Category: History

Dear Sir

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

purple mountian

President Donald J. Trump                                                                                                            White House                                                                                                                      Washington D.C.                                                                                                                          United States of America

Dear Sir,

I am an American who loves this country with every fiber of my being even as I realize that it has problems which must be addressed. I am only a few years younger than you are. When we were  children the world was recovering from a terrible world war. Our elders had been heroes fighting in Europe and the Pacific for the very existence of democracy and justice. We grew up hearing of the horrors of autocratic leaders that lead to the murder of millions of innocent souls. What we heard less about was the unfair treatment of citizens in our own country whose ancestors had once been slaves. We were young and lived in a white bubble with our privilege of freedom to go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted. Only now and again did we witness hints of the inequities in our society and so in our minds the America of our youth was a beautiful thing, a safe and lovely world. We did not yet know of the injustices that some of our fellow citizens with darker skin were enduring even as we reveled in our own safety.

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. My father was a college educated man who provided our family with luxuries that I took for granted until he died suddenly when I was only eight years old. I quickly learned what it was like to worry that my family’s most basic needs would be difficult to meet, but even in our greatly reduced economic situation I knew that we were better off than many Americans and so I began to better understand the plight of the poor and suffering.

I was mostly sheltered from the racism that existed nearby me. It was only when we would ride a bus downtown to enjoy a Saturday of shopping for sales in the basement of Foley’s department store that I saw the water fountains and restrooms marked with signs for “whites” and “coloreds.” I found myself wondering why the black people on the bus had to sit away from the rest of us. I knew them only from such brief encounters because they lived in neighborhoods segregated from mine. I only saw them when they came to clean the houses or work in the yards of white friends. Even as a child I felt an element of mystery and injustice in their situation but nobody really spoke of such things with little ones. They must have believed that we were too ignorant to see the evidence of prejudice that was so clear to me.

The first I heard of the civil rights movement was just before my father died. We had gone to visit my grandparents in Arkansas and there was talk of integrating the schools. My father and grandfather would sit on the front porch of the house discussing the pros and cons of the situation while I was shuttled away into the kitchen with my grandmother. I suppose they thought I was too young to hear about such things but I got enough information to begin to question so much about what we were doing to an entire group of people who had long suffered from abuse.

By the time I was in high school the civil rights marches, demonstrations and sit-ins were in full force. I watched the progress with great joy and anticipation even as I heard whispers from adults who were worried that the world as they had known it was about to change for the worst. There were great divisions in our country even as a sense of hopefulness began to spread from sea to shining sea.

In college my friend Claudia and I were active in the continuing civil rights movement. We marched and campaigned and lived in the hope that the stains of slavery and segregation would be eradicated forever. We listen to Mohammed Ali speak on our campus. He was still Cassius Clay back then and he would soon be expressing his right to freedom by refusing to submit to the military draft. It was his way of bringing attention to the inequities that were still holding our nation back from the greatness that had been the set forth in the ideals in our Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. We were still struggling to achieve a goal that should have been insisted upon as far back as 1776 but was compromised to satisfy those who used slaves for their economic betterment.

I entered the adult world thinking that we had resolved the problems of our Black citizens. I went about living my life and created my own little bubble of satisfaction. The world seemed to be a very happy place for everyone. I welcomed Black children to my neighborhood and I taught them in the schools where I worked. I shared stories with my Black colleagues and entertained them in my home. It was not until a group of my Black students and I prepared for a school sponsored civil rights tour of the south that I began to hear of the inequities and fears that continued to stalk even the most highly educated and economically secure Black people that I know. In transparent conference after conference they related their experiences and I knew then that we had left so much work undone.

So here we are now in a state of unrest in the midst of a pandemic as people not just in the United States but across the globe insist that somehow we must begin the dialogue and the processes of eliminating racism that is still inherent within our systems. We know that we cannot dislodge discrimination in all individual hearts, but we can and should attempt to eradicate it from our public institutions. The Black Lives Matter movement is not about the exclusion of all other lives but an insistence that we once and for all must admit that too often Black lives do not matter as much as ours. When athletes take a knee during the National Anthem they are not attempting to dishonor veterans but rather to bring attention to the reality that we are often prone to look away when Black lives are undervalued. We do not see such incidents as our problem because after all we are good people who love everyone. Sadly by ignoring the situation we contribute to the abuse. Just as we would report adults who mistreat children, so too must we take action against people and systems that are cavalier with the lives of our Black citizens. 

