Dear Ms. Lunelle,
On Sunday evening, January 15, 2023, my babies would ask me if I planned on marching in the Martin Luther King Peace March in downtown Asheville. My reply was “no, I will not be celebrating the Honorable General Robert E. Lee's birthday in a Report.”
The next question would be “who was my favorite Civil Rights Leader?”
Without hesitation, I would answer that I had at least six: "The Honorables General Robert E. Lee, Andrew Young, Matthew Bacoate, Virgil Smith, Ms. Lunelle McCallister, and Kirk D. Lyons. And of those six, only General Lee would garner further inquiry.
Michael said “Mr. HK, we read where you wrote that Senator Elizabeth Warren had ordered all vestiges and signage of General Lee removed from the Historic Military Campus of West Point. My question is how and why did a man who led the armed forces of the South against the Unión be garnered so many accolades and honors that were bestowed upon General Lee at West Point?”
My reply:
“General Robert E. Lee was no ordinary man. He was a man who stood above the rest of us humans in integrity, closeness to God, and love for his fellow man. And not to forget, he was considered "The Father of Reconciliation between the North and South. Among men noble in his quiet simple dignity displaying neither bitterness nor regret over the irrevocable past. Booker T. Washington wrote in 1908: ‘The first White people in America, certainly the first in the South to exhibit their interest in the reaching of the Negro and seeing his soul through the medium of the Sunday school were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.’
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