Lots of bad news all over these days, but I did get a laugh out of this one.
The Associated Press had to issue a correction last month after a story suggested that legendary 20th Century musician James Brown, and not fiery abolitionist John Brown, led a raid on Harpers Ferry just before the Civil War.
I’m not sure that America was ready for James Brown in 1859, or even 1959, but he’d still have been better received than John Brown.
The level of historical learning in this country does seem to be abysmal and getting worse.
***
Check out the Siege of Petersburg Online for daily posts on battle accounts in newspaper articles, diary entries, letters and more!What are your Top 10 Gettysburg Books? See what a panel of bloggers said recently.
Want to read some interesting Civil War content from amateurs and pros alike? Check out the Top 10 Civil War Blogs and Top 10 Civil War Blogs: 11-20.
@CivilWarBlog
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
people today are woefully ignorant about history, which has been very evident in the Confederate monuments debacle, or anyone else even remotely connected to that peculiar institution of slavery. History cannot be sanitized or whitewashed to suit everybody’s whims; it happened and it’s part of us, GOOD AND BAD. Let’s learn from the mistakes instead and carry on in TODAY’S world. Our history shows how this country was born, how it progressed, how it was almost lost and then sustained—-we need all these pieces of the puzzle that now make up this country today, in all its glory. I am thoroughly disgusted with the total lack of knowledge people have regarding THEIR country, their history.