Mr. President, the throngs of people in the street are generally peaceful and their cause is a beautiful thing. They are protesting for the very soul of this country and in many ways they are more intent on making America great that your supporters. They are not thugs or destroyers or looters. The millions of earnest souls across the country are risking their own safety in an attempt to rebuild and redefine the systems that continue to ignore the facts surrounding the history of slavery and segregation. They are drawing attention to the racism that continues in far too many corners of the country.

If you truly want to make America great then I implore you to set your divisive rhetoric aside and serve as a model of compassion and understanding. We are all hurting and we desperately need a leader who is willing to bring us together, not taunt us to fight one another. This is a powerful moment in our nation’s history when we might once and for all admit to the egregious mistakes of the past and move forward by repairing the institutions that continue to ignore the discrimination that breeds in their midst. Truly loving this country means that we will not enable its flaws to fester and grow. Loving the United States of America means coming together to repair the damage of four hundred years of looking the other way. What a glorious thing it would be for all of us to march into the Promised Land together at last. Seize the opportunity to listen and to hear the cries for what they truly are. 

Your sincerely,                                                                                                                                         A proud citizen of the United States of America

 

(Please Note: For those who may think that my naiveté knows no bounds, I do understand that this letter is a dream but it outlines realities and hopes that I do not think any of us can afford to ignore. We must move beyond sound bites and self interests and insist on doing the right thing. This must also include those in the halls of power. Let freedom ring.)

A Sad Time In History

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Could-the-South-Have-Won-the-Civil-War

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Nobody in my family ever said much about the Civil War or my family’s part in it so I just assumed that my ancestors had fought for the Confederacy. I had a rather childlike attitude about the whole incident with the exception of feeling a bit uncomfortable about slavery, a practice of which I did not have a great deal of information. To say I was naive about the whole thing is an understatement.

When I was a bit older my paternal grandmother gave me some documents that had been handed down to her from my great grandmother. They were the discharge papers of my great grandfather, John William Seth Smith, who had served with the Union Army. I was rather surprised to learn that my relations who had almost always lived in the south had supported the Union. As I did more research I learned that Kentucky, where my great grandfather enlisted, was a state that was quite divided in allegiance to one side or another. I found myself wondering what had prompted John W. S. Smith to choose not just to stand with the Union but to join the battle. Secretly I heaved a sigh of relief that he had chosen to fight for the preservation of the nation. He became a kind of hero to me even though I know little about him and don’t even have a photograph to picture how he looked.

Being a peacemaker at heart and someone who encourages free thinking I have tended to be rather forgiving of those who so foolishly decided to secede from the Union. Like many I have romanticized the battles of Americans fighting one another and I have been rather magnanimous in forgiving the Confederates for the reasons that they tried to set up a government of their own. Over time I have found less and less reason to support their cause not just because some of them may have been shooting at my great grandfather, but because the foundation of their reasoning was based on the ugly existence of slavery.

Economics and states rights are often cited as the basis for the anger that lead to a break from the United States of America. Even given that bit of moral latitude the discussions always came back to the financial aspects of slavery, an argument that was used even at the beginnings of the country as a reason to allow slavery. To think that finances came before human life is upsetting beyond reason. Not only was the cause a foul one draped in phrases about freedom, but the act of declaring war was in itself outright treason. As I critically assess the incident I can say that the only good thing that came from it was the freeing of the slaves and no matter what any sons of the south may say, the northern states were rather magnanimous in their forgiveness when all was said and done.

Sadly many of the heroes of the Confederacy had once been soldiers in the United States military, educated and trained at West Point. Try to imagine how we would react today if a group of American soldiers allied to declare war on the rest of the country. We would no doubt consider them to be terrorists attempting to launch a coup. There would be few of us who would even think to support their cause.

So this makes me wonder why we have been so understanding in allowing the Confederate flag to continue to fly and for monuments to be built in adoration of the heroes of the Confederacy. In many ways our permitting such things is akin to letting people fly the Nazi flag and put up monuments to Hitler and his allies in the town squares of German towns. We would surely think that such a thing would be crazy.

Some argue that Confederate memorials are simply a part of history and even a culture that should be honored and allowed. Statues should be about people who are worthy of glory, not those who had a very misguided attitude about slavery and the importance of continuing as a nation. The Confederate leaders were determined to leave the Union, keep slaves and even allow the expansion of slavery to new states. There was nothing particularly noble about any of that.

