I have a few words to say about your editorial slamming the governor for proclaiming Confederate Heritage Month. The world has changed a lot since the days of our civil war. Nobody around here thinks slavery was a good thing. I look at this proclamation as a way for many families to remember their ancestors who died while defending their homeland.
It’s not commemorating an institution that we now realize was wrong.
We also stole land from the Choctaw Indians but I don’t see anyone offering to give their home back to them.
Your editorial went overboard by implying that Mississippi tarnished Martin Luther King’s holiday by also celebrating Robert E. Lee’s birthday, as if it were an intentional insult. We were celebrating that birthday before Martin Luther King was born. It just happened that the federal government chose that date which was already a holiday in Mississippi.
And as for Confederate Memorial Day, how can you attack the very thing that distinguishes our city as the birthplace of our national holiday? The national event was moved ahead a month only because the flowers up north weren’t blooming in April. We continue to celebrate the local event at the height of our Spring flowers’ bloom in April.
So yes, slavery was terribly wrong. No, we should not and are not glorifying that horrible institution. We are commemorating the lives of family members who died in a bloody war.
Bob Raymond
Columbus
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