Today is Confederate Memorial Day. For anyone born below the Mason Dixon line before 1970, you can be happy because you are off tomorrow. You can be conflicted, because you don't want to celebrate what seems to be a dead allegiance, but proud of your background. You can be upset that the state of Georgia still holds on to something which should have died a long time ago. Or you can be completely ignorant of the existance of a holiday which was begun a long time ago when the white citizens of the Deep South tried to wage a philosophical battle with their northern brothers and sisters by coming up with an alternative Memorial Day from the end of May. What it means to me is basically when we moved to Huntsville, back in 1964, when the police in Birmingham were battling the African-American citizens of that city with firehoses and dogs, and segregation still lived in most schools around the old Confederacy, I got a day off from my segregated school to sleep late and ride my bicycle around the neighborhood and enjoy the end of April.
Then back to school. It is hard to hold on to the past and grow into the future.
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