(Letter to the Editor - Graphic Illustration/MetroCreativeConnection)

The column on the (May 18) meeting about Stonewall Jackson is good. A basic reason for learning history is to learn that societies and their standards change with time as a result of important events. Historical figures of the past should not be judged as if they lived in the society of today. Most of them had important contradictions. Jefferson is a good example. Yes, he was a part of the slaveocracy. But in the era he lived, he was a very advanced thinker, in a world where practically every country except Switzerland was ruled by a monarchy.

Getting back to Stonewall Jackson’s time, there were very few abolitionists. Most of the pre-Civil War political debates concerned the expansion of slavery to new territories. These have an odd resemblance to the “divisions” in this country now. Only a few “extremists-out of the mainstream” like John Brown wanted to abolish slavery where it actually existed. Slaves were viewed as a legitimate form of property, akin to work animals. The idea that Blacks should be equal to Whites was rare even in the North.

Looking at the more recent past, I am old enough to remember the integration battles of the l950s and l960s. One thing that happened almost exactly 60 years ago right now was George Wallace’s “Standing in the Schoolhouse Door” in June l963 to prevent a Black woman named Vivian Malone from entering the University of Alabama. He finally backed off when an Assistant Attorney General in the Kennedy Administration named Nicholas Katzenbach made it clear that if Wallace didn’t back off, he would be arrested. The University of Alabama’s football teams back then were all-White. Until some time in the mid-l960s, the Democratic Party in the Sovereign State of Alabama used the slogan “White supremacy-for the Right.” This may sound ludicrous — and definitely not PC — today, but it was the real world within the lifetimes of older people today. Should we not talk about the diehard segregationists of that era who did get pushed aside by the Civil Rights movement and by national administrations responding to it? How can you learn about the Civil Rights Movement without knowing about the blatantly racist Governors and Senators?

Stonewall Jackson was a military genius who fought on the wrong side of a great conflict. So was Erwin Rommel. Should Germans not learn about Rommel? And maybe even American students — the war in North Africa was a key part of World War II, and el Alamein, like Chancellorsville, is a place where important things happened that affect our lives today. This is reality, not virtual reality.

Thanks for the column.

Thorn Roberts

Elizabeth