I am a black South Carolinian. Here’s why I support the Confederate flag.

[thoughtone]

source: Washington Post

Byron Thomas is a senior and student senator at the University of South Carolina, where he is majoring in public relations and political science


Four years ago, I became a national news story after I hung a Confederate flag in my dorm room window at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Controversy wasn’t my intention. For me and many Southerners, the flag celebrates my heritage and regional pride. One of my ancestors, Benjamin Thomas, was a black Confederate cook, and I do not want to turn my back on his service to the South. So I hang the flag in honor of his hard work and dedication to South Carolina during the Civil War.

My Confederate flag isn’t racist; after all, I am black. I’m also an American who strongly believes in the constitutional right to free speech. I fought back against the university’s demand that I take my flag down simply because others view it as a symbol of racism. I fought back against the racist interpretation of the flag and I won.

Now there’s a similar debate about the Confederate flag that flies over South Carolina’s statehouse. In the wake of the Charleston church shooting and pictures of the accused killer posing with the Confederate flag, people have demanded the flag be permanently removed from the statehouse grounds. I deeply respect and honor the nine people whose lives were lost in that church, who died with love in their hearts even though evil was among them. I felt that lowering the flag would give power to the racist terrorist who killed them. For a long time, it bothered me that every time someone raised the Confederate flag, someone else fought to have it removed. Racists hijacked the Confederate flag, and by effectively banning it on college campuses and government grounds, we would allow them to keep it.

But my perspective has changed. In her speech this week calling for state legislators to remove the flag from the statehouse grounds, Gov. Nikki Haley spoke of unity. She equally acknowledged the pain and the pride that the flag holds for South Carolinians. She noted how debate over the flag was hurting the state’s soul. “We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer,” she said. “The fact that it causes pain to so many is enough to move it from the capitol grounds.”

I love the Confederate flag, but I love South Carolina and its citizens more. While the flag’s existence on the statehouse grounds never offended me — and it still does not today — I can’t ignore the deep pain that it causes for many people in my state. I can’t ignore that many can’t love South Carolina as I do until the flag is removed. Continuing to let it fly at our capitol could incite the kind of protests and violence that have erupted in other states that ignore the pain of some of its citizens. I don’t want to see fires, looting and violence in our streets simply because we refuse to let go of symbols of our past. That kind of demonstration would be out of line with the friendly and patriotic character of South Carolina.

Taking down the Confederate flag does not mean supporters of the flag have lost. It’s a message that we refuse to allow the people who use the flag as a symbol of hate to divide us.

We may never completely agree on whether the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism or pride, and whether the Civil War was fought primarily over slavery or state’s rights. But South Carolinians should turn their focus to what we do agree on: that we are citizens of the greatest country in the world and the most patriotic state in the nation. As such, just two banners should fly over our statehouse grounds: the South Carolina flag and the American flag.

Regardless of what happens at the statehouse, I will continue to hang the Confederate flag in my apartment. Because of that decision, I’ve been called “an Uncle Tom” and “a sellout,” and accused of despising my race. Let me be clear: I love the skin that I am in. God gave me my skin color, but he also gave me freedom to think for myself and the right to stand by my beliefs. My skin color should not determine how I think, what I believe and what flags I hang in my home. This process should teach us all to respect the beliefs of others. I hope those who view the Confederate flag as a symbol of hate will keep open minds to those who view it as a symbol of Southern heritage and history, regardless of their race.


<IFRAME height=315 src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fD5JRPV0W7Y" frameBorder=0 width=560 allowfullscreen></IFRAME>

 

[QueEx]

I too am Black and a Southerner but I resent the writer's attempt to make those two characteristics synonymous with ignorance.

 

[SPECTRE1]

There are always feeble minded blacks that will support the white race because they are manipulated into their causes or wanting to be exluded from their persecution/gain favor to achieve a higher status.

Here is a perfect example of somebody through fear or manipulation supporting a cause:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RN3ktXbLzlY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Here not wanting his head placed neatly against his body. This coon not being blacklisted, shot by the police, targeted with surveillance to harass. Realizing that 98% are employed within their companies, getting a decent paying position or even a managerial, money, food to eat.