The fact is that the Union held. The Confederates lost and Lincoln wanted to welcome them back into the fold. The slaves were freed and that should have been the end of that, only it wasn’t. We know that many of the southern states enacted Jim Crow laws that segregated Blacks and limited their freedoms including the right to vote for another one hundred years.

I am all too aware of egregious things that I saw as a child in the 1950s. I remember the Blacks sitting at the back of the city buses. I vividly recall the signs designating water fountains and restrooms for “Coloreds” and “White.” I all too often heard the “N” word being bandied casually about. I knew that there were certain parts of town where Black citizens were forced to live. I even have a memory of hearing a man explain that Blacks had to depart from certain areas where they worked at maids and laborers before dark or risk being arrested.

During the time from about the 1890s to the 1950s treatment of Black citizens was horrific. In the same era many of those statues and monuments were erected. Schools, streets and even military bases were named after the so called heroes and while those honors proliferated people mostly looked away. Few dared to suggest that it might have been in poor taste to do such things and so there was an implied if not spoken agreement that those who attempted to destroy the United States were not really so bad after all. They had been forgiven and if people wanted to honor them for their service in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States surely there was no problem.

We have reached a point of maturity in our thinking. We have begun to understand that the silent message of all of these memorials is that those who lead a civil war had an honorable undertaking despite the ugly aspect of using it to keep slavery flourishing. Little wonder that those symbols have made some of our citizens feel as uncomfortable as constantly driving past a statue of Hitler in Times Square might make World War II veterans or Jewish citizens feel.

The time has come for us to be mature enough as a nation to take down, rename and move on from the darkest chapters of our history. We certainly must continue to learn lessons from what happened, but we should not keep making excuses for those who were unwilling to rid our country of the scourge of slavery and then use war to keep it. There is nothing noble about what they did. Many citizens of the south who had never owned a slave in their lives were forced to fight battles that should not have occurred. They were used as cannon fodder for an inglorious and lost cause. It’s time that we rid ourselves of the stain that has stayed with us far too long. Let’s rename our military posts after other real heroes who fought for this country, not against it. Let’s do it in the name of respect for our flag, for our veterans and for all Americans.

Love Is A Verb

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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We are all weary. To say this is a crazy year is an understatement and I hold little hope that we will soon be rocking along just as we may have been in January. I still know so many who are unemployed who have been working diligently to find jobs that do not now exist. They are in a state of panic since the extra help with unemployment they have been receiving will expire in July. They are not  just sitting at home enjoying the time off from work because their unemployment checks are so terrific. In fact, most of them are receiving so much less compensation than they were when they were working that they did not even receive those twelve hundred dollar checks that so many are crowing about. My heart bleeds for them as I watch them valiantly attempting to find a route back to the careers that they so enjoyed. They are willing to relocate if necessary even though it will greatly disrupt the lives of their families. We cannot forget about them just because we are secure. It is not yet time to celebrate the return of our economy.

The virus is still raging in some parts of the world and its very existence anywhere threatens all of us. I do not believe for a moment that we have seen the last of it and I constantly worry about what the fall and winter will bring. I hope that we are ready for whatever happens but the cavalier attitude of so many worries me that we may get caught unprepared once again. I grieve for those who have lost loved ones and for all the the might have beens. Like everyone I want to go back to church but even my pastor is asking us to be cautious and stay away if we belong to any of the vulnerable groups. It is certainly not over and yet I see people taking group photos with friends, large gatherings at the beach, disregard for social distancing on a grand scale. I desperately want to be wrong about my concerns. I hope to one day laugh at my foolishness in being unduly anxious.

I must admit to being sad a great deal of the time because our country is so divided and the anger is palatable. The last time it felt like this I was young and strong and enthusiastic about being able to help my country to grow and change for the better. I walked in marches for civil rights while a student at the University of Houston. I protested for peace in Vietnam, not because I did not love my country or the soldiers fighting for us, but precisely because I have always thought that this is the only place on earth that I ever want to be. I am a sold gold American but I am not so foolish as to believe that everything about my country has been right or good. I am imperfect and so is everyone and everything on this earth. Only God is unflawed. The rest of us have room for improvement and that includes our nation.

I have always believed that if you love someone or something you do not abandon nor enable them when they are wrong. Love is a verb that requires action, not just blind devotion. Just as I have had to have some difficult conversations with myself, my mother, my husband, my children and my students so too have I tried to be honest about the United States of America. Every person and every organization has room to grow and my beloved country is no exception. If we do not honestly address problems we do little more than sanction bad behaviors.

