I always take a moment to read the “Looking Back” column; I usually focus on the “100 Years Ago” entries since they tend to be the most charming, such as an entry a few weeks ago describing a man who showed up at City Hall offering to chop wood to pay his taxes. (His offer was accepted.)

Jan. 12’s “Looking Back” featured a 1924 “minstrel show to be given at the East Auburn Grange Hall” and listed the names of those in the “snappy colored circle,” which I found was a common term for a minstrel show’s cast of white performers in blackface.

(Anyone who’s curious to research will find many similar notices in other newspapers of the time; several of those gleefully detail “corked” make-up, rustic costumes, and “plantation” songs using words I doubt we’d want to see in today’s paper.)

I don’t believe in sanitizing history in any way. Sometimes we learn about things in the past that make us very uncomfortable, but that discomfort helps us remember the better people we are all striving to be. So I’m not upset that the Sun Journal published this look back.

However, I was surprised that there was no editorial note along the lines of “Although ‘Looking Back’ usually features remembrances of fun and interesting events in our past, the archives sometimes unearth a notice like this one that might startle readers.”

That might have been better than printing it as-is without comment.

Hillory Oakes, Lewiston