Twenty-one in 1951, fresh out of college with a major in Psychology, I spent eleven weeks in Europe with a National Student Association tour: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Holland and Belgium. We experienced for ourselves what had only been disturbing photographs in our local US papers. Broken men, buildings turned to rubble, shortages of things like water and paper, efforts at rebuilding. With a degree of understanding of the German language, thanks to a super high school teacher, I had thought it made sense to plan on buying a book by Freud in his original language. It would be fun to see how easily I could read it. That’s when I learned about removing people from one’s history. Freud had gone the way of book banning and burning, nowhere to be found. Not even a glimmer of recognition of his name, or anything buried deep in bins of books waiting to be filed. Just plain gone.
How could those lovely people I was meeting, admiring, and enjoying have let it all happen? The question has followed as a theme throughout my career and I’ve discovered that part of the answer is “slowly.” So, when I read that the names of people like Colin Powell and other black heroes had been removed from the list of those buried in Arlington cemetery, my senses were alerted. Already concerned about book banning in my own United States I was ready to jump on the bandwagon of concerned Americans. Before running with it, however, I checked with Snopes. I didn’t find a clear “No, it’s not true,” but rather a long and detailed account of the reported event, with a conclusion that the report wasn’t entirely true. I’m including the link here.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/21/colin-powell-arlington-cemetery/
Tomorrow I’ll tell a quick story about receiving a censored letter from my brother while I was traveling that summer.
olin Powell
monagustafsonaffinito 