A Confederate Yankee
By William D. Mayers
(Town of Sullivan, NY) On Oct. 24 of last year, the sixth annual Major Jonathan Letterman Medical Excellence Awards were presented. The individual award went to Dr. Kenneth Kizer of the Institute for Population Health Improvement at UC Davis Health System.
The group award went to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command’s Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (wow – try saying that three times fast).
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine established this award to recognize an organization and an individual contributing to the advancement of medical processes and improved patient outcomes and quality of life. It celebrates Major Letterman’s visionary work as Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac during America’s Civil War.
When Letterman took over that post, the Army’s system for caring for sick and injured soldiers was profoundly flawed. His contribution was not that of the stereotypical surgeon with sleeves rolled up, tending to individuals wounded on the battlefield; rather he created and implemented an infrastructure which allowed all the surgeons of the Army of the Potomac to work more effectively, and for the first time, as a team. His plan saved countless lives and, to this day, serves as the foundation not only of battlefield medicine but also civilian emergency medical care today.
Let me say that again a bit more simply: the Letterman Plan, developed 150 years ago, is saving lives today in areas as remote as Afghanistan and as near as New York following Super-storm Sandy. History guided this creative genius and his creativity guides emergency medical care today, making it almost a no-brainer that the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, from whence the material in this article originated, should head this project and choose the recipients of this award.
It’s difficult for many people today, and not just students in our public schools, to discern just what “all that history stuff” has to do with our lives today. Hopefully, this will make that understanding just a bit easier. It hits real close to home when we realize our troops in harms’ way this very day benefit from the thinking and actions of someone that long ago.
Race: Let’s tell The Rest of the Story
The beginning of the story is the dust-up over Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson’s homophobic and racist rants, coming coincidentally on the tails of a local columnist’s rant over race. Both men cleverly omit a great deal of reality, and if one were not aware of the rest of the story, one might be swayed by these gentleman.
But let’s look at reality for a moment,
Robertson claims “never, with my eyes” to have witnessed abuse of black folks, having at times worked alongside them. Well, that might be true, but one has to ask why? And the answer is a simple as it is brutal: when black folks in the Jim Crow south “got uppity,” men with white skin would don white hooded robes and come burn crosses on lawns, seize black folks and administer serious physical chastisement that all too often degenerated into a lynching.
Ol Phil and I are of an age that we two grew up in the Jim Crow era. I can still remember, though it was more than 50 years ago, a crowd of my “homeboys” gathered around a corpse hanging by the neck, dismembered body parts on the ground underneath. Homeboys that looked just like Phil. Who sounded just like the racist rant in the recent issue of Madison County Courier.
Homeboys putting that “darkie” in his “proper place.” Plastered on the front page of our local newspaper, that was not an uncommon occurrence.
What could lead ordinary citizens to such absolute barbarism? These were, indeed, ordinary citizens, and it could be something as simple as complaining about neighborhood boys sexually abusing little black girls on the way home from school.
Or bemoaning having had one’s dog hacked with an axe.
Or failing to step into the gutter when approached on the sidewalk by white persons.
Or being seen on the western side of Second Street in my home town rather than confining oneself to the east side of the railroad tracks that paralleled Second Street – that part of our city called “n-town” – after 5 p.m.
No, Mr. Robertson, you likely never did hear references to racially motivated abuse. You and I know what that would have gained the blacks who mentioned it. Blacks who had families whose safety and, indeed, whose very lives, depended on black folks knowing their place.
And do we really need to describe in fine detail the sexual attitudes of the local whites toward adolescent female blacks? I don’t think so.
No, Phil my man, we’re certainly not unaware of the plight of the black folks who grew up next to us, are we? They sang gospel songs on their way to hoe them farm fields alongside you, not because they had no serious challenges, but because singing or talking about anything else could at any time bring the wrath of the (white) gods down on their heads.
One would not be too far off the mark in supposing, given the above-mentioned recent racist rant in the Courier, that there are plenty of local folk whose attitudes mirror these. Let me address the author of that rant just briefly: Sir, how Christian of you…
As for the homophobic aspect of Phil’s intemperance: Mr. Robertson, you advance no worthy cause by ranting against those who are gay. You merely paint yourself as filled with hate and intolerance. Fortunately, such attitudes are dying out across this land: even the reddest of these 50 American states, Utah, has now been compelled to drop laws prohibiting gay marriage.
It will take another 20 years, but eventually the last of these 50 will also drop such prohibitions. Will that mean a vastly better country overnight? Of course not. But the way is clear, and there’ll be no going back.
Y’might’s well get used to it, Phil. There’s other, far more urgent issues that need your attention.
William D. “Bill” Mayers RT, RN, of Sullivan is a retired senior U.S. Army Corpsman. A certified healthcare professional since 1964, he holds two professional licenses, including that of Registered Professional Nurse licensed in New York, Alaska, Virginia and Louisiana. He has four children, two stepchildren, two grandchildren and is an avid analyst of current events.