This notice appeared on the front page of the July 4, 2004, issue of the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader:
It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.
When that newspaper’s staff decided to prepare a special edition commemorating the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Civil Rights Act, they began combing through their archives looking for local material. That’s when they discovered a complete lack of such information. The newspaper had simply not covered the civil rights movement, period.
A local African-American leader said, “The white community just prayed that rumors and reports (of the civil rights movement) would be swept under the rug and just go away.”
As odd as that is, it will not come as a surprise to many that a lot of churches lived through the same revolution in this country without the first mention of it from the pulpit. (And we wonder why outsiders found our sermons irrelevant.)
Churches are prone to forget the things they do not want to acknowledge.