A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s Black community, the mayor said Friday.
Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains of C.L. Daniel from Georgia were identified by Intermountain Forensics, said Mayor G.T. Bynum and officials from the lab. He was in his 20s when he was killed.
“This is one family who gets to give a member of their family that they lost a proper burial, after not knowing where they were for over a century,” Bynum said.
Someone who cannot recognize the sins of their country doesn’t love their country. They just want to worship it.
President Truman, who was himself somewhat racist (though less than many contemporary southerners), received a report post-WW2 on the treatment of Black veterans. He reportedly said, “My God, I had no idea it was as terrible as that. We’ve got to do something.” And so he did. Came out swinging on civil rights. Truman was deeply, DEEPLY imperfect, but even he recognized that a common, basic standard of decency and humanity was being violated by the racist behavior of the nation.
When the racial conditions of a country shock a man who is willing to use the n-word in private and acquiesce to his wife’s desire to keep Jews out of the house, something is well and truly FUCKED.
Our history is great not because it is perfect. It is ugly. It is, oftentimes, evil. Our history is great because we can learn from the sins of the past, and learn from those who fought those sins even at the time.