My wife and I took our kids to Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham for spring break a few weeks ago. We spent a morning at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and saw a field trip of well dressed kids in sixth or seventh grade, maybe 100 in all. I asked one of the docents whether it was a private or public school. She said it was public school; she was certain because there was Not. One. Single. Kid of color in the entire group. (A private school would have at least a few token nonwhite kids. A neighborhood school? Hell, friend, that's just our neighborhood. Ain't nothin' can be done 'bout that.)
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama
And their exercise? They were on a scavenger hunt — what fun! You know why? Because running around looking for the exact date Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were killed is way easier — for the ADULTS — than asking a bunch of white kids, "What do you think it would have been like in Birmingham in 1955 if you were black?" (Sorry, son, those three were killed on June 21, 1964. According to the answer key your silly reply that required you to think about it is wrong.)
Now, allowing him all the benefits of all the doubts, the President seems to think that the Civil War was "complicated." No. It wasn't. The Civil War was the simplest damn thing in the history of the country.