I was disappointed to see that Memphis has renamed three parks that honored the South in the Civil War. According to the New York Times, the parks were named Confederate Park, Jefferson Davis Park, and Nathan Bedford Forrest Park. They are now Memphis Park, Mississippi River Park, and Health Sciences Park.
Almost 100 years ago, Martha Mitchell said the old South was "Gone with the Wind." More and more of it is disappearing. I guess there are not many "old families" left in Memphis who remember the old South fondly. Only the Ku Klux Klan came out to mourn the loss of the Confederate names, which is not a very good character reference for them. So history moves on. If the victors write the history, then the Yankees have finally gotten their due, or the most recent victors have been in the Civil Rights struggle, and they are now erasing the old Confederate history.
America is changing, which may be good for America, but it's not necessarily good for me. I worry that along with America's disparaging the old Confederates, it is also disparaging many of our founding fathers -- Jefferson, Washington, Madison -- and even some Yankees who went along with the compromise to allow slavery to continue when the US was created.
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