Re: [sixties-l] Re: sixties-l-Vietnam War Memorials

From: Karl Slinkard (kslinkar@library.berkeley.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 21 2000 - 00:44:51 CUT

  • Next message: Karl Slinkard: "Re: [sixties-l] Vietnam War Memorials(Karl)"

    Mr. Mandel appears to see the US Civil War in as starkly moralistic terms
    as he does the Viet Nam War. Without denying in any part the horror of
    black slavery, I submit that the Civil War contained other elements as
    well. For instance, the Northeastern capitalists managed to split the
    slave owning South from the free soil midwest so that it could colonize and
    exploit both. Most of my immediate relatives came from Tennessee. I have
    found their graves on both sides. I would remind us all, that history is
    written by the winners, and real life is a bit more complex than simple
    good and evil.
    Karl Slinkard, ex-hippie, ex-soldier, ex-good ole boy, ex-freedom marcher,
    ex-drunk, ex-doper, etc.
    kslinkar@library.berkeley.edu

    At 01:19 PM 6/17/00 PST, you wrote:
    >On memorials to the Confederate dead, Langston Hughes wrote me in
    >1951 with kind words about my "stirring poem" opening with a
    >stanza on that subject:
    > " The South alone,' my host had said
    > "remembers its dishonorable dead."
    > His arm swept round the ordered Square
    > to mock the statues frozen there
    > of generals whose armies bled
    > that white might eat the black man's bread.
    >Hughes card and the poem are reproduced in my Saying No To Power,
    >p. 314.
    > William Mandel



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