Quote of the Day -- On Taking Down Confederate Statues

"The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered." 

--New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu

Links:

New Orleans begins to take down Confederate statues

New Orleans takes down Confederate monument

One More To Go: New Orleans Takes Down 

Civil War General's Statue

New Orleans Takes Down Statue Of Gen. Robert E. Lee

The case for taking down Confederate monuments

Final Confederate statue coming down in New Orleans

In New Orleans, Confederate monuments are gone _ Lee last 

Landrieu speech: The Confederacy lost 

New Orleans mayor made a speech on race 

and history we all need to hear

The 12 best lines from Mitch Landrieu's remarkable speech on race

Mitch Landrieu's Confederate monuments speech earning praise

Confederate monument removal in New Orleans inspires St. Louis

St. Louis, History, and Confederate Monuments

Little-Known Kansas City History

Early Kansas City home, possibly belonging to Bernoist Troost. Slave cabin in rear.

To dispel any notion that Kansas City was anything but a Confederate city, one has only to take a look at the town settlers. The first company, formed in 1839, consisted of 14 men and was spearheaded by John C. McCoy, William Gilliss, and a fur trapper from Kentucky named William Sublette. Town founder McCoy, according to the 1850 census, owned five slaves at his home on Pearl Hill. Gilliss, born in Maryland, was a slaveowner. The 1850 census shows he owned three male slaves, ages 18 -36. Although banished by Ewing in 1863, Gillis was allowed to stay, perhaps due to his age, wealth, position in the community, and by showing evidence that he had freed his last slave in 1862.

Fry P. McGee was a son of early settler James Hyatt McGee of Kentucky, reputed to have brought the first slaves to Kansas City in the late 1830’s. The 1860 slave census shows that Fry McGee, his brothers and his mother owned slaves. Jacob Ragan of Kentucky arrived in Jackson County in 1837. He was a known Confederate and was included on at least one of the Provost Marshal’s lists of “bad men.” William Miles Chick was born near Lynchburg, Virginia. He came to Kansas City in 1836. Chick, too, was a known Confederate and was one of the Provost Marshal’s “bad men.” Chick’s warehouse was located next to Jesse’s on the levee. Both were burned by Union soldiers in 1862. Col. Chick was was John C. McCoy’s father-in-law.

Five men of the 1839 company were farmers and slaveholders residing in Blue Township, Jackson County, just east of Kansas City:

Oliver Caldwell arrived in Jackson County in 1833. He farmed at Blue Valley and organized the Christian Church in Independence. The 1840 census shows that he owned 9 slaves; the 1850 census shows Oliver 58, wife Ann 54, 3 children 17-24, and 11 slaves.

George Washington Tate arrived in Westport in 1838. He became a Missouri state legislator in 1842. The 1850 census for Blue Township identifies Tate as a 53 year-old merchant, residing with his wife Lovey 46, and 3 children 14-27 and 1 male slave, age 15.

William Collins was a Kentucky native who lived in Liberty. The 1860 census for Liberty Township shows him with 4 slaves. James Smart of Virginia was a farmer who came to Jackson County 1834 with his brother Thomas and became Jackson County judge in 1846. He was a founder of the Christian Church in Independence and was Oliver Caldwell’s brother-in-law. The 1850 census for Blue Township shows Thomas 53, Nancy 48, and 3 children aged12-20. The 1860 slave census show that he owned 15 slaves.

Russell Hicks of Massachusetts came to Jackson County around 1827. He was a teacher, lawyer and judge who was called “one of the most eccentric members of the Kansas Town Company.” After the war he practised law in Sedalia and was counsel to Senator Thomas Hart Benton. The 1850 census places Hicks, 65, in Blue Township with two female slaves, ages 4 and 23.

The vast majority of the personal wealth in Jackson County prior to the war was contained among men who had been born in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. These men and their families supported the Confederacy and its institutions. The children of the original town members were coming of age during the years leading up to the Civil War, as were the children of the thousands of southern settlers who came to Jackson County in the 1840’s.

--Text by John Dawson

Born This Day, 1827

Indeed, born this day, September 27, 1827 was one Hiram Rhodes Revels and for a few reasons, should absolutely be taught and known by Americans who he was and what he did.

Hiram Rhodes Revels was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church(AME), a Republican politician, and college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. He was elected as the first African American to serve in the United States Senate, and was the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress. He represented Mississippi in the Senate in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era.

During the American Civil War, Revels had helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain. After serving in the Senate, Revels was appointed as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University), 1871-1873 and 1876 to 1882. Later he served again as a minister.

