Nothing can change what was. That's what Gabe wants to know. We struggle with a balancing act between remembering and forgetting in America too. Mississippi is the last state to fly the Confederate flag within its flag. The Sons of Confederate Veterans say it represents their history.
Blacks say it's a symbol of bigotry.
The flag is revered and reviled not because of what it is, but because of what it was. Yesterday voters in Mississippi were asked to decide whether to keep or replace the 1894 version of the flag. In Birmingham, Ala., Thomas Blanton Jr. is finally on trial for the murders of four children in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Officials in Mississippi have also reopened an investigation into the slayings of three civil rights workers shot to death in 1964. We need to remember the past in order to learn.