Contributing Chapter to book on the Texas Teaching Standards

I have been working very hard the last 8 months on completing a chapter for a book on the new and notorious Texas teaching standards. I was assigned to work on the neo-Confederate elements in the standards.

Last weekend I completed the revisions to the chapter and last Monday our editor sent the whole manuscript to the publisher. The chapter still goes to a reader and will come back for further revisions, but these will be minor revisions, work on footnotes, etc. My editor has been very happy with the chapter.

The working title for the volume is currently Social Studies Circus: Politics and Education in Texas and the Nation. The publisher is Palgrave Macmillan. We hope to have the volume published in time for the April 2012 American Educational Research Association conference.

Hopefully, my chapter on the Civil War and Reconstruction on the new extreme right Texas teaching standards will be a point of departure to a larger general discussion of how the Civil War and Reconstruction is taught in America. More immediatly it should help people understand how crazy the Texas State Board of Education teaching standards are and block their implementation.

Additionally, I am going to partner with an educational expert to write up lesson plans for the Civil War and Reconstruction for school teachers. I plan to sell the plans for 99 cents on Amazon.com. It will be very inexpensive for teachers.

It is sort of a relief to have gotten the Chapter done. I had been working hard at work and on two writing projects. Now I can concentrate on the Museum of the Confederacy paper. Euan Hague has been doing editorial work and the first two installments are nearly completed. I will be going over Euan's editorial inputs today and have the next to final version sent back tomorrow, Sunday evening and off to the publisher early this week.

"Religious Dispatches" carries article about neo-Confederate Christianity

The article by Sarah Posner is online at:

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4858/neo-confederates_and_the_revival_of_%E2%80%9Ctheological_war%E2%80%9D_for_the_%E2%80%9Cchristian_nation%E2%80%9D/

The paper by Euan Hague and me referred to in the article is online at:

http://gis.depaul.edu/ehague/Articles/PUBLISHED%20CRAS%20ARTICLE.pdf

The word is getting out about the neo-Confederate movement.

www.salon.com runs article about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Confederate past

The online news and commentary website http://www.salon.com/ has an article on Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Confederate past online at:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/07/13/rick_perry_sons_of_confederate_veterans

I supplied the documentation for the story. The letter to Rick Perry asking him to oppose a Confederate license plate for the Sons of Confederate Veterans wasn't mentioned. You can read the letter online at the History News Network at this link:

http://hnn.us/articles/140292.html

To find out what the views of all the presidential candidates regarding the Confederacy and neo-Confederacy we are going to be sending them a questionnaire. We are still writing some background papers which we hope to have completed in July. You can read the questionnaire at:
http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2010/10/questionnaire-for-2012-presidential_15.html

We have a paper on the neo-Confederate issues that are coming up in mainstream politics, a paper on the presidents and the Confederacy, and we have a lengthy background paper on the neo-Confederate movement. These will help provide background information to journalists.

However, right now we are going to focus on the letter to Rick Perry.

History News Network Publishes Letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry

The History News Network has put online the letter to Rick Perry asking him to oppose Confederate license plates. You can read it at:

http://hnn.us/articles/140292.html

Reader co-signatures for the letter are being solicited in the History News Network introduction to the letter.

This letter campaign is being tracked on the blog http://confederatelicenseplate.blogspot.com/.

Letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry asking him to oppose the proposed Sons of Confederate Veterans license plate.

We have written a letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry asking him to oppose a proposed Sons of Confederate license plate.

We are currently gathering signatures. We have a blog about the letter and the campaign at:

http://confederatelicenseplate.blogspot.com/

One significant online media is going to have the letter online July 4th. We will have more details then.

Origin of Memorial Day by David W. Blight

There is this very interesting article by David W. Blight about the first memorial day in Charleston, South Carolina. I strongly recommend reading it. It is a very powerful essay which I think will have important ramifications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30blight.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

The following is a quote from the story:

After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery.They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

The symbolic power of this Low Country planter aristocracy’s bastion was not lost on the freedpeople, who then, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the
United States never saw before.”

The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

So what is Obama doing today, sending a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Monument.

The History News Network did run the 2009 letter today, but not the 2010 or 2011 letters. http://hnn.us/articles/12140.html.

I suggest people read Blight's essay in the New York Times then read our letters to Obama at: http://arlingtonconfederatemonument.blogspot.com/.

Postings on neo-Confederate homophobia in new blog. UPDATED

I have started a blog to reach out to the Lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender communities about neo-Confederate homophobia at this blog.

http://neo-confederatehomophobia.blogspot.com/

It will happen that I will read about some homophobe and recognize their involvement or connection to neo-Confederacy and I need some convenient way to make this information available.

