I enjoyed the movie Gone with the Wind (1939) starring Clarke Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Hattie McDaniel because I like movies that are historical, showing how people lived back then–the housing, costumes, songs, etc. But I always thought that a four-hour movie was too long. Perhaps the movie has already been shown in parts like a mini-series. [Exception: The Justice League: The Snyder Cut 2021]
As a Black woman, I say things have gone too far when we are trying to ban or get rid of everything historical. I agree that no confederate flags should be flying over any municipal or federal buildings anywhere in the U.S. However, you can’t study history without including every ethnicity and ideology. This is what makes up our world history. [Today, there are Congresspersons who don’t want Critical Race Theory taught in schools at any level. According to Wikipedia, CRT is a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement that began in the United States in the post-civil rights era, as 1960s landmark civil rights laws were being eroded and schools were being re-segregated.]
I don’t have a problem with White people showing pride for their own history on their personal belongings. Remember, the Dukes of Hazzard–a popular tv show–had their General Lee car. And, remember, the statues were dedicated during a different era, but they are still part of American history.
[In the movie, Places in the Heart, the white hooded store owners tried to discourage a widow (Sally Field) from keeping her farm and growing cotton. The Black farm hand (Danny Glover) was beaten and forced to leave. But one of the store owners’ relatives, a blind man (John Malkovich) was also helping her out because his relative coaxed her into hiring him, recognized all the voices of the hooded men and shamed them into letting her alone. I’m sure there were people in power over the store owners who directed them to threaten the widow.]
Since the statues are a part of American history, museums are the places for the statues, etc. although dedicated to slavery and prejudice. They should all be moved/given to the Smithsonian system of museums. [I suspect that U.S. President No. 45 missed the whole point of Black and White protesters being able to protest the statues without getting shot or bludgeoned in 2020.]
Like I saw engraved on a monument to the Jewish holocaust, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana, 20th century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism.
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana
{I posted most of the above article on 9/4/17 to http://www.chicagonow.com/friendly-curmudgeon/2017/09/gone-with-the-wind-banned-in-memphis-actually-indicts-the-confederacy/
[bracketed information is new]
Written by Rosa L. Griffin
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