Letter to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings about Fair Park

I continue to do research into Fair Park.  In this blog posting is the letter I sent him and also the supplementary materials. This was one of six certified letters I sent to Mayor Rawlings. I sent a copy of the letter along with supporting materials to all 14 city council members with proof of mailing.

In the following there is the certified mail postcard, the letter, and then supplemental materials that were sent with the letter.

Click on images to see the entire image.

Mayor Mike Rawlings

Mayor and City Council City of Dallas

1500 Marilla St.

Dallas, TX 75201

Dear Hon. Rawlings:

The Task Force on Confederate monuments had this resolution regarding Fair Park.

2. Recognizing that Fair Park is a local, state, and national landmark, the Task Force recommends that the historic art and architecture of Fair Park which contains symbols of, or references to, the Confederate States of America or persons associated therewith, remain in place as a piece of the history of Texas as presented at Fair Park. However the Task Force recommends that appropriate signage, markers, digital tour guides, public art, educational programming, and/or exhibitions be added as necessary to provide the full context of the Civil War, Reconstruction, “Lost Cause” mythology, the “Jim Crow” era, and the creation of Fair Park for the 1936 Texas Centennial. Historical context should include reference to the many contributions of Mexicans, Tejanos and indigenous peoples made during the colonization of Texas, the Texas Revolution, and during and after the Mexican War leading to the 20^th Century, to also include the participation or exclusion of various communities in those historic events.

First, I would like to point out is that the Cultural Affairs Committee, in their meeting Oct. 12, 2017 were informed of this recommendation, but didn’t vote on it. Is the public to assume that this recommendation of the Task Force on Confederate Monuments has been dropped?

I further would like to review this recommendation. I think it misses the point of Fair Park and the Hall of State which is the representation of a triumphal account of Texas history resulting in the white supremacist state of Texas in 1936. Though not fascistic in its art forms, it is veritably a “Triumph of the Texas Will,” in the art and architecture.  The entire built environment is a message of white supremacy. Leni Riefenstahl would have recognized what Fair Park was about.

The six flags of Texas theme is fundamentally an expression of white supremacy. History in Texas doesn’t start until there are white people present.

In reviewing the murals along the Esplanade in the buildings you see white people as masters of science, technology, crafts, trades, and industry. Nowhere are non-white people present. White people do everything under the patronage of white goddesses in front of the buildings.  A flyer is enclosed with illustrations of this point.

In the Hall of State white people found and build states and societies, African Americans tote bales of hay. Possibly an African American is shown helping to saw down a tree.

The story of Texas to 1936 is the dispossession of Native Americans of the land, the establishment of a society  built by the exploitation of African slaves, the separation from a multi-racial abolitionist Mexico to establish a white supremacist slave Republic with Hispanics and of course slaves making non-white underclasses, then a panicked attempted secession from a United States that was headed towards abolition, then a violent terroristic overthrow of efforts to establish a multi-racial democracy during Reconstruction and then the establishment of a white supremacist Jim Crow Texas.

The omission of Reconstruction from the murals at the Hall of State at Fair Park is the first obvious indicator to look at that these beautiful murals and statues as propaganda and not just pretty things.

The art objects and murals serve to make the, previously mentioned history of Texas, the continuing struggle of a white supremacist society and its triumph in the Jim Crow era in the establishment of a white supremacist state a glorious and beautiful accomplishment of white people. The crushing of non-white humanity is missing. The art defines racial roles in society as given in the opposite page of this flyer.

The literature of the Centennial repeatedly refers to the establishment of an empire, situating the triumph of Texas as the formation of an empire in a world imperial system of white supremacy of European and American empires. The souvenir program for the Cavalcade of Texas performed at the Centennial also portrays Texas history as a triumph in establishing what it calls an “empire.”
 

Cullen F. Thomas, president of the Texas Centennial Commission, the booklet “Commemorating A Hundred Years of Texas History,” makes the racial meaning of “empire” clear when he states about the Centennial, “It will testify that Texans are not unworthy of the incomparable heritage left to them by martyrs and patriots, dying and ready to die, that Texas might become an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth,” establishing that Texas is not just a white triumph, but a triumph of a certain type of white people.  The Dallas Morning News, “750,000 Expected to Attend Centennial during Week,” June I, 1936, pages 1,9, reported that D.W. Griffith, director of the pro-Klan movie, “Birth of a Nation,” both reviewed and improved the Cavalcade to let the public know that Griffith endorsed it.

The Task Force on Confederate monuments recommendation doesn’t see that the entire built environment of Fair Park is in the service of white supremacy, but instead the Task Force sees a something that just needs some corrections and modifications which will likely be implemented as token gestures.  Given the current historical context provided at Fair Park by the Dallas Historical Society I would say they are unqualified to do any contextualization.

I enclose a flyer with some of the Confederate art work to be found at Fair Park. The statue of the Confederacy is particularly insidious because it represents the Confederacy, an attempt to establish a state to preserve slavery and white supremacy, as a thing of heavenly beauty, a white goddess.

The Texas medallion at the hall of state again has all the stages of Texas represented by white women on clouds even though Texas has been a place of multiple nationalities and races. The Confederacy is represented as beautiful, heavenly and bountiful. The medallion as a whole represents this succession establishing white supremacy as the essential core identity of Texas.