Of late it has become popular to hark back to some mythical time when everything in the United States was exceptionally perfect but anyone who has even a small understanding of history knows that there have always been difficulties that have affected different groups in their quest for freedom and justice. Our laws were created with the idea of changing things as needed but now so many want to keep everything set in stone even when it is apparent that even our laws have to evolve with the times. Some find fault with anyone who even suggests that America needs to address certain problem areas, acting as though anyone who does so is somehow disloyal to the ideals of democracy when in truth it takes great love for country to attempt to bring about positive change and improvement.

When I was studying for my master’s degree I took a course in organizational development. I learned that any group that denies active discussion of problem areas is doomed to die. Organizations must be dynamic and disagreements that are treated seriously and with interest in all points of view are the ones that succeed. It is critical that we encourage the varied voices of our citizenry to be heard rather than silenced simply because we feel uncomfortable with confrontation.

I have always had respect for the office of the President of the United States but I do not believe that my loyalty has to be so complete that I should never point out things  that I find to be troublesome. I have never been that circumspect with any other president so I don’t think that I need to be so with our present chief executive. According to the Constitution he is supposed to be working for the country as a whole and not just his loyal group of believers. His every effort should be aimed at bringing the disparate citizenry together, not driving them apart. If I critique him for perceived wrongs it is only because I love America and it is my unalienable right to do so.

We have much work to do. The virus must still be acknowledged. The Black citizens among us must be heard in their attempts to tell us what life in this country is like for them. Taking a stand to see them and understand them is not un-American, but the exact opposite if we are to believe in the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence. We cannot fall back on soundbites to forgive our inaction on this just cause nor can we be so enabling of a struggling president that we drown out or ignore the voices that are crying to be heard. The American revolution continues as it should. At this moment we must decide if it includes everyone longing to be free. When we say that we love this country we have to remember that love is an action verb. If we don’t continually do this to make certain that everyone is included then our love becomes only a word.

You Never Know What You May Find

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

bumpy road

June 1, 2020

To my incredible children, grandchildren, students, nieces, nephews and young people who are like family,

I wrote a letter to you when we first began our stay at home orders here in the United States. At that time most of the Covid-19 cases were occurring in Washington State, California and New Jersey. Here in my hometown of Houston, Texas there were no more than a couple dozen folks who had tested positive for the disease so it was a bit difficult to believe that our area would get hit very hard with the virus. While we were locked away in our homes we watched as the illness penetrated almost every corner of the world in one way or another. The images of empty streets in London, Paris, Rome, and New York City were a haunting backdrop to the rising numbers of sick and dying. Now as I convey my thoughts to you the United States there have been 100,000 deaths even as we begin the process of reopening our cities and towns. At the same time the tragic murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a police officer in Minnesota has led to an outpouring of grief and rage not just in our own country but across the world. 

So much has changed in such a short amount of time. The world as we expected it to be feels very different. People who able to do so are still working at home and students are finishing the school year from their bedrooms. The proms and graduations and track meets and school competitions were mostly eliminated from the end of the year calendar. Some of you took your Advanced Placement tests online without the usual review sessions from your teachers. Being part of this historical event has been tough and the coming times feel almost as uncertain as the last several weeks have been. Who knows what all of us will face as we begin to rebuild the world again? Now with the added difficulties of the protesting and the unfortunate destruction that has sometimes come with it, we are all asking ourselves what we might have done to prevent the suffering.

I have watched all of you working hard to comply with the directives designed to flatten the curve of contagion and protect the vulnerable in our midst. I have heard your impassioned pleas for justice and equality and the recognition of Black Lives. I’ve witnessed you continuing your studies and preparing for a future whose form is evolving even as I type these words. We simply don’t know what the next weeks and months will be like for anyone and yet all of you are maintaining your optimism and your resolve. Regardless of what the world is going to be like as we move forward I sense that each of you will be ready.

I’ve had conversations with some of you regarding your concerns about the environment, the cost of attending college, the inequities of this world. I know that you are thinking well beyond your own needs and you have proved your mettle in this difficult time. With little or no guidance you have worked as hard as you would have if there had been directives and deadlines. Nothing has stopped you and that is the mark of greatness. I have also been exceedingly proud of your compassion and willingness to speak out for those whose lives are being turned upside down.

