Editor, Gazette-Journal:

None of us chose our ancestors. I likely share DNA with many of the people debating the future of the Confederate monument in Mathews. The only example from our slaveholding ancestors worth emulating is their deathbed confessions renouncing the atrocities they committed.

Thank goodness their acknowledgment of these sins was recorded for posterity by the slaves who experienced the utter depravity of their keepers, and who witnessed their final pleas for forgiveness. (Learn more at GwynnsIslandProject.com.) I am a woke daughter of the Confederacy—not sticking my head in the sand, sleepwalking through life, pretending the 42 percent of the population that was Black didn’t build the infrastructure and wealth of the county.

I feel obliged to honor the perseverance and accomplishments of our Black cousins, and to stop pouring brine on their permanent wounds. You can honor the defenders of slavery with your racist scraps of fabric at their many grave markers...