One of the biggest things Hiram Revels did was to  be The Black Man Who Replaced Jefferson Davis in the Senate

Too few Americans know this man and know what he did and how important he and it all was.

Another Executive Order, Issued This Day, 1863

A presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln.

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln had issued a preliminary proclamation warning that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863. None of the Confederate states restored themselves to the Union, and Lincoln's order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners (and their sympathizers) who envisioned a race war, angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, and undermined forces in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy. The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and slave. It led many slaves to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom.

That President's opponents were viscerally, emotionally, strongly against this Executive Order, also.

Link:  Emancipation Proclamation

More Americans Need to Read--and Follow--the Words of Robert E. Lee

More people in this nation need to read and apply and live Robert E. Lee's own words.

These, on our nation and fellow countrymen:

"I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union."

"Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character."

"Madam, don't bring up your sons to detest the United States government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities, and make your sons Americans."

And this, on war itself:

"It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it."

Important Article on Race Today

Columnist/economist Paul Krugman penned an excellent, even important article in the New York Times that was released today.

Slavery's Long Shadow

...racial hatred is still a potent force in our society, as we’ve just been reminded to our horror. And I’m sorry to say this, but the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens. 

Of course, saying this brings angry denials from many conservatives, so let me try to be cool and careful here, and cite some of the overwhelming evidence for the continuing centrality of race in our national politics. 

My own understanding of the role of race in U.S. exceptionalism was largely shaped by two academic papers. 

The first, by the political scientist Larry Bartels, analyzed the move of the white working class away from Democrats, a move made famous in Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” Mr. Frank argued that working-class whites were being induced to vote against their own interests by the right’s exploitation of cultural issues. But Mr. Bartels showed that the working-class turn against Democrats wasn’t a national phenomenon — it was entirely restricted to the South, where whites turned overwhelmingly Republican after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon’s adoption of the so-called Southern strategy

And this party-switching, in turn, was what drove the rightward swing of American politics after 1980. Race made Reaganism possible. And to this day Southern whites overwhelmingly vote Republican, to the tune of 85 or even 90 percent in the deep South. 

The second paper, by the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote, was titled “Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-style Welfare State?” Its authors — who are not, by the way, especially liberal — explored a number of hypotheses, but eventually concluded that race is central, because in America programs that help the needy are all too often seen as programs that help Those People: “Within the United States, race is the single most important predictor of support for welfare. America’s troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state.”

Just this, above, a portion of the article points out truths, sure, but also ends up being quite an indictment of Republicans in general, the Republican Party itself and much of the Right Wing in this country.

I believe there will be 3 reactions to the article.

First, there will be the Right Wingers and Republicans who deny it completely, out of hand, immediately.

The second group will never see or so, be able to consider these points.

Finally, there will be a small, tiny, even number of these people who read the article and accept its truths.

We have a long, long way to go in America, regarding race and wealth and poverty, that's certain.

Some Memorial Day/American History

Racial History in America, 1700 to today

First we owned them--Africans, later to be African-Americans--and beat them and kept them down and tortured them and killed lots and then, after the Civil War and ever since, we locked lots and lots of them in jails and prisons and wouldn't let them live near us or get or have a great education or the good jobs.

And that takes us up to today.

And all us whites, out in our comfortable suburbs don't understand.

Imagine that.

Slavery. And America

Humans of New York

They take you from your family, your history. They make you work. They tell you when to mate. They chop off your foot if you try to run away. 

And I’m sorry to say this, but white people did that. 

And black people are still living with the remnants. For over 200 years, black people built this country and didn’t get a single dollar. And sure, it isn’t happening anymore, but we’re still living with the remnants. We don’t have the same connections, the same powerful friends, the same access to capital. I tell young African Americans that they’ll do just fine, but they’re going to have to work twice as hard. I tell them that they will need to go out of their way to search for their identity. 

They aren’t going to find much about their heritage in the history books. Even the constitution classifies black people as three-fifths of a man, and that was supposedly written by the most enlightened, glorified white people of that time. I tell young African Americans that they are going to have to dig hard to find out the giant contributions that Africa made to civilization, because they aren’t going to find it on the television. And I tell them that just because it’s a tough road does not excuse them from personal responsibility. I tell them that God put them on earth to build and not destroy. And I tell them that some opportunities cost money, but books are absolutely free.”

Links:  Slavery by Another Name

Watch the Film | Slavery by Another Name | PBS

America, slavery and Black History Month

The shared history Americans don't want to acknowledge, let alone learn of:

Kicking off Black History Month: Here comes (back around) the hate

So here we are, February 1, 2014. The start of another Black History month. Good.  We need this.

