Hiding our History

A recent editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that instead of just removing statues of people like former Mayor Frank Rizzo, we should place these statues in public gardens and museums, along with signs explaining why they were taken down from their former sites. That sounds like a real good idea to me.

The writer explained that placing statues of now-unpopular leaders in storage puts these people out of site, but more important, out of mind, which I believe is not good. You don’t want to forget whatever it is that made Frank Rizzo, or Christopher Columbus, such an object of scorn among many people today. You want to remember what made them famous – and sometimes, infamous.

I may not always agree with removing certain famous leaders from public view. Perhaps that means I have to learn more about their history than I currently know. But I do know that history never does you any good if you box it up and store it someplace where we can all conveniently forget it.

Columbus did his famous (and sometimes dirty) deeds 500 years ago. And we’re still talking about him. Whoever said that history is “over.” It’s not. And it never will be.