https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47477354

Trying an experiment. Everything’s excerpted below, but if you want to see the excerpts in context, try this hypothes.is link (you may need to collapse the right-side pane). It’s annotated, but each annotation is just “.”:

https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-us-canada-47477354&group=__world__

«”There’s the danger of presenting a white saviour figure,” says Mr Ownby, adding how Finch, while fictional, is probably the best-known representation of white resistance to racism.

“Of creating hero worship for people whose heroism came through doing their jobs within the system as it existed. After all, the civil rights movement was about changing the system.”»

…

«Mr Doggett says that he understands people holding a stereotypical view of the White South as racist, because such a view is “justified.” He agrees with Mr Gorton that the problem of the region’s racism was compounded by the machinations of the White South’s wealthy elite.

“There’s a long history of wealthy whites manipulating poor whites to put the blame on blacks,” Mr Doggett says. “People became so full of racial hatred that they couldn’t see that blacks were actually their allies.”»

…

«”While there certainly were white Southerners who advocated for civil rights for black Americans, many more didn’t,” says Ansley Quiros, a historian and author of “God With Us: Lived Theology and the Black Freedom Struggle in Americus, Georgia, 1942-1976.”

“In some ways it’s easier – at least for Americans – to tell those few, heroic stories than to grapple with the majority position.”»

…

«”There has been progress,” Mr Doggett says. “Sometimes now younger people seem hopeless about the situation, but people have no idea about how bad it used to be – the police would dredge the river for a black person who had been lynched and come across other bodies no one knew about.

“We’ve come a long way – yes, there is still forever to go, but it is better.”»

…

«But, at the same time, he notes how a visitor to the museum – especially a white one – can leave having been given the impression that all whites were bad all the time, which has a “a depressing effect.”

This in turn, he explains, doesn’t encourage white Southerners – or any Americans – to think more expansively about racial tensions that the South, and the country, still wrestles with.

“I do wish there was more info about those whites who have done progressive things in the South,” he says. “And are still doing them.”»