AmericanPressTravelNews–May 25th, Commentary–By Bob Epstein, Publisher—-Memorial Day is coming up on Monday. We have too many horrible Memorial Days! No I won’t list them here. All smart and decent people older than far too many college age youth, increasingly being taught by some incredibly poor and foolish teachers- even those that call themselves “Professors” (liberal all and socialist leaning, heavily leaning) know what I mean, and have the list burned into their memories. Lest anyone think that all those that have come before and confronted life and death as soldiers for “the Good” not the evil, paid dearly in blood, limb, mental disarray for life, and unfortunately death as well. So, having just been to a children’s science museum in Oak Ridge (home of the nuclear bomb development) TN, and noticing a sculpture created out of steel taken from the Twin Towers horrors, I felt everyone always needs to remember and say never again!
Barb stands at the Memorial Monument and we asked a few of the children that entered the museum what it was, and none of them bothered to read the plaque. They just wanted to play games at the museum. So I asked their teachers why did they dismiss the opportunity to teach their charges about this. Answer: “not very appropriate for their students” by most of them. I should have been stunned. But, I was not! We all live in a nation that has had a dollar become close to worthless, and an educational system amongst many systems, that have become devalued to disastrous depths.
1950s Period Classroom
The story begins with the community’s initial constructive approach to the historic event…then the arrival of outsiders with anti-integration propaganda… a week of growing violence… the formation of a home guard… the arrival of the national guard and martial law. Unlike the stories in Arkansas and Alabama, both the city and state governments supported the “Law of the Land”, represented by the desegregation ruling. The city’s white religious and economic leaders, such as the Rev. Paul Turner, a local Baptist minister, allied with the black students and their families, offering them protection in integration and challenging those they led to do the same in the face of rising violence. At one point, Rev. Turner was physically attacked for his heroic stand. The African-American community on Foley Hill became a rallying point for Clinton in the struggle for equal rights for all citizens. In retaliation, white supremacists bombed the high school in 1958, destroying the building, but not halting the progress of equality. Instead, the Anderson County community, citizens and students from Clinton and Oak Ridge refurbished an abandoned elementary school in Oak Ridge- and Clinton High School was back in session in one week, still integrated.
Interactive screens will allow you to see the Clinton 12 and others in person and hear their recollections and reflections from interviews by Keith McDaniel, producer of the award winning Clinton 12: A Documentary, which was narrated by James Earl Jones.