The nation needs it. God knows the white people, in their own country need it since we don't know our own history.



Recommended reading:

W.E.B. DuBois BLACK RECONSTRUCTION

Ronald Takaki A DIFFERENT MIRROR

Eric Lott LOVE AND THEFT

Noel Ignatiev HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE

Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall AGENTS OF REPRESSION: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement

Alexander Saxton THE RISE AND FALL OF THE WHITE REPUBLIC

(B)ell hooks BLACK LOOKS

Douglas A. Blackmon SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME

Andrew Hacker TWO NATIONS: BLACK AND WHITE, SEPARATE, HOSTILE, UNEQUAL

Go get 'em.

Link:   Slavery by Another Name

Before Memorial Day, the first Decoration Day

Slaves Started Memorial Day

"For two weeks in April, former slaves had worked to bury the soldiers. Now they would give them a proper funeral.

The procession began at 9 a.m. as 2,800 black school children marched by their graves, softly singing “John Brown’s Body.”

Soon, their voices would give way to the sermons of preachers, then prayer and — later — picnics. It was May 1, 1865, but they called it Decoration Day.

On that day, former Charleston slaves started a tradition that would come to be known as Memorial Day."

____________________________________________

But need a "Black History Month"?  Why would we need that?

Side note: You might go to the link to this story. It's great history--national history--and it's actually a fascinating, even beautiful story. 

Quote of the day--on potential

Americans think they know their nation's history

They don't.

We don't know our nation's history. Case in point, from Facebook yesterday:

 

J. Marion Sims is called “the Father of Gynecology” due to his experiments on enslaved women in Alabama who were often submitted as guinea pigs by their plantation owners who could not use them for sexual pleasure. 

He kept seven women as subjects for four years, but left a trail of death and permanently traumatized black women. 

Anarcha was one of the women Sims experimented upon. A detailed history of this monster is in Harriet Washington’s book, Medical Apartheid.

Sims believed that Africans were numb to pain and operated on the women without anesthesia or antiseptic. The procedures usually happened this way.

Black female slaves who were guinea pigs would hold one subject down as Sims performed hysterectomies, tubal ligation, and other procedures to examine various female disorders.

Sims also performed a host of operations on other slave populations. The following excerpt details his “practice” on enslaved infants.

Sims began to exercise his freedom to experiment on his captives. He took custody of slave infants and, with a shoemaker’s awl, tried to pry the bones of their skulls into proper alignment.

Link: 

J. Marion Sims 

American History and why we need a Black History Month

 

That's why.

In case you've never seen and read this letter

Text of ex-slave's letter to his former master (on Yahoo! News last evening):

The famed letter written by an ex-slave in response to his former master's request that he return to the plantation, soon after the end of the Civil War. Different versions of the letter bear various spellings of the writer's name.

Dayton, Ohio,August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir:

I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.

Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy — the folks call her Mrs. Anderson — and the children — Milly, Jane, and Grundy — go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated.

Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson

Some history of Black History Month

American history Americans don't know--and don't want to know

There is a terrific article at Alternet now virtually all Americans should read but that few will: "Why the White South Is Still in Denial About Slavery" On a trip through the South, Civil War culture is presented as "authentic." They just leave out the slavery part. Please trust me when I say that first, it's good and second, it's important we know this history. It's a great, far from dry read. too. Link: http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/153598/why_the_white_south_is_still_in_denial_about_slavery/?page=1. Another great and associated article: What You Didn't Know About the South: Surprises from a White Southerner “The South” is an idea too often wrapped in a fog that emanates from the left as well as the right. Link: http://www.alternet.org/culture/153608/What_You_Didn%27t_Know_About_the_South%3A_Surprises_from_a_White_Southerner/

Quote of the day

"When the Civil War ended, there were no truth and reconciliation commissions formed to process memories, no Nuremberg Trials to enable reflection, no Great Emancipator to free the future from the past — only ghosts and the ravenous politics of memory. The need for national reckoning was quickly subordinated to the political imperative of reunification, and on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, forgetting became more valuable than remembering." --Peter Birkenhead, from his article "Why the White South Is Still in Denial About Slavery" on Alternet. Link: http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/153598/why_the_white_south_is_still_in_denial_about_slavery/

KCK and John Brown on NPR today

There was a story on NPR today about "little known memorial(s) that make you want to pull over and find out more." One of these is the John Brown statue and information in our own Quindaro district of Kansas City, Kansas. Link to original story: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/15/138559911/honey-stop-the-car-monuments-that-move-you