Also there are those in the LGBT community who have "Gone With the Wind" attitudes towards the Confederacy and I think with education will give up the Confederacy.

UPDATE: 5/28/11

I have gotten three different posts published on the blog now. One documents neo-Confederacy in the conservative wing of the Anglican church in the United States.

Incidentally, if you see something of interest for this new blog let me know.

"How the Lost Cause poisoned our history books," by Joan Waugh.

Excellent article about President Grant at:

http://www.salon.com/books/history/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/05/01/joan_waugh_grant

Favorable review in the Tennessee Historical Commission publication "The Courier."

The review of "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader" is at this link:

http://www.tn.gov/environment/hist/pdf/CourierFeb11.pdf

The review is on page 7 of the publication, right most column.

Manuscript on the Museum of the Confederacy in the editing phase

I have a publisher for an essay on the Museum of the Confederacy. I have extensive records on the Museum of the Confederacy going back to the early 1990s. When you index the Southern Partisan, it is amazing what you will find you have indexed. Similarly when you have the Confederate Veteran and UDC Magazine indexed.

I am writing it for a major African American website for scholars, activists, intellectuals, etc. They have expressed an interest. There is a lot of material on the Museum of the Confederacy so my essay is over 26,000 words long so the editing is going to take some time. I had planned on just 5-6,000 words, but as I went through my records I really did come across a lot of interesting material.

UPDATE:

The free guest links for all four installments of the article published on Black Commentator are in the blog posting http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html

Winter Institute of the Univ. of Mississippi has link to ConfederatePastPresent

If you go to either the main page of the Winter Institute here, http://www.winterinstitute.org and this page also. http://www.winterinstitute.org/pages/academic.htm. I think the website www.confederatepastpresent.org will receive a whole new audience. I will have to get more material online this coming summer after I get a couple writing assignments done.

Article on Jefferson Davis Highway published by Cambridge University Press

The article, "The Jefferson Davis Highway: Contesting the Confederacy in the Pacific Northwest," has been published by the Journal of American Studies at Cambridge University Press. The link to the abstract is:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8238353&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0021875811000089

We have another lengthy paper on the Jefferson Davis Highway which we hope to get published elsewhere.

My tentative title for the book is, "The Lost Highway to White Supremacy."

"Civil War News" Praises "Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader."

Civil War News, one of the major, if not the major Civil War publication, in their book review praises the "Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader." You can read the review at this link:

http://www.civilwarnews.com/reviews/2011br/febmar/confedreader-sebesta-b021105.html

A quote from Edward H. Bonekemper III:

"In the same vein, this book contains documents and arguments reflecting a “neo-Confederate” ideology of racism that emerged during Reconstruction, came to the fore during the “Nadir,” and continued to affect Americans’ thinking at least through the civil rights movement and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

This thought-provoking tome should be required reading for all teachers of American and Civil War history. Its contents reflect a long and shameful history of racism in America — a major reason for continuing controversies about the causes, nature and impacts of the Civil War."

James Loewen is co-signer for 2011 Letter to the President

James Loewen is a co-signer for the 2011 Letter to the President.

Co-signatures are coming in.

Michael Phillips, co-signer of Letter to Obama quoted in "Texas Observer"

Michael Phillips, a co-signer of the Letter to Obama, is quoted at this article.

http://www.texasobserver.org/culture/seceding-from-history

It is about neo-Confederate white washing of Civil War history. Good article.

Incidentally, the link to the 2011 Letter to Obama is the following:

http://arlingtonconfederatemonument.blogspot.com/

Manisha Sinha "New York Times" article, "The Strange Victory of the Palmetto State," about SC's secessionism's eventual triumph.

Manisha Sinha, a co-signer of the 2009, 2010, and 2011 letters to Obama to not send a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Monument has an article recently published in the New York Times, titled, "The Strange Victory of the Palmetto State." It is about how South Carolina's advocacy of secession for decades did not get much support outside South Carolina, but eventually it had the support many of the slave states and South Carolina eventually triumphed.

The link to the article is here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/the-strange-victory-of-the-palmetto-state/?partner=rss&emc=rss

2011 Letter to President Barack Obama Concerning the Arlington Confederate Monument Now Online

The 2011 Letter to President Obama concerning federal government support of neo-Confederacy and sending a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Monument is online at:

http://arlingtonconfederatemonument.blogspot.com/2011/02/2011-letter-to-president-barak-obama.html

The racism of the persons who the UDC names its awards to the U.S. Military service academy students

.

The following was posted at the Arlington Confederate Monument Report.

