A great deal more could be written about the death of Diane McIver and the legal, moral, and psychological trials of Tex McIver. A jury of Tex’s peers convicted him of deliberately murdering his wife, and he is at this writing spending the remainder of his life in a Georgia prison. How and why the jury was persuaded is in itself an engaging tale of legal combat waged by titans of the law on both sides of the case.
But enough.
The point of this book has not been the telling of the true crime saga of Diane McIver’s murder. It has been rather been to show in a brief but hopefully illuminating way how the past of America’s slavery, and the slave master’s fear of those held in bondage, has been the prologue of the intense national agony we are enduring today. The lens of race fashioned over centuries warps much of our vision today with violent results. Tex’s fearful brandishing of his gun is but one example with a fatal end.
Can we change? There is room for both pessimism and optimism at this pivotal moment in our history.
Pessimism can be justified by the nation’s continuing inability to find a common civil language with which to examine our past and its effects, and to set about correcting our errors and expunging our evils to make America the noble country its founding documents declare it to be. Optimism is inspired by the growing recognition—particularly but not exclusively among young people, persons of color, and members of ethnicities other than white northern European—that America’s ideals are indeed a light unto the world, and that we can and must reform ourselves to live up to those ideals. That is not an easy task, nor is it one to be accomplished quickly. Generational change is a powerful force for change. But fear, hate, political expediency, and most of all the battle lines of a polarized nation stand in the way.
Events that occurred after this manuscript was completed underscored the ambiguous nature of change in the United States. Kamala Harris’s political revival catapulted her into the highest national office ever held by a woman—vice president of the United States. But two weeks before her inauguration, a violent attack upon the nation’s capital vividly illustrated the depth and power of the country’s political and cultural divisions.
America’s fate before the bar of history is yet to be determined. The jury is still out.