The Times They Are A-Changin’

The last Sambo's restaurant in Santa Barbara, California has covered their sign and will be rebranding their establishment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sambo-s-which-once-had-1-100-restau...

I was surprised there was still one left as the chain collapsed in 1981.  We used to see them all the time when I was a kid driving down to Louisiana from New York or D.C. to visit my maternal grandparents.  I remember the children's stories too, and always thought Sambo represented empowerment as he was portrayed as cleverly using his wits to get out of trouble.  The imagery associated with the character was viewed as racist, and the restaurants closed.

The country is taking down all the vestiges of racism and white supremacy.  This week, Alexandria Virginia officials removed the Confederate Soldier statue with his back turned toward the North that had stood on Washington Street, the main thoroughfare thru town for over a century.  The statue that former Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgensen famously got a DUI for ploughing into with his van.  Who knows, maybe this will be the time when the Redskins finally change their name?

In Richmond, Virginia, all 5 statues of Confederate generals and statesmen on Monument Row are coming down.  Birmingham, Alabama's mayor preemptively removed a monument this week, saying they would rather deal with a lawsuit for acting without proper authorization than a riot caused by angry local citizens.   In Philadelphia, a statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo, who had a history of targeting people of color in his community, has been removed.   New Orleans removed it's Confederate statues last year.  Highways and city streets are being renamed.   Oddly, Charlottesville, Virginia has yet to remove the Robert E. Lee statue from the city park it was in that set off the protests that happened there and became a focal point of the systemic racism in our country.

I think it's good that all of these symbols are being removed from prominent locations where their display can cause pain and trauma.  I don't think destroying them is a good idea.  They should be placed in a properly curated museum setting, where there symbolism and context can be explained and shown why they are now historical artifacts of a repudiated past and no longer presented as praiseworthy.

Talking with my mom, the kindhearted Southern woman who raised me, this week, she told me how her mother had registered black voters in Monroe, Louisiana in the early '60s, a dangerous proposition for the time.  My sister told me about driving around to collect rents from tenants with our grandfather in the '60s in Monroe, and that he was fondly viewed by his black tenants because he would rent them properties where other white landlords wouldn't.  We were taught that racism was an evil, and all people deserve to be treated equally and with dignity.  
 

I told my mom that it will be odd to drive through Alexandria and not see the Confederate Soldier monument anymore,  but a whole lot less odd than it has been for the people who had to drive past it all these years and be painfully reminded that their ancestors were enslaved, and this legacy was being tacitly endorsed by a system that continues to oppress them.

Sambo's was a cute children's story, but it reflected a greater horror.  The owners of the restaurant are doing the right thing.  Enjoy your pancakes.