The following is about the racism of the individuals who the UDC names the awards that they give to the U.S. Military service academy students.

Wade Hampton, was the leader of the Red Shirts who conducted a violent and successful campaign to restore white supremacy in South Carolina ending the multiracial democracy of Reconstruction. Wade Hampton is a hero to the UDC South Carolina Division precisely because he restored white supremacy to South Carolina and overthrew Reconstruction.[i]

The UDC South Carolina Division issued a publication with the cover, “United Daughters of the Confederacy, South Carolina Division: Golden Anniversary 1896-1946.” In it on page 13 is an article titled, “Oakley Park, Edgefield’s Red Shirt Shrine.” Oakley Park is an old Plantation house which the South Carolina UDC division had decided in October 1944 to restore. The importance of this house for restoration is stated in the article, “Oakley Park was the home of General Martin Witherspoon Gary, who with his Red Shirts, in 1876, did so much to restore white supremacy in South Carolina.”

The article explains further:

The “Red Shirts” were largely ex-Confederate soldiers under the leadership of their one-time military commanders. Forbidden to organize into military companies and regarding the gray uniform of the Confederacy as inappropriate, the men arrayed themselves in red shirts and formed mounted bands which patrolled the State in the interest of the Democratic nominee for Governor, which was Hampton, against the Republican nominee, Chamberlain. “A white man’s government”, they said. Then followed a long struggle for control. The Republicans held the State House, and were sustained by United States troops. Conditions were desperate! The Democrats were determined to get the government back into the hands of the white people.

The Red Shirts, who gathered at Oakley Park and rode out from there were a great factor in achieving this, and in the election of Hampton in 1876, and thus was accomplished the overthrow of that “blackest abomination” – The Radical Government of South Carolina.”

In the 21st century the UDC continues to promote the “Red Shirt Shrine,” the UDC run Oakley Park Museum in Edgefield, South Carolina. In the June/July 2001 issue of UDC Magazine, the cover illustration is a photo of the Oakley Park plantation house for an article in the issue about it. .[i] The UDC raised money for this museum in the 1940s and has promoted them as heroes over the years, including the aforementioned Wade Hampton sabre award.

Raphael Semmes erected a tombstone in Mexico with the inscription “In memoriam of Abraham Lincoln, President of the late United States, who died of nigger on the brain, 1st January 1863,” is somehow honored with an award given to an exemplary cadet of the U.S. Coast Guard academy.

Professor Gerald Horne, in his book, “The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade,” discusses the obsessive racism of Semmes. Brazilian society displeased Semmes because of racial antipathies. Horne quotes Semmes in his rejection of post-war colonization of Brazil as follows:

‘The effete Portuguese race,’ he sputtered, ‘has been ingrafted [sic]upon a stupid, stolid Indian stock in that country … this might be a suitable field enough for the New England schoolma’am and carpet-bagger, but no Southern gentleman should think of mixing his blood or casting his lot with such a race of people.’

Horne explains that while Semmes, as a Confederate naval officer during the Civil War, was hosted and feted by Brazilian society he was obsessed with their racial composition. Horne writes:

He was disgusted with “amalgamation” in Brazil, thinking it provided a poor example for North America, as it was leading to “mongrel set of curs” that would “cover the whole land.” He was more pleased with South Africa where “the African has met the usual fate of the savage, when he comes in contact with civilized man. He had been thrust aside, and was only to be seen as a straggler and stranger in his native land.” As he saw it, “the inhabitants of the Cape Colony seemed to resemble our own people” in their penchant for white supremacy.

Horne also questions Semmes being considered a hero and writes:

The “damage done by Raphael Semmes to the commerce of the United States” amounted to “ten millions of dollars.” Yet despite this mayhem he inflicted on the U.S. during the course of his treasonous revolt, after the war his “statue” was placed prominently on “Mobile’s busiest thoroughfare, standing near the sea he so long loved and dominated.”[ii]

Following the defeat of the Confederacy, Matthew Fontaine Maury attempted to recreate the slave-era Old South in Mexico. As noted by Gaines M. Foster in his book, “Ghosts of the Confederacy,” Maury and his comrades planned to:

Bring with them a proportional number of “negro skilled laborers in agriculture” who would enter the country as “peons” – a concession that caused Maury to consider himself an abolitionist. Together, the best families and faithful peons would build a “New Virginia” in a part of Mexico that reminded Maury of the Valley of the Shenandoah.[iii]

Maury also worked at length for a scheme to colonize the Amazon basin of Brazil with African- American slaves. Maury’s contempt for Brazilians and his plans for this slave expansion are shown in these excerpts in a letter of instruction to Herndon who he sent to Brazil as a scout for his scheme:

Who shall people the Great Valley of this Mighty Amazon? Shall it be peopled with an imbecile and an indolent people or by a go ahead race that has energy and enterprise equal to subdue the forest and to develop and bring forth the vast resources that lie hidden here?

