So now it's Confederate Boulevard in Little Rock that's been stood up in the colonel's office and marched down to the stockade. The unfortunate grunt's crime? Having an improper name. At least improper for these oh-so-delicate times.
We can imagine the more frail types as they drive by the street and see the forbidden label. "Oh," they'll gasp as they dab their kerchiefs on their foreheads. Poor, fragile creatures.
Word has it that another application has been turned over to the city of Little Rock requesting that Confederate Boulevard be named something else. Lest it cause fainting spells and fender-benders. The papers say, at the earliest, the matter could go before the city's planning commission at the end of September. Here's hoping folks find more important things to argue about before then. Lord knows there are more important problems facing the city.
City policy requires that at least 50 percent of residents who would be affected by such a change sign a petition. There are 30 addresses along Confederate Boulevard. (Presumably not all are occupied.) The latest dispatches say only nine verifiable signatures have been gathered. And some businesses on Confederate oppose a name change because, among other reasons, they'd have to change business cards, signs and account stationery.
This isn't some stereotypical Colonel Sanders mascot waving a rebel flag at football games on Friday nights. (You might note that one such mascot was replaced in Fort Smith just last month after a unanimous vote of the people's representatives on the local school board.) This also isn't a battle flag of another government taken down from a public building after a mass shooting.
This time it's the name of a street, which got the name because an old Confederate veterans' home was once there.
Is the very word Confederate verboten these days? Should we go through the history textbooks and white-out all the references to it? Will folks at the coming debate at the planning commission be too pure to use the name? Maybe they'll call it the C-word. Or "Con-dash-dash-dash-dash, etc."
One of the petitioners, who doesn't live in the area, says she's passionate about the name change because the current name represents hatred.
No, it represents the name of a Confederate veterans' home that was once there.
She also said the name represents racial bias.
No, it represents the name of a Confederate veterans' home that was once there.
Some who oppose the change say they want to keep the name because the name represents their heritage.
No, it represents the name of a Confederate veterans' home that was once there.
But the language police don't much care for history. It's too full of memories, lessons, color, character and teachable moments. The Civil War was full of 'em. And out of that war came thousands and thousands of Confederate veterans. And as they aged, they needed a place where they could be taken care of. As a president named Lincoln once said, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
If the history books are to be believed, Arkansas was a part of the Confederacy during the Late Unpleasantness. And once upon a time a veterans' home for soldiers stood along Confederate Boulevard.
Nothing will change that. No matter those who'd cover up the past, whitewash it, change street signs and settle for the flat, stale, and unremarkable. Call it a narrative-free history. Also, call it modern, all too modern--and unfortunate.
Editorial on 08/05/2015