A Symbol of Racism... or Not?

This photo of the Confederate flag has been getting around Facebook. The message printed on it reads as follows. The rebel flag was the flag of the Confederate States of America. A lot of people are offended by rebel flags because they believe that they symbolize racism. Quite the contrary. Rebel flags are not racist. The Civil War erupted over states’ rights, not slavery. The south was mostly people in favor of states’ rights. And the north was mostly people who wanted the national government to have more power over the states. Please. Learn your history before you judge. History may repeat itself…

First, that a lot of people might see this flag as a symbol of racism seems perfectly understandable. After all, the flag represented the confederacy and the people of the confederacy believed in holding a race of people in slavery.

Even after the war was won by the union and the confederacy was dissolved, the “freed” slaves were still oppressed, murdered and RAPED by the former confederates for many decades to follow into the next century. One has to wonder why anybody would fly a confederate flag in modern times. The symbol carries no positive feelings for the race of people who suffered under the people that once called themselves a confederacy. Displaying a rebel flag would be much like posting a huge crime scene photo of your murdered child in the back window of my pick-up truck after I was acquitted of the crime that I bragged of committing. Would you not be offended?

While it is true that friction between the north and the south started over states’ rights, it had everything to do with slavery. The issue of states’ rights was compounded by the voter populations in southern states being less than in the north. The southern states, with their agricultural economy built on the backs of slaves, had less representation in congress for lack of a population of white voters . Enslaved black men could not vote and had no rights as citizens. However, they were counted as three-fifths of a white man in order to artificially inflate the voter population and gain southern representation in congress.

Then there was the Missouri Compromise which allowed Maine to be admitted to the Union only on agreement that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state and, thus, maintain the balance of slave and non-slave states. As the western U.S. opened up, succession of the southern slave states was pretty much inevitable.

President Lincoln even tried to make the war not about slavery. He said openly that he wanted only to maintain the Union, with or without slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was only a timed political move that was of minimal, if any, benefit.

The president, though he held genuine compassion for the suffering of slaves, was a racist. He believed black people to be inferior. He did not believe that they would ever be able to coexist among whites. President Lincoln favored sending black people to Africa to form colonies.

Indeed, there was an issue of states’ rights that started with drafting the constitution. In interests of states’ rights slavery was ignored in the constitution. It was left to fester and swell so that it oozed nastiness into the hearts of Americans over the years and well into the 19th century.  Southerners feared and hated northern abolitionists.

A good illustration of the rebel flag as a symbol of racism comes from a story once told to me by a southern black man with whom I was acquainted through work. He and another black man were on the side of the road after dark, suspecting a problem with their car. One white man in a pick-up truck, displaying a rebel flag in the back window, pulled up behind them.

On one hand, it seems possible that the white man was just a southern good ol’ boy, who was proud of his heritage and willing to help out anyone in need. On the other hand and for reasons that ran generations deep, the black men were conditioned to fear white men with confederate flags. They left before the white man could get out of his truck.

States' rights, racism and the rebel flag are just three braids of the same rope. Please learn your history before you judge. This horrible period in our history must not happen again

For everyone...

Who didn't know

#StateRights #Racism #RebelFlag #ConfederateFlag

A Civil War General from Virginia

He was born on a Virginia plantation and, as a young man, received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. One of his classmates, and a friend, was William Tecumseh Sherman. The young officer served with distinction in the Mexican-American War where he was mentored by Captain Braxton Bragg. Later, as a cavalry and artillery instructor at West Point, one of his star students, J.E.B. Stuart was to become the one of  finest cavalry and reconnaissance officers of the Civil War.

Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee was the academy superintendent at West Point when J.E.B. Stuart was a cadet. The young officer, who was Stuart’s mentor and served under Lt. Col. Lee at the time, would later become a Major General in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was called a traitor by J.E.B. Stuart, who wished him hung for treason against Virginia. All three of the soldiers were sons of Virginia.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, many southern-born officers struggled between loyalty to their home states and loyalty to the Union Army, in which they had made their careers. George Henry Thomas was a private man, who later in life destroyed all of his personal documents and papers. The son of a slave-holding plantation owner, there is little record of his political position at the time. However, it can be assumed that his marriage to a New York woman provided some of the influence to his decision to remain in the Union Army.