… That valley is to [be] the safety valve for our Southern States, when they become over-populated with slaves, the African Slave Trade will be stopped, and they will send their slaves to the Amazon. Just as the Mississippi Valley has been the escape valve for the slaves of the Northern, now free, States, so will the Amazon be to that of the Mississippi.[iv]

To further promote this expansion of slavery Maury resorted to the fear mongering of race war, in De Bow’s Review in an article advocating the transfer of African American slaves to the Amazon.[v]

A columnist in the UDC Magazine in 1958 writing about an article praising Maury, lists this as an example of Maury accomplished intellect. Further the columnist quotes Maury writing to his cousin that transferring African American slaves to the Amazon “…would be relieving our own country of the slaves, it would be hastening the time of our deliverance, and if it would be putting off indefinitely, the horrows [sic] of that war of races, which without an escape is surely to come."[vi]

Despite his iconic status in the South, Robert E. Lee was a racist who worked against African Americans after the Civil War. His attitudes are best described by his son Robert E. Lee Jr. The 1904 book Recollections and Letters of General Lee, written by his son, R.E. Lee, Jr., includes the following remark by General Lee:

I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving.

Robert E. Lee wrote the notorious White Sulphur Manifesto to undermine and oppose the Republican Party civil rights policies in the presidential election of 1868. In this letter Lee wrote:

It is true that the people of the South, in common with a large majority of the people of the North and West, are, for obvious reasons, inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would place the political power of the country in the hands of the negro race. But this opposition springs from no feeling of enmity, but from a deep-seated conviction that, at present, the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power. They would inevitably become the victims of demagogues, who, for selfish purposes, would mislead them to the serious injury of the public.

At the Congressional hearings on Reconstruction Lee expressed support of slavery and believing that Virginia would be better off without African Americans.[vii]


[i] “United Daughters of the Confederacy, South Carolina Division: Golden Anniversary 1896-1946,” no author. Also, Harris, Donna, “Oakley Park: Only Shrine of its Kind,” page 23-24, United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, Vol. 64 No. 6, June/July 2001.
[ii] Gerald Horne, “The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade,” pp. 190-91, New York University Press, New York, 2007.
[iii] Foster, Gaines M., “Ghosts of the Confederacy,” page 16, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.
[iv] Gerald Horne, “The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade,” pp. 113-16, New York University Press, New York, 2007. Maury’s plan is discussed from page 112 to 127.
[v] The fact must be obvious to the far-reaching minds of our statesmen, that unless some means of relief be devised, some channel afforded, by which the South can, when the time comes, get rid of the excess of her slave population, that she will be ultimately found, with regard to this institution, in the predicament of the man with the wolf by the ears—too dangerous to hold on any longer, and equally dangerous to let go.

To our mind, the event is as certain to happen as any event is [sic] which dependents on the contingencies of the future, viz.: that unless means be devised for gradually relieving the slave states from the undue pressure of this class upon them—unless some way be opened by which they may be rid of their surplus black population,—the time will come—it may not be in the next nor in the succeeding generation—but, sooner or later, come it will, and come it must—when the two races will join in the death struggle for the mastery,” from Matthew Fontaine Maury, “Direct Foreign Trade of the South,” De Bow’s Review, Vol. 12 No. 2 Feb. 1852, pp. 147.
[vi] Col. John C. Lawton, “Matthew Fontaine Maury,” UDC Magazine, Vol. 21 No. 3, March 1958, pp. 6-7, 10, 17.
[vii] Robert E. Lee, “Memoranda on the Civil War,” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. 36 No. 4, August. 1888, 600-01 for his views on slavery; ---, Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction at the First Session Thirty-Ninth Congress, (Washington: GPO, 1866), 135-36 for his views of ridding Virginia of African Americans.

Information on the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their support of white supremacy posted at the Arlington Confederate Monument Report blog

The link to the post is:

http://arlingtonconfederatemonument.blogspot.com/2011/02/united-daughters-of-confederacy-and.html

The draft of the letter to Obama is being worked on. We have the too long letter and we are shortening it. However, a lot of material in the letter is good back ground information.

2011 Letter to the President concerning the Arlington Confederate Monument almost ready.

The letter is going through a final review for small errors. I hope to have it up at http://arlingtonconfederatemonument.blogspot.com/ by Sunday night.

I think we have much better prospects this year than last year.