Helped with this CNN story about Barletta.

This is the article.

I only contributed part of the story. Wayne Lutton's speaking to the Council of Conservative Citizens and Vinson being a founding member of the League of the South.

Vinson had some really racist stuff that he wrote for the Southern Patriot, publication of the League of the South, but the article didn't cover that. Since the public doesn't know what Chronicles Magazine is, we didn't even pursue that as an item.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/25/politics/kfile-lou-barletta-american-free-press/index.html

This is the kind shout out that Kaczynski did.

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/956702771797004289

I indexed the material which I provided in the 1990s and after all these years it has found a purpose. I play a long game fighting neo-Confederates.

I worked in Mountain Top on job assignment from 2013 to 2017 and a lot of people their were a little off on the idea of Hispanics being there. One of my manager's wife didn't want her daughter to learn Spanish even though the daughter wanted to. The obvious advantage to learning Spanish when living in the Western Hemisphere I think would be well obvious. The manager's wife felt that "they" should learn English. Of course it is always good to learn the language of the majority of the people where you live, I think learning Spanish is a very useful thing.

I met a Dominican there and asked right out why did he come to Hazleton instead of some place else. Did his people get lost? Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA) is a depressed place with a declining population in the cities and though beautiful in many ways could be depressing also with the obvious signs of slow decay.

Many helpful people when I was there, but I would think it would be inadvisable to go there as a minority person. Also, corruption in PA is something else.

There were positive qualities. Less snobbery than Dallas and very helpful people. When driving across the country the landscape had stunning beauty. I remember one time driving on a country road on the way to Harrisburg and it was like driving through a series of pastoral oil paintings or driving through a Maxfield Parrish painting.

White Wash of John H. Reagan Elementary School in the Dallas Independent School District

GENTRIFICATION AND WHITE SUPREMACY

Recently the Oak Cliff edition of the "Advocate" published a white wash of John H. Reagan for whom the John H. Reagan Elementary school is named after.

At the following web page you can read and download a pdf about the "Advocate" article and how bad Reagan was.

My paper only has some examples of John H. Reagan's rancid views. I wrote it quickly in response to the "Advocate."

This is the link to the Oak Cliff "Advocate" article.

http://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/2017/12/backstory-one-low-income-school-oak-cliff-bears-name-confederate-leader/

This is the link to the page on John H. Reagan Elementary school with the information on his racism.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/john-h-reagan-elementary-school.html

I am starting to populate the DISD Confederate school web pages with information.

Psychiatrists, Trump, 25 Amendment, and secession. UPDATE

When Donald Trump won the election a lot of people who might call themselves liberals suddenly put their powdered wigs on and started to talk in pious tones about the American Founders and the intent of the Electoral College and that the Electoral College should refuse to vote for Donald Trump.

This didn't happen. Had it happened I think it would be disastrous. A few people that most people had never heard of would have nullified an election. It would be a civil war. Imagine every highway in the nation blockaded in the rural counties of the nation. The national guard would have to be called out in every state of the nation.

Now there seems to be a movement to impeach Trump based on psychiatric opinion and the 25 Amendment to the Constitution.

Some members of Congress were foolish enough to invite a Yale Univ. psychiatry professor to speak to them to see if Trump could be impeached on grounds of mental health.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-25th-amendment-mental-health-322625

Lawmakers concerned about President Donald Trump’s mental state summoned Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee to Capitol Hill last month for two days of briefings about his recent behavior

This is stupid at so many levels.

First there is a whole history of psychiatry being used for political purposes and for social repression.

There is Soviet psychiatric abuse of dissidents. There is the infamous statement about Barry Goldwater supporters having mental issues. There is the whole history of anti-gay psychiatry. I am sure other examples could be given. Foucault's wrote "Madness and Civilization." Thomas Szasz wrote "The Myth of Mental Illness" and "The Manufacture of Madness." There is the book, "Diary of a Mad Housewife," about how a woman with an inane husband is told that she is crazy. 

Then there is the state of the "science" of psychology which is in disrepute. There is the whole business of scientific results not being replicated. Freud was exposed as a fraud. Perhaps you know that Carl Jung was a Nazi. 

Then there is the ongoing scandal of psychiatric hospitals declaring people insane to collect insurance money. I don't think there is a branch of medial practice or science with lower credibility with the public. 

Being obnoxious, rude, loathsome, inane, stupid, vacuous and vain are certainly undesirable qualities, but they are not insanity. 

However, all of the above means nothing to idiotic partisans. After all, Slate, the publication of the establishment actually published this article doing an analysis of Trump's signature. 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/20/donald_trump_s_horrifying_signature_is_a_cry_for_help.html

The whole problem with psychology and psychiatry is that the profession and its practitioners have tended to see persons who don't share their opinions or beliefs as being mentally ill. 

I have the 25th Amendment supplied with a link at the end of this blog posting. 

The idea is that if the president is mentally unfit, the president could be declared unable to perform the duties of office. 

It is somewhat disturbing that even one congressional representative would have Bandy X. Lee doing a briefing. 

It isn't at all surprising that Bandy X. Lee is doing this. Lee is the editor of "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," a book with testimonials of "27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessing the president's level of 'dangerousness.'" 

What might be impeachable is some dealings with a foreign power. However, I think that it needs to be something very clearly a betrayal of the United States, and clear, not to Democrats who are breathing heavy with panic alarm, but the general public. Misfiling paperwork or omitting a form or violating some obscure regulation isn't going to be enough. 

A belief in Democracy is the acceptance of losing the election. Obviously a lot of people haven't accepted losing the 2016 presidential election. 