I recently heard a woman speaking about the effect of Covid 19 on the psychological health of the nation’s youth.  With a smile on her face she insisted that those of you who are young possess an inordinate amount of grit, the quality of maintaining determination even when life is challenging. She assured her audience that true grit will propel people like you forward regardless of what kind of changes are wrought by this pandemic. She pointed out that some of the greatest discoveries and positive developments were born in tough times. Isaac Newton invented Calculus when he was sent home from the university during an outbreak of plague in the 1600s. That same terrible time resulted in sanitation improvements and new medicines. She believes that it will be the young men and women of the world who will define the problems that the pandemic has exposed and then invent new ways of enhancing the world. You are the explorers, entrepreneurs, creators and leaders of the future.

I know that you have faced so many disappointments and the possibility of even more as the virus and the unrest dictate how we will return to a new kind of normal. I really hope that the older generation will listen to and consider your ideas. You are dreamers and your thoughts have the potential to fuel a worldwide renaissance. You have seen the possibilities and now it is time to begin to bring them to fruition.

You still have dues to pay and hoops through which you must jump but you are quickly earning your wings and respect for your hard work and patience. The sacrifices you are making now and  the challenges you will most certainly face in the coming times will make you strong as long as you refuse to allow them to defeat you. You are creative and flexible. Use those natural tendencies to keep your optimism flourishing. Think beyond the confines of the way things have always been. Continue to be curious and unafraid to notice problems and address them.

I smile when I think of you and my chest puffs up with pride. Learn from this experience but do not allow it to pull you down. Be ready to teach some tricks to old dogs like me. Be open to unexpected opportunities and be willing to take a side trip down a bumpy road. You never know what you may find.  

Yours,

Mama, Gammy, Aunt Sharron, Mama B. 

Fulfilling the Promise of Democracy

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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I suspect that we are all on edge these days. With Covid-19 it’s been a tough several weeks and we have so little sense that things will return to normal any time soon. I’ve experienced moments of feeling strong and unstoppable, and times when I felt defeated by all of the illness and death. Mostly I have found myself all too often feeling disappointed in some of the negative attitudes I have witnessed. I’ve tried to concentrate on the mostly good and wonderful things that I have observed but sometimes late at night I have been ground down by a sense of disappointment that anyone would be ugly during such a time as this. I have often shed tears not because of any inconvenience to me but because of the extent to which this virus has caused suffering in the world.

It was within this context that I watched a video of the killing of George Floyd last week. I saw the heartless police officer with his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck and I could only think the cop appeared to almost take delight in humiliating and harming Mr. Floyd. I felt a flurry of intensely negative emotions that raced from sorrow to anger. When protestors hit the streets in a state of rage I would normally have wanted to instantly chastise them for being so destructive. I am a peaceful person who has always followed the rules. I like order in my life but somehow I found myself understanding how they had reached the end of their patience with a system that has over and over again treated them and their ancestors without human respect. It was as though I too had run out of excuses for racist behavior.

In the days following I slept very little and when I did I kept having vivid dreams of my mother. In them I was desperately attempting to get close to her so that I might be comforted. She would look at me, smile invitingly but somehow there was a barrier between the two of us as though she was reminding me that she had already taught me what I needed to know. I thought of her and my children, grandchildren and former students day and night. I prayed for peace and also some kind of revelation that might help us all. I found it in remembering advice that my mother had given me at the very beginnings of my long career in education.

When I complained to my mama that my students were behind in their learning, often unwilling to do simple homework assignments and sometimes too rowdy for me to convey my lessons her reply was that I needed to figure out what I was doing wrong, not keep focusing on what I thought they were doing wrong. As I pushed back on her insistence that I needed to change she explained that it sounded to her as though my pupils were dealing with difficulties far more pressing to them than completing math practice each evening. She urged me to find out who they were, what bothered them, what excited them. She said that when I demonstrated compassion and a genuine desire to learn about them we would together begin a dialogue that would lead to everyone becoming better. I reluctantly followed her advice because I was desperate to make a difference in their lives. I soon realized that the art of teaching had to be human first.

As I have watched the looting and destruction in our country in the past many days I have been saddened and disturbed because I feel that it may only lead to more misunderstanding of the message I believe most of the protestors are earnestly attempting to convey. I  have worried that the just causes of our forty two million African American citizens are being highjacked by an element that does not truly represent them. I saw many of my white friends becoming increasingly disturbed and I heard the president invoking a position of force to quell the disturbances. I feared that the bad behaviors of the few in this historic moment would become yet another excuse for shutting down the voices of the peaceful  many just.