Thomas advanced rapidly to the rank of Major General when the Civil War started. However, he was not a man to hold his own lantern high. More ambitious officers took advantage of this by taking glory for themselves at the expense of General Thomas. General William T. Sherman is known to have spoken highly of his West Point classmate at times but, for the most part, his loyalty was toward General Grant. Sherman’s loyalty to Grant continued after the war when the post war spotlight shined on the two men as heroes and helped launch Grant to the presidency.

As Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas Jackson earned the name Stonewall Jackson at Second Manassas, so Union Maj. Gen. George Thomas later became known as the Rock of Chickamauga. Having been driven from Chattanooga by Union forces, Confederate Maj. Gen. Braxton Bragg was determined to retake the strategic supply hub. On September 18, 1863, Maj. Gen. Bragg’s army skirmished with Union forces at Chickamauga Creek.

Union Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans had been watching Bragg’s army and anticipated an attempt to retake Chattanooga. On September 19 the Confederacy was gaining ground but could not break through Union defenses. That changed with the arrival, late that night, of Confederate Gen. James Longstreet leading eight fresh brigades.

The next morning, using Longstreet’s additional strength, Bragg launched a two-fronted attack on the Union lines. Thinking that his defenses had been breached and fearing that his army would be routed, Rosecrans ordered retreat. In the confusion, Maj. Gen. Thomas took the initiative to rally the troops that he could find on the field and, with his own troops, took up a defensive position while the rest of Union Army retreated to Chattanooga.

They held the lines until nightfall when Thomas and his army could retreat back to Chattanooga under the cover of darkness. The battle resulted in extreme losses on both sides but was decidedly a Confederate victory. In the end, the Union held Chattanooga and the Confederacy held the high ground. However, if not for the actions of the Rock of Chickamauga, in holding the lines against impossible odds, the Union Army would likely have been routed and, thus, would have lost Chattanooga.

After the war, up to 1869, Maj. Gen. Thomas commanded the Department of the Cumberland in Kentucky and Tennessee. President Andrew Johnson offered Thomas a promotion to the rank of lieutenant general with the intention of replacing Grant as the general-in-chief. However, Johnson was a Democrat and Grant was a Republican with his eye on the presidency. Thomas had no taste for politics. He requested withdrawal from the nomination and asked for command of the Military Division of the Pacific.

Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas died of a stroke in 1870. His remains were transferred from San Francisco back to New York. He is interred in Troy, New York. Thomas was born a middle child among ten siblings on a Virginia plantation in 1816. None of his blood relatives attended his funeral. Like J.E.B. Stuart, they had never forgiven him for, what they considered to be, treason against his native Virginia.

The Blindness of Bigotry

One of my Facebook friends recently shared the following.

"PROUD TO BE WHITE" 

This is great. I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race is......
Michael Richards makes his point........................ 
Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TVs Seinfeld does make a good point.

This was his defense speech in court after making racial comments in his comedy act. He makes some very interesting points...

Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to this? There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, etc. 

And then there are just Americans. 

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you.. so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?
You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. 

You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day. 

You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi. 

You have the NAACP. You have BET. If we had WET (White Entertainment Television), we'd be racists. If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists. 

If we had White History Month, we'd be racists.

If we had any organization for only whites to 'advance' OUR lives, we'd be racists.

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that??

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.

If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships... You know we'd be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US ... Yet if there were 'White colleges', that would be a racist college.

In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.
You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.

I am proud...... But you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists??

There is nothing improper about this message.. Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on. I sadly don't think many will. That's why we have LOST most of OUR RIGHTS in this country. We won't stand up for ourselves!

BE PROUD TO BE WHITE!

It's not a crime YET... but getting very close!

