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"Holocaust was a better example. It's really not a contest"

The 20 million Ukrainians murdered by Stalin is no comparison with the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler? How about the Turks' attempt to wipe out the Armenians?

"The point was people have been doing bad stuff to each other since the dawn of time."

Yes, that's true.

"Every generation thinks now is the worst ever. One of them will be right but I doubt it's this generation."

There's no need to phrase it as a dichotomy of "worst ever" and "all in your imagination." Things do get better and worse in given locations over the centuries and even decades. It seems to me that things in Western Civilization are getting much worse very quickly.

"Maybe they will have a conference in Tehran on (the exaggerations in the descriptions of Jim Crow)."

Whether they do, or whether they don't, it won't affect the truth at all.

For instance, one piece of information that is now nearly impossible to find is that the Montgomery Jim Crow law that Rosa Parks violated did not have broad support among the white citizens of Montgomery.

It was ramrodded by a minority cabal of strident racsists who managed to seize power in the Montgomery City Government that was out of proportion to their support in the population.

The bus company at first refused to enforce the law, until the cadre of radicals used force, in the form of armed policemen, to coerce them to discriminate against their Negro riders.

That doesn't mean that the Jim Crow law was acceptible, but it should force a re-thinking of "the South" and its people.

[21stCenturyFreeThinker]

There's no need to phrase it as a dichotomy of "worst ever" and "all in your imagination." Things do get better and worse in given locations over the centuries and even decades.

I'm reminded of a story I heard about the Soviet Union. They had a severely restricted press during most of their existence and did not get to read much about the periodic bad things that happen anywhere. Once the Soviet Union fell the people there started reading about plane crashes and became worried about the sudden steep decline in the safety of their airlines. Of course we all know planes were crashing all along but stories of crashing planes weren't allowed in their newspapers.

I think cable news and the internet has brought us a similar situation. Things we would never read about when there was one newspaper and a couple of short newscasts a day are sensationalized in our new media. That doesn't mean it's all bad, just different. It takes some getting used to.

I know close to my home there was a horrible crime where a high school senior pretended to be an air conditioning repair man to get some young children home alone to let him in their house. Once inside he murdered them for the thrill of it. That happened in the early ninety's and was front page news here locally for about a week. It certainly wasn't national news. Of course today it would be fertilizer used to fill endless hours of "news" over months.

You're right that things do get better or worse periodically. But if you look at the big picture we are pretty lucky to live in this time. We live in an amazing country that has been a beacon of hope to the world for over 200 years. Democracy and freedom are on the march all around the world. We are benefiting from amazing advances in health care, communications, transportation, productivity and economics. Think of the health care advances alone, A little over a century ago someone was as likely to die of infection from a gunshot wound as they were from any damage the bullet did. Remember, President Garfield likely died from the germs on fingers being stuck into his wounds by doctors.

the Montgomery Jim Crow law that Rosa Parks violated did not have broad support among the white citizens of Montgomery.

True, but the good people of the South let it happen with little active resistance. Much the same as the good people of Germany didn't really support the Nazis but let WWII happen. The Jim Crow situation in the South wasn't as severe as the Holocaust in terms of deaths but morally it was still plenty bad. Let's not forget the lynchings and terrorist attacks the Blacks had to endure. Also, the Jim Crow laws were not restricted to Montgomery but were in place in much of the South. Montgomery definitely wasn't a unique situation.

That doesn't mean that the Jim Crow law was acceptible, but it should force a re-thinking of "the South" and its people.

I think the good people of the South (I'm a native Texan myself) deserve forgiveness as much as the people of Germany or Japan do. I don't hear many people looking down on the citizens from those places and I don't think the people of the South should be looked down on today. One of the tenants of Martin Luther King's leadership was to solve the problem in such a way that all of the citizens of the South could benefit. Much better than the violent solution advocated by Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

I don't think there is any reason to minimize the odiousness of the Jim Crow South to forgive the people there any more than we need to minimize the odiousness of the Holocaust to forgive the people of Germany.

But we do need to keep in mind the lessons of this period of history. One I think is especially important is to defend the freedom of your neighbors before you need to defend your own. The good people of the Jim Crow South would have benefited from applying this rule as the good people of the modern South do.