Failing to teach history

It troubles me that so many state legislatures have passed laws to restrict public school teachers from teaching our bad actions in history under the premise it is bothersome. Slavery of African-Americans and its persecuting brother the Jim Crow era did happen. Genocide of Native Americans and stealing their land did happen. Firing gays and lesbians who worked in government jobs under the Lavender Scare did happen. Blackballing so-called Communists under the McCarthy witch hunts did happen. And, we did detain Japanese Americans in camps.

We may not have had a Holocaust in the US where 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but Jews did get persecuted here, too. We must know these lessons. If we fail to learn history, we are destined to repeat it. And, that concerns me.

So, take a trip to the well-done Greensboro Civil Rights Museum at the site of the Greensboro Four sit in or another similar museum close by to your area. Or, listen to the song "Strange Fruit" sadly sung by the great Billie Holiday, which was so profoundly disturbing about the lynching of African-Americans, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tried to ban it from being played.

Our country's history is filled with imperfect leaders who sometimes failed to live up to our ideals. We should know the what, when and why these things were allowed to happen and avoid them in the future.