I

s it

deja vu

? Or is it just karma?

For the first time in four decades, dissatisfied -- if perhaps buzzed -- people occupy parks across this country to demand change from the establishment.

Or

something

.

Are we back to Haight-Ashbury's Summer of Love? Or is it just an hallucination?

In some cities, the police break it all up with tear gas and riot gear. Is this Chicago 1968, or just a Facebook-generation fraud?

Hippies and anti-war protesters of the '60s brought turmoil to Democratic presidential candidates in 1968. Now it seems Tea Partiers and anti-government protests will lead GOP hopefuls to the same.

Maybe, whether we study our history or not, we're still doomed to repeat it.

You can bet one thing:

If we don't know our history, we can't possibly know our place in it.

So karma keeps coming.

Backers of Alabama's contentious immigration law have made it a prime talking point to argue that HB56 was all about the rule of law and has nothing to do with race or civil rights.

But across the world -- where Alabama's place in history is seen more clearly than in Alabama itself -- it just doesn't wash.

"If there is any place where bigotry does not go unrecognized, it is Alabama," The New York Times editorialized this week. "The new laws come cloaked in talk of law and order; the bigotry beneath them is never acknowledged."

Like deja vu.

Recently civil rights groups -- Hispanic rights advocates and others -- have come to Alabama to protest our law. Some good ol' Alabamians responded as you would expect.

"They are bringing loudmouths and agitators," a letter writer wrote to the News editorial page this week. It might as well have been printed in 1965.

I can't say often enough that Alabama's immigration law is in no way equal to the civil rights struggle, to slavery, oppression and Jim Crow. But it reeks of the same stink. It even uses the same language.

In 1960, when The Times' Harrison Salisbury penned his famous "Fear and hatred grip Birmingham" story, obstinate city residents refused to see the truth. Four little girls had to die before they finally got it.

When Freedom Riders came South to register blacks to vote, defenders of Alabama's status quo branded them "outside agitators."

We stand in the classroom of the Civil Rights Movement. But we didn't learn its lessons.

It's not too late, though. Because the lessons of the '60s were not all about discord, fear and horror. The best lessons of that decade are there to help us still.

Because the 1960s were not merely a time of chaos. It was a decade of great courage. That's what made it momentous. That's what made it special.

In Birmingham, common men, women and children showed incredible bravery as they took to the streets. Politicians here and in Washington showed courage when they finally realized America was better than a racist state. Policies changed, laws changed, ideas changed, and finally, people changed.

We have our history. We have to know it, and we have to know our place in it.

But that doesn't mean we are doomed. Because history teaches what we need to know, not only to survive our time in history, but to change it:

Courage.

John Archibald's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write him at jarchibald@bhamnews.com.

