I applaud the Naples Daily News for its recent article entitled “Massive resistance: How the South fought school integration” in a time when the likes of Mr. Trump and MAGA, and closer to home, Mr. DeSantis, make concerted attempts to rewrite or delete the ugly and bad parts and dress up the remainder of the “the good, the bad and the ugly“ history of this wonderful country we all love.
No worries, the country has enough good history for all of us to revel in. The unvarnished truth often tends to tug at the conscience, which tends to work against those seeking to be authoritarians, whose mantra is that the only truth is their truth. Recall Mr. Trump’s “believe only me and me alone.”
Portions of the Naples Daily News article were deeply personal as I lived through that experience. Prince Edward County in my home state of Virginia is one county over from Mecklenburg County, where I lived and grew up, and many of the Black children shut out of public schools in that county were forced to relocate to relatives and friends in my county or elsewhere just to get an education. Unfortunately, many did not have that luxury, lost educational opportunities and the impact of these actions reverberates in that area of the state even today.
The article demonstrates the consequences of a country failing to simply do what is right at critical junctures in its history. After the Civil War, the country had a choice, fully integrate the newly freed slaves and citizens into American society with equal opportunities or pass laws in an attempt to make them permanent second-class citizens. The country chose the latter.
After the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation and the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the country again had an opportunity to once and for all stop the ongoing illegal and unconstitutional mistreatment of its own Black citizens. It did not and the South chose Massive Resistance instead.
Today, it is voter suppression, gerrymandering and intimidation through legislation and the courts that are the tools of powerful politicians unwilling to do the right thing. It has expanded to include how the country treats immigrants.
Most of us can look at any situation, exclude self-interest, and say this is the right thing to do and the right way to do it. It is incredibly sad we keep electing politicians who can’t do the same thing and thus act accordingly to avoid having this nation repeat the most ugly, egregious parts of its history. Teaching history in its unvarnished state is a good start.
A retired colonel with the United States Marine Corps, Thomas Minor is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Naval War College with a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies. He spent 30 years as a Marine infantry officer with the last assignment as head of the Department of Naval Science and instructor of leadership and ethics at the Virginia Military Institute. He is a resident of Bonita Springs.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Unvarnished history is best history | Opinion
Reporting by Thomas Minor / Naples Daily News
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