Just read - no comments needed

[L Verge]

Rich - I know that I am breaking my own suggestion not to comment on the monument debacle, but I found your exact quote above lifted from an article that appears on http://www.vox.com: "... there are no statues of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels gracing public squares in Berlin, let alone Nazi flags or other Nazi art. Public Nazi imagery was long ago destroyed, and swastikas were long since knocked off the walls of Nazi-era buildings. The only Nazi imagery you’ll find is in exhibits devoted to understanding the horror of the period."

This got me to wondering if the symbols of Nazism were first removed by the German citizens themselves OR by the conquering Allied forces as they took over the country. My suspicion was confirmed in the same article: "Conquering armies banned the swastika immediately after the war -- In 1945, the conquering Allied powers took control of Germany and banned the swastika, the Nazi party, and the publication of Mein Kampf, Hitler's famously anti-Semitic text" source cited as Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Historian.

I also found the following in a 2017 article on Politico: "Tearing down the symbols of Nazi terror was a necessary first step -- but it didn't ensure overnight political or cultural transformation. It required a longer process of public reconciliation with history for Germans to acknowledge their shared responsibility for the legacy of Nazism." Please pay close attention to the meaning of that last sentence -- especially "shared responsibility."

And finally, back to the first article on vox.com, I am especially pleased to quote from Condoleezza Rice, a woman that I admire very much: Ms. Rice was being interviewed on Fox News and was asked if she wanted the South to erase the past by taking down the monuments to Confederate leaders. "I am a firm believer in 'keep your history before you,' she told the hosts. So I don't actually want to rename things that were named for slave owners. I want us to have to look at those names and realize what they did and be able to tell our kids what they did and for them to have a sense of their own history."

Her response reminded me of a situation that occurred at Surratt House Museum about fifteen years ago. At that time, we had the rather universal symbol of the crossed Union and Confederate (battle flag}flags displayed on our entrance sign. A complaint was filed with the Director of Parks and Recreation, the government agency that owns our museum. A woman complained about the Confederate image.

Our county director was a very talented and respected black woman who had worked her way up the ladder of the agency (which is quite large) from working at community centers, etc. Her response to the woman was, "That flag is part of your history also..." That's the core of the argument that I will continue to preach about educating oneself to all of one's history.

Getting personal - I was born into a military family that understood desegregation of the forces, a family who ran the local store and enjoyed talking with all the citizens, a family who owned two tenant farms and took care of the tenants when they needed transportation to doctors, repairs, and other things. I walked up and down aisles of tobacco following the auctioneer and watching my mother negotiate higher prices so that her tenants (who got 60% of the profits) would have a better winter -- we also supplied their house, their equipment, and the fertilizer. I then became a teacher the same year that my Maryland county desegregated its schools and went through years of busing. And, I continue to live in my home county, which is now predominantly black and is the richest African American county in the nation. Trust me, I am just as American as everyone else; but I hope to one day see our differences heal without the obstruction of the race card - and I don't believe that will magically happen because we destroy monuments and rename buildings and streets.