thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Commentary: A day when bigotry lost in Maryland
1982
President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan walk with Barbara and Phillip Butler and their 4-year-old daughter, Natasha, outside the family's suburban Washington home in College Park, Md., on May 3, 1982. (Barry Thumma/AP)

Patti Davis
The Washington Post

On the morning of May 3, 1982, my father read a story in The Washington Post about a black family in Maryland — the Butlers — who'd had a cross burned on their lawn in 1977. William M. Aitcheson, an "exalted cyclops" of the Ku Klux Klan, was charged with the crime.

Five years later, a federal judge had ordered him to pay the Butlers a civil judgment of $23,000. Except Aitcheson evidently had disappeared. When my father went down to the Oval Office that morning, he announced that he wanted to go visit the Butlers — that day.

A little after 4 p.m., my father and mother boarded Marine One, flew to Maryland, and a motorcade took them along quiet rural streets to College Park Woods, pulling up to a tan brick home. Waiting for them were Barbara and Phillip Butler, their 4-year-old daughter, Natasha, and Barbara Butler's mother, Dorothea Tolson.

My father had brought along a jar of jelly beans to give to them. My parents sat with them in their living room and listened to what they had been subjected to as one of only five black families in the area. A car had driven onto their front lawn and taken out their lamppost. Garbage had been dumped onto their property. Then came the cross burning. The cross was 6 feet tall and heavy. It was doubtful that Aitcheson had carried out the burning alone, but he had been the only one charged.

"This isn't something that should ever happen in America," my father told them.

COLUMN: Ah, the America of my childhood. So full of bunk and bigotry. »

I'm very aware that my father's policies, especially on the subject of welfare, did not make him popular within the black community. One of my father's complexities was that, just as he was physically nearsighted, he could be myopic in other ways. A story that he could hold close, such as the Butlers', was something he instantly responded to and acted upon out of compassion and humanity. But the larger, more distant picture of thousands of families who would face hardships because of his policies didn't resonate in the same way. It is too bad someone didn't take him into the homes of people affected by welfare cuts; his policies might have changed.

Thirty-five years later, another president learned of neo-N**is marching through the streets of Charlottesville, Va., which had led to the death of a young woman who bravely came out to counterprotest. His reaction: “There are very fine people on both sides."

This isn't something that should ever happen in America.

We need to remember this when a campaign ad put out by the current president's political team is so r****t that even Fox News won't run it. Or when President Donald Trump proudly calls himself a nationalist and berates black female journalists, calling their questions stupid and incompetent.

COLUMN: Is President Trump a r****t — or does he just act like one? »

We need to remember, when children are ripped from their mothers' arms and put into cages, that there was a time when such a thing wouldn't happen in this country. These days, when blatant r****m has been allowed to emerge from the shadows and sweep through neighborhoods, so that young black boys are yelled at for mowing a neighbor's lawn, we need to think about how other presidents — including my father — viewed leadership. He felt a responsibility to comfort victims of hatred. He accepted the gift and the burden of reminding us that greatness is achieved, not by might, but by how we treat one another as human beings.

We will never be free of history. There will always be the echoes of whips, and tree branches scarred by ropes and the ghosts of bodies swaying in the air. America's darkest chapters should haunt us all. They should also teach us about the cost of bigotry — the cost to our humanity, the cost to our souls.

But there will always be the echoes of small moments in our history, too. Such as an afternoon when a man, moved by a story, visited a family and — knowing the impact his visit would have, since he held the highest office in the land — told them that prejudice and hatred should not exist in America. We need to remember stories such as this, so that we can find our way back to who we are supposed to be.

The Washington Post

Patti Davis is the author, most recently, of the novel "The Earth Breaks in Colors" and is the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan and former first lady Nancy Reagan.

EyeSawYou

Patti Davis like you are pathological liars, why do you post such bloviated BS from time to time?

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Kindly point out the unt***h, and explain how your post isn’t an insult.

EyeSawYou

There are a few lies in your post, here is one..

"We need to remember, when children are ripped from their mothers' arms and put into cages, that there was a time when such a thing wouldn't happen in this country..."

To say the children were RIPPED from their mothers arms is a lie, yes they were separated but not ripped away. Also..."that there was a time when such a thing wouldn't happen in this country". << Another blatant lie, children were being separated and put in cages during Obama's term as well, so there was a time that this was occurring before Trump. Not to mention that a few immigrant children were also placed with human traffickers, but of course progressive liars like you and her won't even mention that at all.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Some were pulled off their mother's tits. What do you call that. Obamas problem that he had to deal with was unaccompanied minors. Even trump couldn't figure out a way to separate unaccompanied minors from their parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unaccompanied_minor
I*********n l*w
In i*********n l*w unaccompanied minors, also known as separated children,[2] are generally defined as foreign nationals or stateless persons below the age of 18, who arrive on the territory of a state unaccompanied by a responsible adult, and for as long as they are not effectively taken into care of such a person. It includes minors who are left unaccompanied after they entered the territory of state.[3] A few countries have non-asylum procedures in place to adjudicate unaccompanied minor cases.

Obama did not separate unaccompanied minors from their parents. By definition unaccompanied minors are already separated from their parents.

Trump separated families and created unaccompanied minors.


I probably didn't explain this to your understanding, but that is the best I can do.

If Obama had done exactly as Trump did that wouldn't make the statement:
"We need to remember, when children are ripped from their mothers' arms and put into cages, that there was a time when such a thing wouldn't happen in this country."

For that to be a lie there would have had to never been a time when this didn't happen.
Familiarize your self with some of the subtleties of the language and how where negatives are placed is important. And don't turn people in for calling you a moron and then call them a pathological liar. It's in bad form.

EyeSawYou

LOL you are lying yet again, immigrant children were in FACT separated from their parent(s)under Obama and put in cages....that's a FACT! Also, some of these immigrant children were placed with human trafficker during Obama's term. "Some were pulled off their mother's tits"? LOL you are full of sh*t, got a reliable source to back up that claim? Why must you constantly lie about things that are easily fact checked?

Some immigrant children were placed with human traffickers during the Obama administration.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-obama-administration-children-human-traffickers/

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

The human traffickers is a known tragic mistake. The separations you haven't documented yet.
That really is enough insults

skylane5sp Loc: Puyallup, WA

Ah yes, again is offered the totally out of context 'there are fine people on both sides...' inferring that President Trump supports neo-N**is or wh**ever the fantasy de jour calls for.

If you bother to do some research into the complete, original statement, NOT the lie perpetrated by the lying media, you would discover that the context of his statement was in reference to the local PEACEFUL protesters FROM BOTH SIDES, those that wanted to revise currently politically incorrect history by tearing down monuments and those that wanted to preserve history - however flawed - as both a heritage AND a reminder. NOT the troublemakers that showed up.

But hey, it came out of the President's mouth and Rachel says it must be bad, right? Or misconstrued by the lying media. Like all the infantile hoopla over the supposed utterance of your Trumpism "bigly". BIG LEAGUE, useful i***ts, BIG LEAGUE.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

And you think Patti Davis takes talking points from Rachel?

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

I’m not sure, but I know that you do.

Rose42

Trump's statement about fine people on both sides was taken out of context. But I'd take Reagan's Republican Party over Trump's. No question.