 

[yureeka9]

Isn't this the same short bus ridin muthafucka that was on campus with the confederate flag hanging out of his window years ago?

 

[Mrfreddygoodbud]

when I see lost souls like this...

one movie comes to mind.....

 

[QueEx]

Leonard Pitts Jr.: Enlightenment on
Confederate flag was long overdue​

By LEONARD PITTS JR.
Miami Herald
June 28, 2015


"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

That's an observation widely credited to Winston Churchill, though it's one he may or may not have ever made. Whoever said it, the truth of the axiom has seldom been more obvious than now, as we watch the fall of the Confederate battle flag. It is too early to say whether this will prove lasting. But the signs certainly point toward a seismic shift.

In South Carolina, where the Confederacy was born, a motion to allow debate on removing the flag from the grounds of the state Capitol passed by a vote of 103-10. Alabama has already removed its flag. Meantime, a number of major retailers, including Amazon, eBay and Arkansas-based Walmart, have announced they will no longer carry the flag. Perhaps most amazing, Valley Forge Flag, a 133-year-old flag maker in Pennsylvania, has said it will no longer manufacture it.

We appear to be on the verge of a long overdue national consensus that this American swastika is unfit for human consumption. And to think: All it took was the blood of nine innocent people.

Ever since 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof shot up Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the ground has been shifting beneath that flag, so beloved of the white, conservative South - especially after images emerged of Roof posing with one. "God help South Carolina if we fail to achieve the goal of removing the flag," said South Carolina senator and presidential aspirant Lindsey Graham last week. He said this just days after telling CNN the flag was "part of who we are."

The suddenness of the change in attitude toward that flag is bracing, reminiscent, in an odd way, of when the Berlin Wall fell: Nobody saw it coming - it happened. That said, it is hard to be wholly invested in cheering what is happening here.

Consider: The Confederate battle flag was not somehow made more racist by Roof's alleged rampage. Notwithstanding claims by Graham and others that it has somehow been misused as a racist symbol by the likes of Roof, the fact is, the thing was used as such from the moment the first thread of the first flag was sewn in support of a treasonous regime that was, to borrow Mississippi's words, "thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery."

The flag was certainly understood as racist - that was the whole point - by those who resurrected it to signal massive resistance to the Civil Rights Movement. It is still understood that way; why else is it ubiquitous at white supremacist rallies?


<SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">So what happened at Emanuel did not change the flag's meaning; it only made that meaning harder to ignore. And while its fall is significant, you have to wonder if it really marks a fundamental change in the mind of the white, conservative South. Particularly since you can't turn around in Dixie without running into some road, bridge, statue or park honoring some individual who took up arms against the U.S. government in the name of perpetuating slavery - or without meeting someone eager to rationalize that, hiding behind abstracts like "honor" and "duty" to avoid admitting what the Confederacy really was.</span>


<SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">The tragedy at Emanuel has forced a moment of clarity into this fog of cognitive dissonance.</span> In days to come, we'll see just how much that's worth in terms of real change. Because at some point, the people of the white, conservative South must themselves take responsibility for their own racial education, for facing - and growing from - the truth about their beloved Confederacy.

Consider that it took an act of mass murder before they were willing to reckon honestly with their flag and its meaning. Yes, one is pleased to see that finally come to pass.

But the price of enlightenment seems awfully high.


ABOUT THE WRITER

Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 3511 N.W. 91 Avenue, Doral, Fla. 33172. Readers may write to him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.​

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/28/271437/leonard-pitts-jr-enlightenment.html#storylink=cpy

 

[muckraker10021]

We all know that there have always been a small amount of coons, snitches, willfully ignorant, "uncle tom", subservient, broken, scared, self-hating, white-supremacist supporting, African-Americans embedded in the Black community, akin to bed bugs, unseen but embedded in a mattress.

When you study the history of Black resistance against white supremacy in America since 1619, the hundreds of slave uprisings against the torturous slave labor concentration camps that most Black Americans don't even know about, and the famous Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey revolts - you will learn that many rebellions failed due to a 'snitch', a scared cowardly slave who ran to 'massa' and betrayed the uprising.

