Palestine Herald-Press: EDITORIAL: Grieving the past and looking to the future
Jul. 29—Today is a terrible anniversary.
One hundred and eleven years ago African American residents of Slocum faced fear and chaos that ended with an untold number of lives lost and uprooted.
This event was even more agonizing than the tacitly approved norm at the time which often saw white groups exacting "justice" in the form of lynchings.
We are shining a light on the Slocum Massacre on this tragic anniversary.
We do it because as a newspaper charged with recording accurately the events of our time, this is a reminder of the gravity of that responsibility.
Original reports in The Palestine Daily Herald on the second day of the event claim 12 to 15 Black lives were lost, but the numbers and circumstances were still not fully understood—and are still trying to be grasped even now.
This is not an event of our time you might say. It is not and yet it is.
It is in the sense that it has barely been addressed and so many do not even know it happened.
There are those who have carried the story forward like Constance Hollie-Juwaid—a descendant of one of the Slocum families. Even the spelling of her name tells the story of a tragic past, the spelling changed by a family forever changed.
Upholding our duty as the local time stamp, not telling the story because we wish it had not happened would be irresponsible and inexcusable.
There are many tragic anniversaries, but like the loss of a loved one in a family or a war on a foreign front, we tell the stories to bring healing. We tell the stories to remember the people.
This is how we heal collectively.
This is how we learn.
This is how we grow.
We acknowledge the horror but in that acknowledgement we are not endorsing or celebrating, we are grieving.
This is an anniversary we are not celebrating, but we are honoring lives lost. There are people whose lives were taken and people whose lives were forever changed.
It is history and it is ugly, but it is true and should never be ignored.
