I'd prefer more Albert Brewers.
First political candidate I remember seeing. Brewer got screwed over pretty much.
It's really easy to sit back today and throw stones at the "morally reprehensible" people of a different age. When people look back on us 50 years from now they'll laugh at some of the "morally reprehensible" and short-sighted and corrupt things we did. Your grandchildren will scorn the "morally reprehensible" positions you and your family took -- because that's the way things are today and we accept it without a second thought.
Bullcrap like The Help and Roots and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter color the way people of today view events of the past. The entire South was full of red-faced, bacca chawin', white shirt wearing country gumps who went to Klan rallies on the weekend, treated their black help like second class citizens and if they got uppity, why they just whooped 'em.
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Garbage.
Most southern whites didn't own slaves. Slaves were expensive. In today's dollar a slave was roughly equivalent to a Mercedes. How many people you see beating their cars with chains if it doesn't run right?
From TV, who was the biggest racist you can remember? Archie Bunker. Where'd he live again?
As far as my views of the Depression, Civil War, Ancient Rome or the forays of Ghengis Khan yes, they would pale in comparison to those of someone who experienced that era.
It's a little like Bo Jackson. You may have seen him on film and recognize his greatness, but unless you lived through the nine dark years before he arrived at Auburn and were in some of the stadiums when he ran over, through and around entire defenses you cannot fully appreciate just what he meant to Auburn and what a jaw-dropping athlete he was.
I never saw Jim Thorpe or Red Grange. I'm sure they were amazing athletes. I SAW Bo. I saw him with my own eyes. There are kids today for whom Bo is nothing more than a Grange or Thorpe. The want to compare him to Mark Ingram or some lackluster toad like that. Because they don't know. They didn't see.
I saw.
I'm not that old and I saw what things were like. I've seen segregated water fountains, I've seen separate sections in the theater. I saw people get along for the most part. I saw the generational change where people who were 15-20 years older than me decided that the old ways weren't going to work for them. And they bucked the system. The minority did. The majority was used to the way things were.
Who was Rosa Parks? Was she just some tired old grandmother who needed to rest her feet? Heck no. Go check out her own museum. She was a communist agitator who trained in New York/New Jersey for months while they planned the revolution.
You seriously think people are better off today? Back then families cared for families (not like it was on garbage like The Help). Now? So many of those people who were employed by families are wards of the government, living in government homes and drawing government checks.
An entire society dependent on benevolent government handouts has been created where just a generation ago most people earned their own keep.
But it's better now, right? Because you watched The Help and Minnie ain't got to make no mo' doo doo pies.
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