Byron Thomas is a buffoon, an educated fool; yes "educated fool" is an oxymoron, but that is what he is.

I'm sure Mr. Thomas can read on a college level and his vision is not impaired, but, he is afraid of confronting the easily obtained facts about 350 years of white supremacy in AmeriKKKa and what the confederate flag stands for. His mentality is the same as the house ****** who ran to 'massa' and told him about an upcoming slave revolt.

THE CIVIL WAR
What This Cruel War Was Over

The Meaning Of The Confederate Flag Is
Best Discerned In The Words Of Those Who Bore It
READ: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/

<hr noshade color="#170B3B" size="6"></hr>




When the March 7, 1965 bloody Sunday SELMA march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge led by John Lewis and others occurred; the white men pictured below were waiting for them on the other side of the bridge.

<img src="http://s6.postimg.org/g2j5vkcf5/dixie_flag_Selma_march_3_65_1.jpg" width="650">

 

[thoughtone]

I too am Black and a Southerner but I resent the writer's attempt to make those two characteristics synonymous with ignorance.

The difference is, you are Black and a Southerner. He is Black, Southern and a REPUBLICAN!

 

[Mrfreddygoodbud]

His next piece is going to be titled..

I am black and a clinically retarded Southerner

here is why I support lynching for uppity negros!!

 

[SPECTRE1]

It was not slavery that caused the Civil War. It was the possibility of blacks that would be free with equal political power as whites voting, going to school, and owning property. In many states that outnumbered whites.

It was a fear of having a black governor or other political officials in power, deciding legislation. Paying slaves a wage was not an issue. If you look at the action taken afterwards you can see this is the case with disenfranchisment, property rights, and segregation.

 

[thoughtone]

 

[silentking]

Fuck this nigga B


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[grownazzblakman]

source: Washington Post

Byron Thomas is a senior and student senator at the University of South Carolina, where he is majoring in public relations and political science

Four years ago, I became a national news story after I hung a Confederate flag in my dorm room window at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Controversy wasn’t my intention. For me and many Southerners, the flag celebrates my heritage and regional pride. One of my ancestors, Benjamin Thomas, was a black Confederate cook, and I do not want to turn my back on his service to the South. So I hang the flag in honor of his hard work and dedication to South Carolina during the Civil War.

TRANSLATION:

"I never bothered to learn the TRUE meaning of the Confederate flag, or what it really represents.... Because if the South had actually won the Civil War.... I wouldn't even be allowed to read or write these very words... BY LAW.

Even though nowadays there's this new thing called 'Google' that could have taught even more shit about the history of its creation, but I don't really care about the rest of them facts.

See, I only read up to the part where it said that my distant Uncle was FORCED AGAINST HIS WILL to carry the Confederate Flag in his back pocket while he cooked meals for the men who were LITERALLY fighting to keep him & his entire bloodline in shackles for the rest of their days (including me)... and I stopped reading right there... and just knew I had to 'rep' his colors to show my support of his enslavement."

 

[thoughtone]

 

[thoughtone]

This is what the Tea Party does to Black people.

<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PWRLzKQTzow" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x7ndcZk6nSg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[muckraker10021]

It was not slavery that caused the Civil War. It was the possibility of blacks that would be free with equal political power as whites voting, going to school, and owning property. In many states that outnumbered whites.

It was a fear of having a black governor or other political officials in power, deciding legislation. Paying slaves a wage was not an issue. If you look at the action taken afterwards you can see this is the case with disenfranchisment, property rights, and segregation.

You are 1000% wrong!
There is no reason for you to make such an error. The Southern white men who declared war on the United States of America when they seceded and formed the Confederacy left no doubt as to why the started the 'Civil War'. It was about SLAVERY. They wanted to preserve SLAVERY forever.

The elite white Southern men who controlled the political, economic and military apparatus of the slave South, the "Slaveocracy" - they wrote down on paper and distributed worldwide the reason why they declared war on the United States of America. That reason was SLAVERY.

