By Kendra Hamilton | I enjoyed the Statehouse Report’s discussion of “the elephant in the room” on July 31. But I think a missing element is South Carolina’s legacy of violence against and coercion of … other whites. Two “integration stories” told by friends my age come to mind — stories that helped to shape my thinking, as an African American with deep South Carolina roots, on the dimensions of the problem facing us.

The first, I heard 20 years ago. A bosom friend from Gonzales, La., confided the terror and confusion that descended upon her childhood when she learned that her best friend’s father, a known Klan leader, was believed “by everyone” to have murdered another classmate’s father, a Jew who was active in civil rights.