In a message dated 2/22/08 11:42:05 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:


> 
> It certainly does seem possible, however, for us to memorialize this element 
> of our collective past.  I find it striking that we have a National Museum 
> to memorialize the Holocaust, an event in which the United States was 
> tangentially involved, and nothing at all to memorialize slavery and segregation, in 
> which we as a nation were profoundly implicated. What does that say about our 
> collective priorities, or for that matter about the way we fashion our 
> public sense of our own history?
> 
> 

Well noted.   It will be interesting how the National Slavery Museum, still 
in the fundraising mode can interpret this history moulding economic system 
when it finally opens.   As a Civil War living historian, one of the biggest 
peeves in our hobby is any whitewashing or   twisting of history just because it 
doesn't fit the most contemporary "political flavor of the month" syndrome.   
We need to try and look history through the eyes of people who lived it at the 
time.   Sometimes that is painful, sometimes it is surprising and it is a 
challenge to contemporary society to tell their stories with a minimal of our own 
prejudices/viewpoints.

Anita L. Henderson
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
www.AGSAS.org
researching Maria Lewis, Black Female Trooper of the 8th NY Cavalry


Anita


**************
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