Must remember past

“Lest we forget” was a theme used on our recent Memorial Day as we remembered our war dead. “Let us not forget our history.”

“Lest we forget” would be a good theme for the recent Juneteenth celebration also. It celebrates the ending of slavery in Texas and the South on June 19th, 1865, in Galveston. We must never forget that slavery was the scourge of our country in its early years and the underlying cause of our brutal and disastrous Civil War. Today’s systemic racism stems from the same white supremacy that justified slavery.

“Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams famously said. Let us earnestly hope so. Many of our current political leaders would want us to forget the historical facts. This state and many others have actually passed laws banning the honest discussion of our history of slavery and racism. It is unconscionable and probably unconstitutional for the state to ban the teaching of factual history.

Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederacy, but it did not end slavery in the Northern states. It did not free any slaves in the five slave-holding states that had remained in the Union. Undoubtedly, it inspired three of those states to subsequently abolish slavery on their own, but slavery would remain legal in two of the states until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865.

History teaches us that the shame of slavery was a nationwide problem. We must remember the past lest we repeat it.

GEORGE BENJAMIN

Siloam Springs