A listener sent me this today:

I thought I heard you say this morning (7-5-12) that you didn't think the US could ever completely live down the shame of slavery. Perhaps that's true but I thought you might find it interesting to hear the view of one man who was a first generation free black man. His father was a black soldier in the Union Army. He was a college graduate and a writer. His name is Paul Laurence Dunbar and here is his poem titled "The Colored Soldiers".

A line in the last stanza reads: "For their blood has cleansed forever every blot of slavery's shame".