Kudos to Mr. Lyman.  It takes chutzpah to ask our legislators to consider his 2025 wish list after having called them soul-less barbarians for years.  Yet, legislators would agree wholeheartedly with his final wish, under his “DEI” label: for our teachers “to share the true history of the state, without any vague and mealy language intended to scare people from basic principles of truth and respect.”

Amen to that.  Mr. Lyman being a woke advocate, let’s take a snapshot of that history as it relates to Blacks, the largest class of victims in woke theology.  The 1960s and before was the era of invidious discrimination.  Blacks were like the Israelites in Egypt.  Merit didn’t count.  Black welders, for example, with decades of talent and families to feed, some fresh from two wars welding tanks and airplanes, had to watch less qualified white apprentices walking through factory gates throughout America, taking the jobs the Blacks desperately needed and could perform better.  

Then came Dr. Martin Luther King.  Their Moses, who led them from bondage.  Followed by brave white Alabamians like our legislators in the 1960s who (in several cases had to ignore death threats) changed Birmingham’s form of government to remove its racist Police Commissioner Bull Connor.  Since then, white-majority governments have passed all sorts of laws, spent trillions of dollars, and seen millions of white people help blacks all over, even here in Alabama.  Merit started counting and Blacks began flourishing in this Promised Land of ours–climbing ladders everywhere, heading Top Ten lists, from actors and athletes to scholars and entrepreneurs.  There’s been magic in that rise of Blacks, and in all fairness, those of us Baby Boomers who’ve served in the trenches to end employment discrimination and know what a Bull Connor Billy Club can do to a man’s skull and emotions, can feel that magic far better than younger generations like Mr. Lyman’s.   

But, then came wokeism, which has become the established faith in the legal and regulatory framework of the American political system, elite corporate culture and academia.  Central to its creed is CRT, which tells precious black children they’ll be fighting an uphill battle against a society controlled by white people who hate them.  CRT pollinated DEI, which tells those children that merit doesn’t count: without DEI’s brand of preferential treatment, they’ll be denied opportunities.  As a result, children become poisoned with hate and fear.  Thinking, don’t fight the system.  Forget studying hard to follow your dreams.  Many opt for rebellion and crime.    

So yes, we need true history.  To demonstrate that while our society has certainly not reached the ideal of being color-blind, we are light years better than yesteryear.  We’d have never elected a black president and vice president if we were white supremacists.  Our children need the confidence that came over with the Mayflower that, with hard work and ambition, the American dream is theirs.  So long as they don’t drink the poisoned Kool-aide of CRT and DEI.

Guy V. Martin Jr., Montgomery