Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
The Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has come up with an idea for celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War—known to some as the “War between the States.” The veterans group has proposed that the state of
Mississippi issue a series of specialty license plates commemorating the war. These specialty plates, planned for the years 2011 through 2015, would each have a different design.
What has some people upset is the specialty license plate slated for the year 2014, which would honor General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest, a native of Tennessee, is considered by some to have been a military genius. Others feel differently about Forrest who is “reviled” by some for allegedly having lead a massacre of Black Union troops at Fort Pillow in his home state in 1864. It should be noted that Forrest also served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
According to ABC News, the NAACP is planning to send a letter to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour requesting “that he publicly denounce the license plate and use his office to prevent it from being issued.” Derrick Jackson, president of the Mississippi state NAACP, said of Forrest: “He should be viewed in the same light that we view Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The state of Mississippi should deny any vanity tags which would highlight racial hatred in this state.”
Although many historians agree that Nathan Bedford Forrest distanced himself from the KKK later in his life, some believe “it was too little too late because the Klan had already turned violent before Forrest left.”
Sources
THE SLAVE NARRATIVES – TRY IT SOMETIME YOU MIGHT LKIKE IT1
Holy crap! Josephine is a great example of the Right trying to rewrite history. She is also an example that some people actually believe what the Koch brothers are feeding them. Safe homes for the slaves??? I have to find out what kind of drugs can produce that kind of thinking.
OS,
“SL, that sounds like the Koch brothers company retirement plan. Now if they can just get it through Congress with the help of ardent supporters like John of Orange and Paul Ryan.”
I know it’s not a laughing matter but … I just had to burst out laughing …
SL, that sounds like the Koch brothers company retirement plan. Now if they can just get it through Congress with the help of ardent supporters like John of Orange and Paul Ryan.
Josephine,
“And After all wasn’t it the yankee invaders and occupiers that turned them out of their once safe homes and jobs and then taught them it was ok to rape and kill, burn and steal in their communities.”
Oh, I’m sure the freed slaves regretted leaving their “once safe homes and jobs” … living in drafty shacks and working under threat of the whip … great employee benefits. Kinda puts pension plans and healthcare to shame, huh?
Far be it from me to pretend I’m as “scholarly” as you are, since when did raping, killing, burning, stealing become exclusively freed-slave things taught to them by Yankee’s?
Seriously. How many times did your mother drop you on your head as a child?
Otteray,
Jospehine learned math from the same teacher who taught her history.
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own math or your own facts. 4,743 / 86 = 55 not five. Almost all of those lynchings were in the south, with Mississippi and Georgia leading the way. 55 lynchings average per year nationwide is not something to brag about. Mississippi averaged seven lynchings per year over those 87 years, with 92% of those lynched being black and 8% white. Any claim the motivations were not racist is disingenuous.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html
One is too many. The reign of terror is hopefully coming to a close, but it is still with us as long as there are incidents like the murders of Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd, Jr.
One other note on the lynchings: of course more would be in the South that is where the blacks were bottled up – where most of them in this country lived; with 3 million of them in the South and 10 in Illinois of course there would be more crimes, more lynchings in the South. And After all wasn’t it the yankee invaders and occupiers that turned them out of their once safe homes and jobs and then taught them it was ok to rape and kill, burn and steal in their communities. The yanks did it and got away with it!
Josephine,
P.S. It looks like you may be as good at math as you are at history.
Josephine,
I have to ask a question: Where did you learn basic arithmetic? By my calculations 5 X 88 = 440. Good grief, woman, get yourself a calculator!
Now for a little division:
4,793 ÷ 88 = 54.46…
Otteray Scribe I suggest you follow your own advice instead of wasting your time on these goofy biased racist bloggers. What do you hope to gain here and what is your aim?
LMAO at-not saying the Pledge of Allegiance makes you a traitor. Didn’t you know that if you click google and search Bellamy you can read the whole fact story about this Marxist who wrote this pledge. I would only say this pledge if I was in the Military, because the government is the boss…………..otherwise the government works for us citizens. Training little kids to cross their heart and pledge their all to the US government is pure nazi-like propagandize.
Tuskegee Institute stats are good, the 4793 in 88 years, about 5 a year, included whites, indians, and others in all states of the USA, and not just black people in the South. Where is your proof of lynching today? you said: there has not been a single year completely free of at least one lynching”
Tuskegee History: The school’s beginnings were indeed inauspicious. At the urging of Lewis Adams, a former SLAVE, and George W. Campbell, a former SLAVE OWNER, the State of Alabama had provided $2,000 for teachers’ salaries but nothing for land, buildings, or equipment. Classes began in a dilapidated church and shanty. Booker T. Washington an ex-slave from West Virginia and a graduate of Hampton Institute, was recruited by George Washington Campbell.
http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/carver/tuskegee.html
Campbell provided funds frequently in the early years and was initial president of the Board of Trustees. Washington, Up From Slavery, Washington Papers, vol. 1, p. 279.
ADAMS, the ex-slave: . Adams could read, write and speak several languages despite having no formal education. He was an experienced tinsmith, harness-maker and shoemaker and Prince Hall Freemason, an acknowledged leader of the African-American community in Macon County, Alabama.
Josephine sez: “Pf course lynching is always part of the beat em up equation – funny tho all the results of universities studies show there were only about 3000 lynchings from 1800 to present in the entire USA.”
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Way to make up your own statistics. 3,000? All universites? Really? Some of the most credible stastics come from Tuskgee Institute and they documented 4,743 in the 86 years between 1882 and 1968. Since then, there has not been a single year completely free of at least one lynching. At least some of the more recent lynchings targed gays, such as Matthew Shepherd.
As for terrorist watch lists, Brent may be in for a surprise next time he tries to buy an airline or train ticket.
“Pf course lynching is always part of the beat em up equation – funny tho all the results of universities studies show there were only about 3000 lynchings from 1800 to present in the entire USA.”
One lynching is one too many, lady.
“You are in DENIAL of the USA’s true history, you just can’t take the pain of truth.”
No, dear. It is you – and the illiterate Brentley – who continue to glaze over our true history, particularly when it came to slavery. Remember, “Gone with the Wind” was fiction, bohunk.
The South lost the war – get the f**k over it.
“claim that physical” = “claim OF physical”
Mike, I don’t think it has occurred to Brentley or his supporters that this blawg is one of the most widely read legal sites on the Internet. This site readership is not just the relatively small number of regular commenters. His comments no doubt have been seen by Congressional staffers, Federal law enforcement and many Mississippi attorneys. Not to mention the SPLC which monitors potential domestic terrorists. He commented that he worked at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution. One has to wonder what the lawyers at the State Attorney Generals’ Office think, especially in view of his claim that physical altercations with inmates.
Brent:
why would you want to revive the confederacy? It was nothing but a bunch of rich landed aristocracy, most of whom received land grants from the king of England for some service or another. It was nothing but a feudalistic society based on slave labor and keeping everyone but the landed gentry in their place.
Otteray,
I understand what AY was saying. IMO, that still doesn’t make one’s racism any more acceptable as far as I’m concerned. Racism is racism. That was the point that I was trying to make.
“its funny that you would use a quote from a slaveowner and revolutionist!!! lol!! yall are too funny”
Brent,
Seriously, Mespo used your own quote which clearly state that you feel you owe no allegiance to the US, but only to a resurrected CSA. I know you deeply hold your beliefs, but can’t you understand how they would be seen by others to be traitorous to the USA?