The Secesh category archive

Will Bunch is dismayed at how some white Southerners keep hanging on to the past.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine explores how and why law enforcement misread the threat of right-wing domestic terrorism.

It’s a long, complex, and depressing tale and, unfortunately, required reading for our times.

In a titanic struggle between rationality and rationalization, Thom tangles with a Confederate monument apologist.

The Austin, Texas, city council has passed a measure eliminating “fee waivers” for Confederate groups who wish to march in the Austin Veterans Day Parade. Said groups, natch, are protesting that they are being discriminated against. At the Austin Statesman, Alberta Phillips points out the ludicrousness of their plaints. Here’s a bit (emphasis added):

Austin’s support of Confederate groups goes back at least 12 years with groups flying either their beloved battle flag or Stars and Bars during annual Veterans Day parades — right up there with Old Glory. As such, Austin has supported the big lie of the Confederacy: Southern states seceded from the nation for the honorable cause of defending “states’ rights” and not slavery.

Follow the link for the rest.

Headline: Confederate statue “Silent Sam” on University of North Carolina campus toppled by protesters.

Badtux cuts through the sophistry about “birthright citizenship.” An excerpt:

Opposition to birthright citizenship by Republicans is often claimed to be about immigration.

It isn’t. This is good ole’ fashioned neo-Confederate pining for the return of slavery.

Follow the link to see why he says that.

The Roanoke Times explores how the Commonwealth of Virginia slanted textbooks to whitewash–you will pardon the expression–slavery. A snippet:

Come 1950, though, Virginia’s political oligarchs — the so-called “Byrd Machine” of U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd – saw signs of change on the horizon, and signs of change meant signs of trouble. Most alarmingly, the federal government under President Harry Truman was starting to promote civil rights, which threatened to undermine the fundamental tenet of Southern politics.

Springston’s story says: “Lawmakers thought that requiring schoolteachers to promote the Byrd organization’s view of history would set students straight and keep teachers from spreading socialist or communist ideas.” Ironically, that’s no different than what the Bolsheviks did when they instituted communism in the Soviet Union — they taught students a different version of history.

(snip)

On the website Politichicks, Eichelman writes: “One former commission member admitted to me that the goal of the seventh grade book was to ‘make every seventh-grader aspire to the colonnaded mansion; and if he can’t get there, make him happy in the cabin.’

These were the textbooks I had when I was in school. I realized by the time I graduated high school that they were–er–slanted (perhaps that’s why I chose to get my degree in history with a focus on U. S. Southern–as a rebellion against the attempt to indoctrinate me in bigotry).

My local rag looks back to a time in the recent past, when black folks weren’t allowed on a beach. Here’s a bit; follow the for the rest, and, all the while, remember that there are those amongst us who would happily return to recreate those times.

Around 1905, African American businessman Lem Bright built shelters for bathers on his land near Little Willoughby Bay and Mason’s Creek. It became known as “Lem Bright’s Place” or “Little Bay Beach” and was immensely popular. During one event, more than 2,500 crammed onto the three-acre lot.

(snip)

A year later, most of Bright’s beach buildings were consumed in a mysterious fire. The Guide reported that it was likely set by disgruntled whites. The story also said the arsonists were probably among those who appeared at a zoning meeting and shut down African Americans’ requests to rebuild.