One thing that was weird in a goofy sort of way. I was there the first year of REAL desegregation in Alabama. Here you had all these black kids streaming into their first year of HS into a school named for the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. None of us knew, or remembered that. Actually, the KNOW ALABAMA state history books had told us that, but we didn't quite process the connection, and none of the black kids said anything about it.
Of course, during those years we were all too busy trying to be footballs studs and score chicks to worry about that stuff, but anyway.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a cavalry genius. I understand the "fustest with the mostest" man's tactics are still studied at West Point.
I would like to be wrong but recent history is not reassuring.
Neither is ancient history, but don't let that stop you.