Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Independence Day
Posted by: lain // Category: Good Questions, Historical Quagmires // 10:35 pm
Happy 4th of July (tomorrow)!
Team Wren’s Nest will not be showing up to work, thank goodness. In our stead, we’re giving you a post to ponder. I’ll make it quick, promise.
As noted in a recent Metroblogging Atlanta comment, Joel Chandler Harris was big on African-American education, suffrage, and equality. No doubt these were progressive ideas for the time.
Harris so strongly believed in the importance of African-American literacy and education that he commissioned paintings of black children learning to read and write. He placed the paintings above the mantle in his room, and surely they were some of the first things he saw every day.
Harris did not, however, support formal integration.
Today is the 99th anniversary of Joel Chandler Harris’ death. To that I say, three cheers for history! And the tough questions it raises. Where will your prejudices put you 99 years from now?
License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
4 Comments
Leave a Reply
day off? whassat
Happy 4th of July, Lain! And Wren’s Nest! And Gabe! Where are you Gabe?
Happy July 4th
[...] We tend not to dwell on this argument here at the Wren’s Nest, but I will point you to one earlier post, as well as a picture on our brochure– [...]