Slavery wasn't as long ago as we would like to think

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As I'm reading Gone with the wind the realization that slavery wasn't as long ago as most of us would like to believe. People live to be over 100 nowadays. Slavery isn't even 200 years old. Slavery ended in 1865 meaning that slavery isn't even 160 years old. It's closer to 158 years since slaves were freed in December. That means our relatively close ancestors could have owned slaves. I highly doubt many of mine if any of mine did. For one we came from poverty and for two I'm from Ohio which was a free state and considered Yankee territory and most of my family was not from the south. I imagine if you are from southern states there's a great chance your family could have owned slaves. It just blows my mind how close we really are to that era. I guess I never really thought about it before because for as long as I've been alive it really hasn't been something anyone in my area has dealt with at least not to that extent. Racism sure, but not like the South. We like to say that slavery was in the past and it was but not as far in the past as most people seem to believe. People say things like "Oh that was my great great great grandparents" and really it could have been your grandparents depending on your age or your great grandparents. There was only 47 years between the end of slavery and my grandmother's birth. I mean it's likely more to be someone's great-grandparents that owned slaves but not necessarily. It's likely people who were enslaved were alive when our grandparents were born especially if they were children when they were freed. I believe i read the last living slave died in 1971 he was stated to have been 130 which is pretty old but it's possible. I feel like we like to think it was so long ago because to us it is but when you consider how long someone can live for it's pretty amazing to think you could have known someone who knew someone who was a slave. It's sad that slavery was ever a thing and I'm so grateful we have come such a long way from that time in history but it really isn't as long ago as some people seem to think. I was curious how Margaret Mitchell could have known so much about how people thought in the South at that time and then I realized she was born in 1900 in Atlanta and she was probably still living around people who felt that way. The book has been an amazing read and pretty eye-opening on how terrible people could be at that time to think and feel the way they did about other human beings. As much as I love the book I also realize how backward that type of thinking is because of the way I was raised but that was what they knew and that type of thinking takes many years to erase and we still haven't completely erased it. I am loving the book but I guess it still kind of makes me realize how grateful I am to not have lived during that time. I am grateful for the freedoms everyone has now even if we aren't where we should be just yet regarding racism. The old South sounds pretty in a way but when you think about how horrible black people were treated it takes away any magic you may otherwise feel for the time period. It was only a great time if you were white and even greater if you were a white male.