OXFORD — The world is filled with monuments and markers commemorating and celebrating human triumphs.
Likewise, every human failing, large or small, leaves a landmark, too.
Dealy Plaza in Dallas. The balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. An empty pedestal near the Penn State football stadium. A shopping center cinema in suburban Denver.
After a milk truck driver murdered five Amish schoolgirls before shooting himself in rural Pennsylvania six years ago, the white frame building where the children were ambushed became a landmark.
But not for long.
Immediately after the girls were buried, the Amish removed everything — everything — from the scene of the carnage. The area was relandscaped. A new school was built elsewhere.
These horse-and-buggy believers adhere strictly to the scriptural admonition to forgive. Immediately after the murderous spree, many were surprised to hear community members say they bore no ill thoughts about the shooter. People were more surprised that the mourning Amish families called on his widow to comfort her.
They forgave, but removal of the schoolhouse was not intended to mean they’d forget their daughters. Removing all signs of the school was merely intended to facilitate their privacy, to dissuade tourists and gawkers who wanted to see where “it” happened.
Mississippi has its share of noble and less-than-noble landmarks.
Discussions never cease over whether to keep or remove reminders of bad things to frustrate gawkers, as with the Amish, but to “move on”as well.
One viewpoint is that having a marker at the rural Delta store where in 1955 Emmett Till wolf-whistled at a white woman causes us to wallow in the past. This viewpoint holds that we should live in the here and now, not be reminded that the Chicago teen’s mangled body was later pulled from the Tallahatchie River — or that no one was ever held responsible.
The competing viewpoint is to preserve. For years, governors and lawmakers dithered over a civil rights museum in Mississippi. The idea is still a notion but may come to fruition with a $20 million allocation from the 2011 Legislature. The museum’s mission will be to tell the story of race-based oppression and those who worked to end official segregation.
Those who oppose preservation of “negative” landmarks are not all in denial. They honestly don’t see the purpose.
Perhaps the best answer to their dilemma can be found in the word “reconciliation.”
People who are able to reconcile — and it’s not a quick or easy thing — don’t fully forgive and they certainly don’t forget. They choose, however, to accept facts. They elect to frame history in context. It is then that they are able to move on, form grudge-free opinions and relationships.
Examples can be found on the campus of the University of Mississippi. Within a few yards of the big, white doors James Meredith entered to desegregate the university 50 years ago is a statue of Meredith, erected in admiration. Not too far away from Meredith is a marker admiring the University Greys, school boys who left the university to fight in the War Between the States, also erected in admiration.
This could only work in an atmosphere of reconciliation, where the past is accepted for what it is and there’s a continuing commitment to respect it, learn from it and let all that happened, good and bad, guide the present.
Up at Penn State, the statute of Joe Paterno, hailed as one of college football’s great coaches, has been removed because he was complicit, investigations show, in covering up sexual abuse of children.
It was their decision, but an argument could be made it was the wrong decision. “Forget it.” “Move on.” Those are understandable reactions.
The truth, however, is that we can learn as much from what we got wrong, perhaps more, than what we got right.
Reconciliation is certainly not easier than forgiving and forgetting. Eventually, though, it might keep us from making the same mistakes over and over again.
• Charlie Mitchell is assistant dean at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism. Contact him at cmitchell43@yahoo.com.