I thought of the beginnings of my country, a land that I do love, but a nation with ideals that have always been imperfect in their distribution. I know that members of my paternal grandmother’s family where here in the colonies very early on, and some of them chose to fight when the revolution began. Like so many I have tended to romanticize that epic chapter in history but over time I have learned that it was not quite as glorious in every instance as I would like to imagine. Wars are rarely pretty. People die in them. Property is destroyed in them. So too was our American Revolution a horrible time when the colonists must have been terribly divided and hoping to make the violence stop so that they might go back the their normal. While it was a glorious cause it exacted a terrible price for those who endured it.

As long as I live I will never ever understand how anyone could have believed that it was okay to capture, enslave and sell human beings. I’d like to mark it off as just a time when people didn’t know better but I have read too many accounts of brave souls advocating for the abolition of slavery from its very beginnings. Not only did the practice grow like a cancer in the colonies but it was eventually enshrined in the Constitution of the new country. There were a sufficient number of arguments over whether or not slavery should have been allowed for me to realize that we built our first hundred years of existence on a dastardly compromise. We allowed human beings to be bought and sold like livestock and did not even count them as full persons in the prescriptive phrases of the Constitution. Today’s problems were born in that horrific mistake. 

I have spent enough time researching slavery to know about the brutal conditions in which the people lived. The humiliations to which they were subjected were unconscionable and even though I have not yet found any evidence that my ancestors owned slaves I find myself wondering if my relations simply ignored the practice so as not to cause trouble. Somehow it would comfort me to think that maybe one among them was brave enough to speak out against the horror of the practice. 

When Abraham Lincoln finally freed the slaves it took another hundred years to pass legislation that allowed our black brothers and sisters to live among us rather than in segregated neighborhoods. It was not until I was in my teens that they were even allowed to eat in our restaurants, stay in our hotels, used our public facilities, enjoy the same opportunities of education and work that were the taken for granted privileges of my family. Even then there were still Americans who viewed African Americans as inferior beings. Blacks are all too often stereotyped with labels that they do not deserve and try as they may to be part of the American dream even the most successful among them, including the man who became President of the United States, continued to suffer the indignities of racism.

I suppose that there is a breaking point that occurs when an entire group is being abused. There is a moment when one has to say, “Enough!  No More!” The death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer brought the almost two hundred fifty years of mistreatment boiling to the surface for Blacks in America who are tired of worrying about their safety and the safety of their children. They can no longer simply sit back and accept the tragedies that continue to stalk them no matter how hard they try. Like the Sons of Liberty of old they have cried out against the tyranny that they and their forebears have endured. This time they will be heard just as the patriots of old made their dissatisfaction of the status quo known to the king.

There are those who do not understand the frustration that has led to an eruption of destruction in Minnesota and other parts of the country and yet I suspect that it is something that our Founding Fathers would recognize. Their forays against the British merchants, governors and soldiers were often violent. First person accounts describe how angry colonists would vandalize and loot businesses and then sell the goods that they stole to support their uprisings. When the revolution officially began with gunshots in Concord only about forty percent of the people in what would eventually become the United States supported the philosophies and efforts of the patriots. Many loyalists were harassed and even run out of their homes by the rowdy revolutionaries.

Some of my husband’s kin chose to leave the country for the duration of the battle for independence rather than endure the chaos. Even back then people were quite divided about how to deal with the growing numbers of illegal acts targeting the king and his army. It was a violent and often bloody time that might make most of us uncomfortable if we were to see exactly how things were. Nonetheless the white colonists ultimately gained from the sacrifices that the patriots made but the Blacks did not. They were still in bondage even after our country won its freedom from the British and to this very day they suffer the indignities of discrimination.

We like to think of our nation as one where there is opportunity and freedom and justice for everyone. We have made progress in the almost two hundred fifty years since our country was formed but it must surely be apparent to all good men and women that we are not yet there. It is a struggle that continues to this very day. As we attempt to rid ourselves of the virus of Covid-19 we must be just as diligent in eradicating the virus of prejudice that should have been insisted upon from our country’s beginnings.  The United States of America will not heal and will not be as great as it should be until we break the chains of racism that have tainted all that we were supposed to believe about equality. Until we truly demonstrate our belief that all men and women are created equal with the same rights for all people all of the time we will not have fulfilled the promise of democracy. We will not accomplish this with armies and shows of force but with indications that we are ready to finally listen.