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The Fiftieth: Dallas Did Not Assassinate JFK
I was born in 1982, and I think, technically, that makes me a member of the millennial generation. I didn’t see “The Breakfast Club” or “Reality Bites” until I was in college. I’ve never understood or appreciated “hair metal;” I was raised on James Taylor and Cat Stevens. Although I remember, very vividly, how the girls in my seventh grade class cried hysterically after hearing on the radio that Kurt Cobain died, I didn’t become a fan of his music until a few years later. And, like others in my generation, I was on the Internet years before my parents…
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12 Years a Slave: Inheritance, History, and the Future
When my Great Aunt Sue Eakin, at the age of eighteen, finally rediscovered a well-worn, long-forgotten copy of Solomon Northup’s book “12 Years a Slave” hibernating on the shelves of a popular bookstore near the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, the bookstore owner practically gave it to her. “There ain’t nothing to that old book,” he said. “Pure fiction. You can have it for 25 cents.” As I mentioned previously, Sue had first seen the book “12 Years a Slave” when she was only twelve, tagging along with her father, a man we called Daddy Sam, for a visit with…
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In Central Louisiana, Slavery Is Scrubbed While Confederate Civil War Forts Are Reconstructed
Years ago, shortly after I finished college and settled back in Alexandria, Louisiana, a family friend of mine told me of a proposed project that he believed would be a game-changer for the local economy. “We’re sitting on a gold mine,” he said. “Right across the river, we have the last remaining untold story of the American Civil War.” He had a compelling sales pitch: Two adjacent and long-forgotten Civil War forts, Fort Randolph and Fort Buhlow, could be reconstructed and rediscovered. Because most of the land hadn’t even been touched since 1865, it was possible, he said, that Civil…
CenLamar | Est. 2006
