Back on the beach of my heart, where so much is the same as when my family first brought me here nearly 50 summers ago. One thing is missing, though: the wreck of the SS James Longstreet, perched decoratively on the horizon during the day, a fiery blaze every sunset, until it finally rusted away completely a few years back.

“I miss the James Longstreet,” I thought to myself this morning. And then suddenly, I asked myself:

Q. Who was this James Longstreet guy, anyway? 

A. So glad you asked. Turns out, this name I’ve known since earliest childhood belonged to a Confederate general best known as Robert E. Lee’s right-hand man. 

Q. Wait what? How did a Confederate ship end up wrecked off the coast of Massachusetts within living memory? 

A. No no no, it was a World War II Liberty Ship that got stranded somewhere else, dragged here onto a sandbank, and used for bombing target practice by the military. Local folks would get woken up at night on the reg by planes screaming out of the sky to rain fire on this hapless hulk in the middle of the Bay.

Q. OK, but that still doesn’t explain why the US Government in 1942 would name a ship after a racist traitor, does it?

A. Well, he wasn’t JUST a racist traitor. After the Civil War, he joined the Union government and became an ambassador and other things. He was the US Postmaster General at one point. 

Q. Oh, so Louis DeJoy isn’t the first racist traitor to hold that post? 

A. I thought you wanted to talk about James Longstreet.

Q. Right right, focus, thanks. So, tell me this: why do I feel sorta upset at learning that my beloved childhood landmark actually memorializes an avowed white supremacist who fought to establish a country that “rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man”?

A. Because… not being taught this kind of thing is exactly how our country has normalized surrounding ourselves with a one-sided, sanitized version of “history” that honors the brutal perpetrators of one of the most horrifying multi-generational crimes against humanity that our world has ever known? Maybe because of that?

Q. Yeah. Maybe because of that.

A. Yeah.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love it here, on the beach of my heart. It’s just, now I know more about this land that I love. Happy 4th of July, y’all.