The slaves were worth $$$$$ more than the land that the slave labor death camps were located on. These racist white men did not view their African slaves as human beings, but as beast-of-burden who "Biblically" were marked with The Curse of Cain and the Mark of Cain

I posted the post below on August 2012

http://www.bgol.us/board/showpost.php?p=11933374&postcount=43

Was the Civil War actually about slavery?

Anyone, especially a Black American, who in this year of 2012 — is still befuddled as to the cause of the U.S. civil war, is either deliberately ignorant, intellectually incurious or suffering from cognitive dissonance. There is <b>NO </b> excuse in this internet age not to know why the Southern States succeeded and the Civil War began. It had <b>NOTHING to do with “states rights”</b> — that is a propaganda phrase used by unrepentant confederate sympathizing Southerners who want to mask the reality that their forbearers went to war to preserve the captivity and oppression of African slaves; human beings who their ancestors viewed as non-humans.

To cut through and smother all the lies and propaganda put forth by todays revisionist confederate historians and their bloviating allies in the RepubliKlan noise machine, all we have to do is to go to the actual written documents that the Confederate states submitted to the world when they announced their succession from the United States of America.
<blockquote>
<center>Mississippi
"Journal of the State Convention" ( 1861) </center>
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
<span style="background-color:yellow"><b>
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
</b></span>
That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

<center>Georgia
"Journal of the State Convention" ( 1861) </center>
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Georgia from the Federal Union.


The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation. Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. <b>The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party....</b>

<b>....Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs. The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why?</b>

<span style="background-color:yellow"><b>
Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere;</b></span> because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.

<center>Texas
"Journal of the State Convention" ( 1861) </center>
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Texas from the Federal Union.

(TEXAS) she was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. <span style="background-color:yellow"><b>She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as Negro Slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy.</b></span> Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, <span style="background-color:yellow"><b>based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States. </b></span>



</blockquote>


For you peeps who actually still read non-fiction longer than 300 words, in this twitter age, and are interested in "reality-based" irrefutable historical information, the links below will take you to the actual text of the Southern confederacy succession documents which the excerpts above are taken from along with other historical documents. The historical revisionists who you see on corporate television, attempting to sanitize what really happened in the America of the 1850’s -1860’s are confident that the overwhelming majority of viewers are too intellectually lazy to dig out the real facts and reject their propaganda.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140222045112/http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

​

 

[thoughtone]

You are 1000% wrong!

The historical revisionists who you see on corporate television, attempting to sanitize what really happened in the America of the 1850’s -1860’s are confident that the overwhelming majority of viewers are too intellectually lazy to dig out the real facts and reject their propaganda.

I find it telling that the generation (the so called hip hop generation) that has proudly and matter-of-factually proclaimed that using n*gg*er in their music, their so called art and their every day vernacular are the most ignorant of their history and the history of the roots of racism.

They seem to constantly be blind to the facts that racism is an economic means to an end. Most likely due to the fact that the post Reagan era generations have adopted materialism and the so called "free market" as their religion.

They have accepted the capitalist argument of winners and loser and have resigned themselves to accepting that those of African decent are the losers.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

I too am Black and a Southerner but I resent the writer's attempt to make those two characteristics synonymous with ignorance.

Same.


So his ancestor was a cook? So he was a slave. That's his "service" to the South?
What an ignorant bastard.


btw
COINTELPRO and muckraker are both right. It was about slavery but part of that was the complete understanding that if they freed the slaves, voting rights and electoral power were next and that would have changed the region forever.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

I find it telling that the generation (the so called hip hop generation) that has proudly and matter-of-factually proclaimed that using n*gg*er in their music, their so called art and their every day vernacular are the most ignorant of their history and the history of the roots of racism.

They seem to constantly be blind to the facts that racism is an economic means to an end. Most likely due to the fact that the post Reagan era generations have adopted materialism and the so called "free market" as their religion.

They have accepted the capitalist argument of winners and loser and have resigned themselves to accepting that those of African decent are the losers.

While I don't see it like that at all, if there is a failure with the younger generation, it's the fault of their parents.

