African American

It has caused upheaval in my family's memories of the 1950's, when I and my cousins spent every summer at our grandmother and great-grandmother's farm outside of Colfax. I remember going to Woolworth's to buy paddle balls on rubber bands. I remember swimming in the creek. I remember playing in the woods. I remember shelling peas on the porch. I remember watching my grandmother shoot armadillos in the garden at night. I remember nighttime singing at Bethel Baptist Church.

I do not remember hearing about this tragedy, ever. I just talked to my 94-year-old mother, and she doesn't remember ever hearing about it. (She didn't grow up there, it was her husband's family home.)

Perhaps white privilege extends to selective forgetting of unpleasant things. We children were unaware of these memories that surely must have haunted our old people. What a shameful legacy.