The State Fairs at Fair Park have had a Confederate Day each year from sometime in the 1880’s until sometime in the 1990s. On these days neo-Confederate groups have had presentations advancing their ideology.

The fact that Fair Park is given local, state and national landmark status is no excuse to uncritically accept a white supremacist built environment. They might merit these landmark status, but they should merit this as an example of a 1930s white supremacist built environment showing another example in that era of fascism a different way of supporting white supremacy.

The city of Dallas should recognize Fair Park for what it is and act accordingly.

                                                                                    Sincerely Yours,

                                                                                    Edward H. Sebesta

CC:

Office	Name	Address	Address
Mayor Pro Tem	Dwaine Caraway	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
Deputy Mayor Pro Tem	Adam Medrano	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 1 Council Member	Scott Griggs	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 3 Council Member	Casey Thomas II	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 5 Council Member	Rickey D. Callahan	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 6 Council Member	Omar Narvaez	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 7 Council Member	Kevin Felder	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 8 Council Member	Tennell Atkins	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 9 Council Member	Mark Clayton	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 10 Council Member	B. Adam McGough	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 11 Council Member	Lee Kleinman	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 12 Council Member	Sandy Greyson	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 13 Council Member	Jennifer Staubach Gates	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall
District 14 Council Member	Philip T. Kingston	Mayor and City Council	Dallas City Hall

There were two supplemental documents added in with the letter.

FIRST SUPPLEMENTAL DOCUMENT. 

I had to break up the WORD document into image files.  This is the two-sided flyer I handed out.

These two images were page 1 of the flyer.

Page 2 of the flyer.

I am going to have the text first and then an image of the final part.

Summary Review of Fair Park as in White Park

The story of Texas to 1936 is the dispossession of Native Americans of the land, the establishment of a society  built the exploitation of African slaves, the separation from a multi-racial abolitionist Mexico to establish a white supremacist slave Republic with Hispanics and of course slaves making non-white underclasses, then a panicked attempted secession from a United States that was headed towards abolition, then a violent terroristic overthrow of efforts to establish a multi-racial democracy during Reconstruction and then the establishment of a white supremacist Jim Crow Texas.

The omission of Reconstruction from the murals at the Hall of State at Fair Park is the first obvious indicator to look at that these beautiful murals and statues as propaganda and not just pretty.

The art objects and murals serve to make the, previously mentioned history of Texas, the continuing struggle of a white supremacist society and its triumph in the Jim Crow era in the establishment of a white supremacist state a glorious and beautiful accomplishment of white people. The crushing of non-white humanity is missing. The art defines racial roles in society as given in the opposite page of this flyer.

The Cavalcade of Texas which was performed every evening during the Centennial in 1936 also portrayed Texas history as a triumph in the establishment of what one Texas Centennial Commission booklet describe as an “Anglo-Saxon empire,” not only defining a racial triumph but excluding whites who were not Anglo-Saxon and positioning Texas as part of the world imperial system of white supremacy.

It should not be surprising that D.W. Griffith, who directed the notorious pro-Klan movie, Birth of a Nation, was involved in its production.

Fair Parks art powerfully endorsed and encouraged neo-Confederates meeting there in the past and is a continuing text to teach a white nationalist history in the present.

Fair Park is a project of a white supremacist state in the interwar era, it isn’t fascist, but a comparison of similar tactics with fascist and totalitarian art and architecture is warranted. To consider Fair Park as just an object of the decorative arts is banal white nationalism and collusion with its agenda.  To only consider the Confederate art work is to be oblivious.

SECOND SUPPLEMENTAL DOCUMENT

Just because the same images are shown here doesn't mean that the accompanying text is the same. Additional issues are discussed.

Page 1

Page 2

This page is going to be a text and an image. Click on the image to see the figures on the right. I am not finished analyzing the image. I think these three women are supposed to represent the Fates from Greek mythology and one of the goddesses is the Confederacy which is conflated as the South. The following is the text for the image on page 2 of this supplement.

This art work touches upon the Confederacy in two ways. In the image below on the left there is the Confederate army with the Confederate battle flag are heroically portrayed.

The three female figures to the right however have multiple neo-Confederate themes. 1) The Confederacy and the South are represented as identical even though half as many men from the South were in the American army as in the Confederate army.  2) This is a “war between the states” idea since the middle figure is Columbia, a figure representing the United States, as a separate figure from the North and South figures which represent warring factions instead of the Civil War being a Confederacy attempting to secede from the American nation. 3) Slavery, the cause of the Civil War, is nowhere to be seen in this representation of the Civil War.

Page 3

Notice the clouds on which the figures rest. The Confederacy is a being in heaven and hence heavenly.

Page 4 

This is an image of omissions and making the Confederacy as integral to Texas identity.

I am still analyzing Fair Park and doing research. I am still purchasing artifacts. What is really interesting is how the art establishment of Dallas refuses to see what Fair Park is and what the art work is about. Instead they just sort of babble pretty pretty. That is the perniciousness of Fair Park making white supremacy as beautiful.