 

[thoughtone]

While I don't see it like that at all, if there is a failure with the younger generation, it's the fault of their parents.

You can blame all ills on the previous generations.

With the access to information easier than it has ever been, there are no excuses.

People can seek out any ridiculous celebrity information, yet most don't even know who their local city or county representatives are or when or how to vote, much less know what issues are one the local and national ballots.

People need to grow up and take ownership.

When you are 18, you are responsible for your own fate, not your parents!

 

[Upgrade Dave]

You can blame all ills on the previous generations.

With the access to information easier than it has ever been, there are no excuses.

People can seek out any ridiculous celebrity information, yet most don't even know who their local city or county representatives are or when or how to vote, much less know what issues are one the local and national ballots.

People need to grow up and take ownership.

When you are 18, you are responsible for your own fate, not your parents!

I don't know what you're seeing.
If you look at this new generation of activists, they're all young, some very young. It's not a bunch of 50-60 yr olds out there leading marches and demonstrations and economic boycotts. It's the "hip-hop generation" doing it.

But your life doesn't start at 18. Someone has raised you and instilled certain values in you for the most impressionable time of your life.
I took my son to the polls with me when I voted and now that he's 18, I remind him and his friends of the same age to register and vote. That's what we're supposed to do.

 

[thoughtone]

I don't know what you're seeing.
If you look at this new generation of activists, they're all young, some very young. It's not a bunch of 50-60 yr olds out there leading marches and demonstrations and economic boycotts. It's the "hip-hop generation" doing it.

But your life doesn't start at 18. Someone has raised you and instilled certain values in you for the most impressionable time of your life.
I took my son to the polls with me when I voted and now that he's 18, I remind him and his friends of the same age to register and vote. That's what we're supposed to do.

It's not a bunch of 50-60 yr olds out there leading marches and demonstrations and economic boycotts. It's the "hip-hop generation" doing it.

Ferguson Activists 2014. I see more gray heads than there needs to be.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Ferguson Activists 2014. I see more gray heads than there needs to be.

What does that even mean? There isn't a quota of young people and old heads.
Looks like a big crowd with everyone represented.

Edit:
And let's be clear

walking in the front doesn't make you a "leader". Doing the day to day organizing and rallying on the ground is where the leaders are made.

 

[muckraker10021]

More facts about why the civil war started & the confederate flag



June 30, 2015

.....Alexander Stephens took to the stage at the old Athenaeum in Savannah to deliver a speech that would justify the praise lauded on him in easier days by the newly elected President of the United States (Abraham Lincoln) and to outline in no uncertain terms the causes and conditions that had led the country to the brink of civil war. It was March 21st when Stephens spoke—the first full day of a spring that both the speaker and the captive audience filling the Athenaeum beyond capacity surely felt was being mirrored in the birth of their new nation, the Confederate States of America.

When Stephens, who had just been elected as the vice president of this new—yet unrecognized—nation, spoke to the people of Georgia that night, he did so in the uneasy limbo that lay between the formation of the Confederacy and the hostilities at Fort Sumter that would signal the start of the Civil War. Just 10 days earlier Stephens and other members of the Confederate brain trust had put the final touches on the country's constitution and the newly elected vice president took it upon himself to explain to his people the raison d'etre of the Confederacy. What followed was the now infamous Cornerstone Speech.

The Cornerstone Speech got its name from a line in Stephens's oratory that left no doubt as to why the states of the lower South had seceded. After describing slavery as, “the immediate cause of [this] late rupture and present revolution”, and going on a long diatribe about why Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers were fundamentally wrong in their presumption that the enslavement of African Americans was a moral and political evil that would eventually fade away, Stephens told the assembled crowd that,

<span style="background-color: #FFFF00">
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”</span>
​

There is no ambiguity in such a statement. Just as there is no ambiguity when Mississippi's Declaration of Secession states that, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world” or when Jefferson Davis, in his farewell speech to Congress, proclaims that his home state is leaving the Union because “the theory that all men are created free and equal [has] made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions.” Any man or woman who endeavors to argue that anything other than slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War is simply engaging in that magical thinking promulgated after the fact by groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy in order to create a narrative that not only lionizes the actions of the Confederate soldier, but serves as a tool to promote the aims of white supremacy.....

