its President, Jefferson Davis, glorifies this chapter in our history of the “Lost Cause,” theory that the north started the war by depriving its citizens of its constitutional rights to property—i.e., owning Black Slaves.
While I do believe that we as a nation cannot turn our faces to what happened, we also must cope with the reality that a certain aspect of our collective culture has to continue to survive the aftereffects this war generated. There will always be White supremacists out there who hate the Black man with so much passion he or she will always blame them for their misfortune, economic distress, and inability to move forward.
Our culture will always have people distrustful of the government and willing, even praying that someone will come along and be their messiah, such as Mr. Trump tried to accomplish. Of course, had he won a second term, I doubt very much they would have stomached him declaring the United States Constitution invalid and making himself president for life.
Stone Mountain is in our collective consciousness, whether we want it to be or not. Martin Luther King even wrote about it in his “I have A Dream” speech in 1963. Tearing down monuments that at one time glorified Confederate soldiers and generals isn’t the answer, though I personally thought it interesting that all of this was done in reaction to the George Floyd killing along with other brutal police killings in 2020 giving Black Lives Matter ammunition to show how our racist attitudes hadn’t changed.
We have an obligation to learn from history, visit the sites, the memorials, the statues, not destroy them or revise our history to suit a political agenda. My worry is that if we destroy those relics of our collective past, then we certainly are doomed to repeat history.
Jerry Schellhammer 