Past & Present

I happened to mention this piece of work Ilich Ramirez Sanchez during class this week, while talking about the rise of al Qaeda. I was talking about how Sudan provided a haven for Osama bin Laden during the 1980s. Jackal also lived there until Sudan decided it needed to redeem itself in the eyes of the international community.

It will be interesting to contrast this visitwith her previous one in the 1950s when Virginia was fighting to maintain Jim Crow segregation. It’s neat to think about the streams of more recent civil rights history flowing past this now embalmed site of a colonial event 400 years gone.

I have not been to Jamestown. But I did take advantage during a vacation in the Outer Banks to visit the lost colony of Sir Walter Raleigh, sanctioned by England’s first Queen Elizabeth. Not much there to see today, so you have to, like me, get a kick out of merely standing in the site of events you have read about.