David Pittman makes a number of valid points about the legacy of Henry Grady and the need for more focus on the rich diversity of Southern media professionals and their influence (“Rename the Grady College for Charlayne Hunter-Gault,” Oct. 14). But there are ways of balancing the scales without resorting to more “cancel culture” broad-stroke reactions. As we are already seeing, cancel-culture “remedies” tote a lot of woke baggage, and their unintended consequences can make their once-assured justifications less so, while part of the power of history is to be able to shine a light back on mistakes and miscarriages of justice, not to pretend that bad things didn’t happen. Would it be better if Athens got behind a brand-new project to build a Charlayne Hunter-Gault Media Center? In this way, the past is intact, in all its imperfection, but the future looks much brighter for the new understanding we have of it.
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