The elephant in Timothy Bishop’s post Civil War harmony room (The News-Times, Letters to the Editor, April 27) is the bargain between Northern and Southern whites after the Compromise of 1877, which allowed “white” brothers to unite in a myth of a “noble” war now to be concluded at the expense of former slaves and their descendants for over 100 years.

“Let us have peace,” said U.S. Grant. Among the cost of white harmony paid by black Americans were harsh segregation enforced by lynching, denial of the right to vote, frequent “legalized” seizure of property earned by the sweat of black labor, a legacy of unequal educational opportunity, and in our own day loss of life itself for too many young black men, unarmed, unoffending, unthreatening, to frightened, ill-trained, and bigoted white policemen.

Daniel C. Hudson

Ridgefield