And for the South, of no group is that more true, and true over centuries, than for African Americans. It is a legacy which, no matter how far we have thankfully come by 2009, lives on and whose impact, practical and psychological, will continue for many years to come.
But there is another side to that history, an empowering story of human persistence and resilience. It is the story of how a long enslaved and then marginalized and even terrorized community found strength and about how ultimately its members, joined by growing numbers of the majority, obliterated legal and institutional racism.
It is that story that is celebrated in an expansive exhibit that opened this week at the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We Shall Not Be Moved: African Americans in the South, 18th Century to the Present" will continue through Feb. 5.
As Cliff Bellamy noted in a story in The Herald-Sun on Thursday, two nearby exhibit items highlighted the difference between the two stories, the story of subjugation and the story of resilience.
A 1942 sign from a Texas restaurant warned would-be customers: "NO dogs Negroes Mexicans." The other item was a 1968 button proclaiming, "Black is beautiful."
The contrast, archival consultant L. Teresa Church told Bellamy, was intentional "Black is Beautiful became a rallying cry that you could appreciate yourself even if other people don't," she said.
Those items also bracket years of ferment when the country was beginning to emerge from its long period of racial apartheid. It was a period marked by enormous courage and staggering danger to those, especially African Americans, pressing for change.
Those who fought that struggle and those who experienced it, black and white, are aging. A younger generation may be inclined to take for granted freedom and equality won only through wrenching sacrifice. Others may be inclined to dismiss the lingering effects of the long era of slavery and segregation as a past irrelevant to today.
For all those reasons, the Wilson exhibit is vitally important. The organizers are to be commended.
