150 years. Is that too long to remember? Get over it, some people would say, do say. Will they say that in Manhattan in 7 score years? If they do, how would the children of the children of the children of the people who were there be expected to respond? Buildings burned and people died and we are still struggling to understand why.
Wars and foot races start with a gun shot, but the participants have to be at the line for that blast to mean anything. Whatever brought them there, as wrong as it may have been, can bring them back. There is plenty of evidence to support the notion that the Civil War was our nation’s penance, paid in blood, for the moral failing of slavery and the lack of resolve to end it peacably.
When we remember that first shot, or the first impact of a jet, let’s also remember that not all things are fated. It’s not our inability to see injustice that allows it to continue, it’s our unwillingness to act against it. To be sure, however, justice does flow like a mighty river. We stand in the way to our own peril.