Segregated WWI memorial divides S.C. city

Via Joe

GREENWOOD, S.C. — Along Main Street in a small South Carolina city, there is war memorial honoring fallen World War I and II soldiers, dividing them into two categories: "white" and "colored."

Welborn Adams, Greenwood's white Democratic-lean

ing mayor, believes the bronze plaques are relics of the South's scarred past and should be changed in the spirit of equality, replaced like the "colored" water fountains or back entrances to the movie theater that blacks were once forced to use.

Yet the mayor's attempt to put up new plaques was blocked by a state law that brought the Confederate flag down from the Statehouse dome in 2000. The law forbids altering historical monuments in any way without approval from legislators.

Historians, black and white, have reservations about replacing the plaques, saying they should serve as a reminder of the once-segregated U.S. military.

"Segregation was the accepted social order of that time," said Eric Williams, who spent 32 years as a historian with the U.S. Park Service. "If we alter the monument, we alter its historical integrity.

 

More @ Facebook