One of many things I learned in working with the James Scott monument project is that some stories run so deep in families and communities that it is hard for an observer from the outside to understand their significance.
A reporter sent in from out of town might have noticed the amount of hugging in Columbia yesterday was somewhere above the national average. He or she might have noticed a lot of people chasing around the crowd because they felt it important to talk to particular people on this day. I don't know how an observant reporter could have missed the amount of emotion that was running just beneath the surface and periodically rising to the surface.
But I doubt that any news report will capture either the complexity and depth of the Scott story of 1923 or of the Columbia story in 2011. So I'm reduced to testifying, as they say. If you had been there, if you had really been there, you would have found the experiences extraordinary and moving.
I'm posting as a separate page this morning (you'll find it on the bar to the right of this blog) my own statement, read at the memorial service, about Hermann Almstedt's heroism on the night of the Scott lynching. I noticed this morning national press stories praising Professor Almstedt for going to Stewart Bridge in 1923 to defend a man he believed was innocent, which is a misstatement of the facts. The facts tell a deeper story and one that makes his actions that night even more significant.
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