I always find it interesting how majority ethnic groups can find phrases, behavior and history to support their biased notions when they see minorities getting a voice. They’re like good Christians, cherry picking the scripture that supports their bias and interpreting it to benefit their own argument. It is amazing what they forget about so much of the past or simply leave it out.

When white people whine about Martin Luther King Day, they forget about President’s Day.

When white people whine about Black History Month, they forget about all of the whiteness in their history books when they were in school.

How many white children learned about George Washington Carver in school but didn’t know that he was a black man?

How many of white people know of the Black Sheep Squadron of WWII but have never heard of the Tuskegee Airmen?

When was a white man ever lynched by a mob of angry black men on Saturday night for raping his family’s black housekeeper?

Do you know why many Native Americans avoid circulating twenty dollar bills?

How many of you have ever even tried to empathize with the suffering on the Trail of Tears? Better yet, how many of you know what the Trail of Tears was?

Why don’t we have currency carrying images of Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse? Certainly, they were among the greatest of American leaders. They stood against impossible odds and were murdered for it just like Abraham Lincoln. Oh, but you probably didn’t know that the most effective of Native American leaders were murdered, did you?

I’ll bet that all of you good white folks know that Audie Murphy was the most decorated American war hero of WWII. How many of you know that the most decorated ethnic group of WWII were Americans with Spanish surnanes?

When the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted, there were riots in the streets of East Los Angeles. Did you ever wonder why the residents of Beverly Hills didn’t riot when OJ Simpson was acquitted? I’ll bet not, but then, you’ve also have never felt the internal raging anger of generations upon generations of oppression.

The person that originated this selected opinion on Facebook challenged readers to have the guts to send it on. I reiterate that challenge. However, the people with real guts will send it on with my comments also attached.

America’s First Slave Owner

The first forced immigration of Africans to the British colonies started in Virginia in 1619. Initially, these Africans had the same rights as European indentured servants. Some of the freed African indentures acquired slaves themselves in order to successfully work their tobacco crops.

European indentured servants first came to Virginia about ten years after the founding of Jamestown. Landowning colonists had quickly realized the need for cheap labor in order to maintain and profit from their plantations. There was no shortage of both skilled and unskilled labor in Britain. Many people were willing or in a position to be coerced to contract their labor for passage to the colonies.

The life of indentured servants was often harsh but they were not slaves. There were laws to protect them. Contracts varied from four to seven years of service for an indenture. Upon earning their freedom, the contracts also provided the indentures with enough land, grain and livestock to make a start of their own.

Anthony Johnson was a freed indentured servant of African origin who, by 1651, had accumulated 250 acres of land and five black indentured servants of his own. One of his servants, upon fulfilling his time of contracted service, was denied freedom by Johnson.  Sources vary as whether the servant, John Casor, left the Johnson of his own volition or was begrudgingly allowed by Johnson to work for another man, by the name of Robert Parker.

Either way, Johnson eventually chose to sue Parker, in county court, for stealing his servant. In 1655, the court ruled in Johnson’s favor declaring that John Casor was his slave for life. Casor did, in fact, die in service to Johnson. The court ruling had made John Casor the first true slave of the British colonies in America.

What is interesting about the ruling is that it did not provide for white colonists to permanently enslave black indentures. Nonetheless, the ruling was a catalyst for the eventual legal enslavement of black people in the American colonies. It was not, however, until 1670 that the Virginia assembly passed legislation allowing that all whites, free blacks and Indians had the right to own black persons as slaves.

The evolution of black people from indentures to slaves came about gradually over several generations. Though Anthony Johnson died a free man of property, most of his property was confiscated upon his death on the grounds that he was an alien and, thus, had no rights of citizenship. Two-hundred years later, the same thinking would deny freedom to Dredd Scott and his family.

Mad Dog 06

The sound small arms fire strafing the Black Hawk helicopter was followed immediately by a blinding flash in the face of the co-pilot, who was in control of the aircraft at the time. Everything went into a blur as Capt Duckworth instinctively struggled to control the helicopter with control pedals and feet that were no longer there.

