I will be offensive to some modern people’s sensitivities. Their history is so bad that they spend their lives apologizing for their ancestors. My ancestors did some wrong things, but they were not maliciously motivated. I think better of them, and I think better of your ancestors, too.
Kate Smith sang some racist songs and may have been a racist. Singing to entertain her generation was all that happened by her initiative. She sang in the 1930s. She was a famous singer. We love the history we have come from and the lessons it brings.
If Kate Smith is to be treated as a moral criminal by the removal of her statues, what are you going to do with your grandparents’ photographs? Will you burn them? Please don’t. We genealogists hunger for records from the past. We don’t justify our behavior; we document their behavior.
We’re not overreacting, now. We are showing love for our neighbors and our history. History is unchangeable. We are changeable.
I see no good done by tearing down history. This is not the same as statues that glorify Confederate soldiers who fought to expand racism and lead subversive violence. Their record belongs in a museum, not either broadcast in public or destroyed.
