I liked the article (honestly), but i think there is an important point to sharing a story. A “historical” story can be used as in one of two ways, to help us prevent history from repeating itself, or to incite history TO repeat itself. This is why I think people need to be careful.

The moral and message about what you found on Kennilworth Ave is a good one - and it’s worth sharing. This is the kind of story with a message that helps us remember where we came from.

The difference betweeen that and the way you approach the UWM situation is this - the way you share history might serve to undermine the progress that we’ve made over the past 17 years. Same thing for the Deaf community - we do need to remember our history so that we can be empowered, but we need to be careful how we use these memories. If we’re not…we undermine the entire process that led to changes in 1988 (and last year).

As far as quotes go, Mitch Album wrote “History doesn’t just repeat itself, it imposes its will. It pulls you down its drain.” Take that to mean what you will, but stories from our past can be powerfully motivating, or manipulatively inciteful. And THAT is why we had objections to not putting the situation at uwm in it’s proper context

“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left
to speak up
for me.”
Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

History is there for posterity, so that we may learn, become educated, and perhaps get a glimpse of what life is like loooking in from the outside, from a different perspective. I say “different” because I, as a deaf person, also have a spot looking in from the outside at times.

Education is one of the pathways to understanding what goes on around us.

Thanks for an interesting story about history and remembrance. I think I, too, would have been equally as stunned to see the water fountains as you and everyone else that day. I would have fingered the fountains and the inscriptions to confirm their reality to me. Although I’ve seen pictures of segregated water fountains, it’s actually a different experience to see for yourself. As painful as it is, we should always try to remember the past which is why I support saving relics of history like that and putting it aside for display for future generations.

But then again, I’m a historian by nature.

As for your comment about the world changing, I simply say that the world has moved on. The percentage of people that are happy with change in general decreases the older they get.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santayana

That is another way of saying that there is nothing new under the sun. That, by the way, is an old Roman saying.

Simply put, its to remind all of us that we should never forget and never allow it to happen again.

But they should be done sparingly in places of businesses because really, those kind of things belong in museums. The reason I say that is because we have to balance between constantly picking open a wound, preventing it from healing and remembering, learning about what happened so it never happens again.