<span style="background-color: #FFFF00">
.....Towards the end of his Cornerstone Speech, Alexander Stephens remarked that, “With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.” That, my friends, is what the Confederate flag represents. </span>
​

READ the entire article HEREhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...te-Flag-Was-Divorced-From-Slavery-Segregation


<hr noshade color="#660033" size="8"></hr>

 

[thoughtone]

Not sure if anyone will read this muckraker10021.

The facts are clear.

 

[QueEx]

So his ancestor was a cook? So he was a slave. That's his "service" to the South?
What an ignorant bastard.


btw
COINTELPRO and muckraker are both right. It was about slavery but part of that was the complete understanding that if they freed the slaves, voting rights and electoral power were next and that would have changed the region forever.

Been busy lately and missed your comments. I agree in toto -- it was about slavery.

 

[thoughtone]

No slavery, no Civil War!

 

[SPECTRE1]

From 1868 on, campaigns and elections were surrounded by violence as white insurgents and paramilitary tried to suppress the black vote, and fraud was rampant. Many Congressional elections in the South were contested. Even states with majority African-American population often elected only one or two African-American representatives to Congress. Exceptions included South Carolina; at the end of Reconstruction, four of its five Congressmen were African American.


In 1872, Grant was the first American President to legally recognize an African-American governor, P. B. S. Pinchback of Louisiana.


African Americans in Office 1870–1876

State Legislator 633
Senators 2
Congressmen 15

 

[RUDY RAYYY MO]

Ignorant muthafucka, the creator of the flag states that it was created as a symbol of white supremacy http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07...symbol-white-supremacy-southern-heritage.html

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

[thoughtone]

 

[SPECTRE1]

Nearly a decade later, even as he edited the draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in August of 1862, Lincoln hosted a delegation of freed slaves at the White House in the hopes of getting their support on a plan for colonization in Central America. Given the “differences” between the two races and the hostile attitudes of whites towards blacks, Lincoln argued, it would be “better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” Lincoln’s support of colonization provoked great anger among black leaders and abolitionists, who argued that African-Americans were as much natives of the country as whites, and thus deserved the same rights. After he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln never again publicly mentioned colonization, and a mention of it in an earlier draft was deleted by the time the final proclamation was issued in January 1863.

Here we had an opportunity to be truly free, our own land away from the hell hole of the U.S. We need to find out these fools names.

The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free all of the slaves.
Since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure, it didn’t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln also exempted selected areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty of whites in those states. In practice, then, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t immediately free a single slave, as the only places it applied were places where the federal government had no control—the Southern states currently fighting against the Union.

Freeing slaves was a way to punish those rebelling against the Union. It was not about doing the right thing. I am taking away your property as punishment. If you lived in border slaves states that was apart of the Union, you were not free

 

[thoughtone]

The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free all of the slaves.

You got that right!

Native Americans owned African Americans as slaves. In particularly Cherokees. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't free those people held in bondage, because they were considered a separate nation and weren't subjected to the laws of the United States.

Remember that the next time you sympathize with the plight of so called native Americans!


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cwBTZe0VVLg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[QueEx]

<div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:63%; padding-bottom:-webkit-calc(56.25% + 50px); padding-bottom:calc(56.25% + 50px); height: 0;"><iframe style="position:absolute; width: 100%; height: 100%;" src="http://www.today.com/offsite/will-confederate-flag-come-down-in-south-carolina-477909059967" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe></div>

 

[QueEx]

The South Carolina Senate gave final approval Tuesday to a bill
removing the Confederate flag from a pole in front of the Statehouse,
sending the proposal to the House, where it faces a less certain future.

<iframe width="635" height="500" src="http://player.theplatform.com/p/2E2eJC/nbcNewsOffsite?guid=tdy_mor_flag_150708" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe>


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GqH21LEmfbQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


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[QueEx]

It Goes.

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