Beyond its abuses of the Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole nations, my home of Georgia has made at least two fundamental historical errors. In 1749, HRM's Province of Georgia permitted slavery over Gen. James Oglethorpe's original intentions for the colony. In 1861, the State of Georgia illegally seceded from the United States of America to protect that institution's existence and expansion. The first error initiated one of the worst generational human rights' abuses in North America. The second lead to my people's defeat, ruination, and earned scorn from the other Several States. Generations passed before Georgia could even begin to recover, albeit incompletely and only in fits and starts.
Genuine solidarity between Georgians of different races still escapes many facets of daily life, be they schooling, health, religion, business, or family. Racial disparities in these institutions continue from slavery, Jim Crow, and white privilege's ugly legacies with little abatement in our new Gilded Age. Progress as it is is fragile, precious, and celebrated, perhaps too easily to the neglect of problems deemed intractable or even unworthy of mention. Still it exists, and as much as the universe's long arc frustrates us, its bend still moves us to inspiration to labor, to speak, to love.
That imagined future emboldens me, but the disasters of Georgia's history continue their haunting presence. When I see Cliven Bundy's armed insurrectionists rally - with impunity - around a man whose dangerous racial and political ideologies are intertwined - my fears of another secession, bloody war, and agonizing recovery from apocalypse come rushing back.
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