A rocket-propelled grenade had entered the helicopter at Capt. Duckworth’s feet and exited out the top of the aircraft. By some miracle, the rotors had not been damaged. The pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Dan Milberg set the helicopter on the ground while the crewmen, Staff Sgt. Chris Fierce and Spec. Kurt Hanneman put out fires on the helicopter and formed a defensive posture to fight off enemy ground troops.

Two other helicopters were called in to provide cover fire while the companion aircraft to the downed helicopter rescued Capt. Duckworth and her crew. Capt. Duckworth spent the next eight days in an Army emergency surgery hospital in Iraq. Her first memorable periods of consciousness were at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. with her husband at her side.

Capt. Duckworth did not know the extent of her injuries immediately. When she reached a point of consciousness, from which the doctors felt that she could understand what she was being told to her, her husband and one of the doctors told her of her condition. She was a double amputee and had lost some use of her right arm. She received the information stoically. Later, she said that whenever she started feeling down she needed only to look around to see another amputee in worse shape that she was.

Ladda Tammy Duckworth was born in Thailand to an American father and Thai-Chinese mother. She followed the footsteps of her father, a veteran of WWII and the Viet Nam War, when she joined the Army National Guard. Ms. Duckworth chose to become a helicopter pilot because it was one of very few combat roles available to women.

Though not a gifted child, Tammy Duckworth’s mother put strong emphasis on education and insisted on her daughter’s dedication to learning. She graduated from high school in Hawaii, earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Hawaii, her masters at George Washington University and was studying for a doctorate at Northern Illinois University when her National Guard unit was deployed.

Capt. Duckworth was promoted to major while at Walter Reed Hospital. With the extent of her injuries, no one would have faulted her for retiring to a rocking chair. However, upon release from the hospital, Maj. Duckworth was on her way home to Illinois and planning to return to the job that she had before her National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq.

It is common practice for disabled soldiers to be discharged from service. Maj. Duckworth, however, chose to remain in the National Guard. Though she can no longer fly helicopters, she believes and has proven that she still has much to offer by her service. She is a trained aviator and can still do classroom training, work on staff and be an inspiration to other injured veterans. Maj. Duckworth has been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

 Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, met and came to know Ms. Duckworth during her time in Washington. He urged her into politics because he was impressed with her charisma and intelligence. A congressional seat was opening up in her district and Sen. Durbin took her under his wing. It took two runs at the office, however. The first run, for Illinois Congressional District 6 in 2006, was lost by a very narrow margin.  In 2012, Ms. Duckworth unseated the incumbent of District 8.

Tammy Duckworth was better known during her second congressional run for having served in two different roles in offices of veterans’ affairs. The first opportunity came immediately after she lost the first run for congress. She was offered a job to be the Director of Veterans’ Affairs for the state of Illinois. Then, when Barrack Obama was elected president, he offered Ms. Duckworth the high level role of Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, in the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs.Though, not to downplay Ms. Duckworth’s qualifications, it is also likely that some democratic gerrymandering helped her to win in the second run for congress.

In her first months of service in the House, Rep. Duckworth continues to carry the banner high for veterans’ benefits. During a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, she recently called out a government contractor for gaming the system to get veteran’s eligibility for federal contracts. Rep. Duckworth advocates hiring more veterans as doctors and nurses in VA medical facilities as they would better relate to the veterans’ needs.

Rep. Duckworth is, without a doubt, a soldier for the soldiers. It will be interesting to see what differences that her voice and freshman leadership can accomplish in congress in her first term. Rep. Duckworth is the first disabled female American veteran to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Her presence seems only to grow stronger and it is unlikely that she will lose momentum, as her background and determination drive her forward, in pursuit of veterans’ needs.

For a more comprehensive read about Rep. Tammy Duckworth, check this US News article written by Rick Newman. Iraq War Veteran TammyDuckworth, the Comeback Artist 

And Some Gave All is the story of a World War II soldier written by an author friend of mine. The soldier was her brother.