CNN: Univ. of Georgia to Alter Integration Mural

[Hissyspit]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/03/29/racist.mural.ap/index.html

Georgia school to alter integration mural

ATHENS, Georgia (AP) -- University of Georgia officials said Monday they would alter a wall-sized mural commemorating the school's integration because of complaints it contained a racial slur.

The mural features a photo of the former Charlayne Hunter, the first black woman admitted to the university, pushing her way through a mob in 1961, along with the highlighted quote of words shouted then: "Make way for the nigger." The mural was criticized by some, including members of the campus chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Hunter-Gault argued against removing the mural. In an opinion piece in the campus newspaper, she said she hoped students who raised the issue "will be part of a solution that will allow those words to stand as a reminder, however painful, that they are the heirs to a legacy of struggle, but also of victory over bigotry."

Officials said the mural would be revised to change the quote to smaller type and use it in context from Hunter-Gault's 1993 book, "In My Place," where she wrote: "As students call out Ni**er go home and a variety of other unoriginal taunts, I found myself more bemused than angry or upset."

[annabanana]

1. By all means.. Feel free to airbrush the past...

Tidy up all the unpleasant details of your ugly, nasty legacy. Why should generations yet to be born have to come face to face with the worm ridden hate encrusted truth.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it....

and if you airbrush out historical facts, it is far easier to instill "facts" based on lies-like that all welfare goes to blacks (remember Reagan's welfare queen?), that slaves were happy and content until the mean Yankees came and took them away from massa, etc, etc.

[xchrom]

3. this is how the u.s. has always treated it's history...

from native americans on -- we have always edited out the ugliest{and economically some of the most important} parts of our history.

what this represents for me -- is in the u.s. we use citizens to alter the truth of our history.
not the state.

citizens in the country will not be reminded of their past in real terms.
they would have to take responsibility then.

[rodeodance]

4. "airbrush the past"--good one

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. I know what you mean

I've always loved history, and in my senior year in high school, I was required to write an historical essay on something no one in my school had done before. I did a paper on Sojourner Truth-and could find a total of two books on her at the University of Illinois library. This was 1968, and Black History was basically ignored.

[K-W]

6. From The Onion: "History sighs, repeats itself." nt