The Grapevine

Okay, I won’t quarrel with cause/effect/outcome. I will quote a wise southern woman who lived through it all :

“Non-violence does violence to us all.”

It is my opinion that Americans who by birthright were entitled to every right and responsibility of citizenship should never have had to survive years of that particular iteration of racist domestic terrorism to be able to exercise those rights. Many did not survive, black and white, and I, for one, will never forgive our government for a single death or attack from the first sit-in forward.

…in 1863, the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first black regiment from the North, paraded in full dress uniform on Boston Common. Crowds cheered as 1,007 black soldiers and 37 white officers passed in review. After ceremonies at the State House, they marched to Battery Wharf and boarded steamships for South Carolina. Just seven weeks later, 74 men and their commanding officer, Robert Gould Shaw, were killed in an heroic assault on Fort Wagner. On Memorial Day 1897, 60 veterans of the 54^th were among hundreds of people who gathered on the Common for the unveiling of Augustus Saint-Gaundens’ Memorial to Robert Shaw and the 54^th Massachusetts Regiment. This statue remains one of the great works of public art in the country.