Letter to the editor: Actions of T.C. Williams were reprehensible

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Letter to the editor: Actions of T.C. Williams were reprehensible
T C Williams
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To the editor:

Dino Drudi argues in his letter, “High school should keep the name T.C. Williams,” in the March 29 Alexandria Times that city schools superintendent T. C. Williams was justified in firing Blois Hundley, a black cafeteria worker and mother of eight, for having the temerity to join a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking to compel the Alexandria school system to allow her children to attend a whites only school.

Without offering anything remotely resembling evidence, Drudi implausibly claims that Hundley’s action constituted insubordination and conflict of interest. As the late Christopher Hitchens observed, “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Drudi concludes this apologia thusly: “History can only morally assess actions in the context of their time, not with the informed judgment inherent in hindsight.”

This is nonsense. As an arch segregationist, Williams’ actions were just as morally reprehensible and unjust in 1958 as they are in 2018. And that he felt no constraint in firing Hundley for the offense of seeking a better life for her children further underscores just how morally bankrupt he was as head of the Alexandria school system.

– Craig Taylor

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