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If It Were Not For Hate

If It Were Not For Hate If It Were Not For Hate

If it were not for hate, life might have been rewarding and fulfilling for many who are not with us today. If it were not for hate, Caroline Kennedy might have enjoyed Father’s Day with John Fitzgerald Kennedy into his golden years. She celebrated her last Father’s Day with JFK when she was six years old.

If it were not for hate, Martin Luther King might still be with us, providing leadership and sage advice that might make a difference with his views on courage and nonviolent protesting.

If it were not for hate, the movie Mississippi Burning would never have been produced.

If it were not for hate, the twin towers would never have collapsed in Manhattan.

If it were not for hate, Leo Frank might have fathered a child who might have given him a grandchild to bounce on his knee.

If it were not for hate, certain Ku Klux Klan members would never have become accomplished murderers.

If it were not for hate, the nine members of the Historic Emanuel Church in Charleston might be gathering today to sing spirituals and songs of faith and forgiveness.

If it were not for hate, innocent children in day care at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City might have grown up to do some good for the world, certainly the communities where they would have lived out their lives.

If it were not for hate, Anne Frank might have written more than a diary with words which could have made a difference in our world. As it is, her moving thoughts remind us that hate by Nazi leaders has left an enduring scar on a world that still cannot conceive of Hitler’s heinous brutality.

If it were not for hate, 1,198 civilian lives would not have been lost when a German submarine sank the passenger liner, Lusitania, on May 7, 1915, during World War I, also known as “The Great War.”

If it hadn’t been for hate, Pan Am flight 103 would have passed over Lockerbie, Scotland without incident and 270 innocent lives would have not been snuffed out.

If it had not been for hate, the massacre and widespread rape of Chinese civilians by the Japanese at Nanjing would not have resulted in the humiliation and brutalization of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

If it had not been for hate, there would be no need for historians to chronicle the inhuman treatment of American servicemen with the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in World War II. If you are a latter-day critic of what the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is it not in order to justify appropriate means to end a war the U. S. did not start; reacting to a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor with a commitment to end the suffering and loss of life for both sides?

If it had not been for hate, the senseless bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963, which took the lives of four little girls who had arrived early for Sunday School, would not have happened.

If it had not been for hate, the children of Medgar Evers would not have grown up knowing that Byron de la Beckwith, who killed their father, was a hero to many whites in the state of Mississippi.

If it had not been for hate, Emmett Till, Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney and their relatives would not have had to wait decades until justice was served when a Texas born reporter Jerry Mitchell doggedly fought to have cold cases reopened until many of the guilty were brought to trial. He wrote a remarkable book, Race Against Time, which discloses how his efforts led to convictions of several evil men who thought that they had literally gotten away with murder.

This is an incomplete list and hate still triumphs in our world. How is it that love is in such short supply when you assess our world today?

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