Robert E. Lee (IF You Know? Book Excerpt)

History Class?

As I entered college, I took the required history courses. And there was only one professor to teach these courses: “Mr. Lee.”

I name him that here, because the first day of my freshmen history class, as he strode into the room, I remember thinking, “He looks exactly like General Robert E. Lee,” as in the Civil War Robert E. Lee.

That one.

And then he spoke...with a Southern accent.

Keep in mind, this is a small Midwest college.

Mr. Lee was incongruous. Dressed in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and western styled shirts with embroidered red roses on them, his wavy grey hair and beard did cast an impressive resemblance for General Lee, at least, in my mind.

And his accent punctuated his appearance; he was “not from around here.”

And maybe I could have left it at that and simply appreciated this fish out of water with the Southern drawl, were it not for one phrase he repeatedly uttered as he taught his students.

He referred to “The Civil War” as “the war for Southern independence.”

A-ha.

I was curious about his insistence on using that phrase.
As he was the only college history professor on staff, any history class I took, be it American or World History. This usage of “the war for Southern Independence” was built into his instruction.

It was uncomfortable as he peppered this phrase into his teachings. I thought...

 Is he a racist?

Is he not facing the South’s loss in the war?

Does he take the Confederate’s position?

Is he trying to make that period of history less about the devastation of slavery and more about the South’s right to decide for themselves how to run their affairs?

Was he trying to convert us “Yankees” to sympathize with his perspective?

After all, he had a classroom full of “white” students.

Surely, we would see his point, right?

And it’s this unsettling “point” which still disturbs me concerning both my small town and its neighboring communities. There seems to be this limited perspective on history, on the status quo, and on the current world we live in. This perspective appears to insist things are simple, straightforward, and “white.”

But we all know that prejudice runs more insidious than that.

And the very notion that “this place” is “all white,” ergo, we don’t have to deal with anything other than white, promotes its own convenient, subtle, and even “Midwest nice” form of racism.

We don’t deal with matters of skin color and diversity here because we don’t have to.

Oh, really?

Just a white town, then?

“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.”

Luke 12:2

If You Know?: Cruse, Sheryle: 9798272042019: Amazon.com: Books

 Copyright © 2025 by Sheryle Cruse