The precedence for what is happening is a disturbing affair after another radical change in government, the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is the infamous Banker's Plot. 

https://www.npr.org/2012/02/12/145472726/when-the-bankers-plotted-to-overthrow-fdr

It needs to be pointed out that bad policy, wrong opinions, poor diplomacy, rudeness, vulgarity are not impeachable offenses. Otherwise someone on some pretext would be calling for the impeachment of any president within an hour of the president assuming office. 

The various right wing secessionist movements are dormant because Trump is the great hope of the demographic to whom they hope to appeal. They are waiting until Donald Trump is no longer seen as a hope for right-wing aspirations. This might happen with the 2018 elections if the Republicans lose both houses of the legislature to the Democrats. 

However, what would even more enable secessionists would be that Trump is removed from office on some basis that doesn't have credibility. It would tell Trump's demographic of supporters that even if they get someone they like elected to office the establishment will by some means or another remove that person from office. 

At the Texas Republican state convention in 2016 a secession resolution lost by only 16 to 14 with one abstention. There is support out there for secession.

If Trump is to be impeached it better be on grounds that are plain and clear and widely understood. Even then, it could really enable secessionists.

UPDATE:

There is a lot of discussion on how smart Trump is. I don't think it is particularly relevant. For those who think ridiculing Trump or dwelling on the extent of his intelligence is important they need to have a broader focus.

Trump has defeated first the Republican Party establishment, then the Democratic Party establishment in 2016. That doesn't mean that Trump is smart. It does mean that with whatever intelligence he has he figured out a way to defeat both establishments with very little resources.

I would use the word that Trump has cunning, but that word is often used when people who we would like to think aren't smart, out smart someone who we think are smart.

The issue is that Trump had a strategy, whether stumbled upon or cleverly devised, which worked well enough to get him elected against all odds.

We might consider that whatever he is doing is working for him. There are a lot of special elections that the Republican Party are losing where they should have been odds on favorites. However, Nov. 2018 is a ways away. How many people initially thought the 2016 Trump campaign was an amusing circus until it wasn't?

It could be that Trump is having a melt down and is crashing and crashing the Republican Party. It looks like he is. I just don't know. I don't think anyone really knows either. 

The 25th Amendment:

SECTION 1 

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. 

SECTION 2 

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. 

SECTION 3 

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. 

SECTION 4 

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. 

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Courtesy of this page.

https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxv?gclid=CjwKCAiAqIHTBRAVEiwA6TgJwwbZ2weBoR20K2-QOW8OG3amMjTnOfqPPrCCF27z8kyEqIZhO7kJ_hoC_gIQAvD_BwE

Dallas African American Republican Taft Thompson defends Confederate monuments and Donald Trump.

This is a video from the Dallas Women League of Voters panel on Confederate monuments 11/30/2017. I have put together the segments that Dallas Republican Taft Thompson spoke, as well for contrast the comments of Rev. Maxie Johnson. A short segment by Buddy Apple is included where he backs up Thompson.

I used Movie Maker to segment and then stitch together segments.

There is the introduction where the topic of the panel was introduced and the bios of the panelists were given.

Taft Thompson speaks at 3:10 and 9:40.  They are quite something else.

Not the party of Lincoln anymore, not the party of Frederick Douglass anymore.

DePaul Univ. Jan. 2018 Map of the Month is Dallas Confederate Streets/ New Protest Walk Planned.

DePaul Univ. has put online the Jan. 2018 Map of the Month of Dallas Confederate Streets.

http://via.library.depaul.edu/mom/47/

You can also get a 2-sided one page map at:

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/dallas-streets.html

The backside refers to all the Confederate streets in Dallas with the web links for the informational pages for each street.

Another protest walk is planned.  Feb. 3, 2018 2pm up Gaston and down Junius Street.

https://www.facebook.com/events/420415618376646/

The the following map has Throckmorton Street added.

Jim Schutze of the "Dallas Observer" ridicules people who make excuses to keep Confederate monuments

Jim Schutze in this article doesn't use the term "banal white nationalism" but it is obvious he understands the concept if only in his own terms.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/trumps-shithole-remarks-were-exactly-what-we-needed-10256390

This is one quote.

We are masters of denial. We always have a cover story. Last September, when Dallas was in the throes of debate over removing a memorial to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, one of my own great awakenings as a reporter was to the fact that Dallas apparently is home to a large population of militant monument removal fiscal hawks. 

These are people who are not racist, according to them, and who say they have no feelings whatsoever about the Civil War or slavery. Their great concern in life, their cause, their noble crusade is that no Civil War memorial shall be removed at a cost one penny greater than the proper going rate for Civil War monument removals. 

Who knew?

Another quote:

And lastly, for weeks after the removal finally was accomplished, the removal hawks were busy spotting all kinds of social needs, from better public schools to free mental health care, that could have been paid for with the money they felt had been squandered on the removal. One of them asked me, “How many hot meals for the elderly could have been paid for with that money?” Isn’t that wonderful? Suddenly they’re all Mother Theresa. 

Look, I hope what I am saying here does not come across as making me out to be the cool guy. Sometimes we white folks do that — make fun of other white people for being racially clueless as a way of making ourselves look cool. I assure you, I suffer no such delusion. Where racial cluelessness is concerned, I think we have more than enough to go around.

I think a lot of people are recognizing these arguments for what they are. Excuses. 

Quoted in article about white liberal racism. This is one of the big road blocks to de-Confederating Dallas

This is the link to the article.

http://atlantablackstar.com/2018/01/09/no-educated-not-make-less-racist/

This is my primary obstacle to de-Confederating Dallas.

Map of Confederate and KKK streets in Dallas. UPDATE:

This is the map of Confederate and KKK streets in Dallas. Junius St. is both Reconstruction KKK and Confederate. R.L. Thornton is 20th century KKK. The others are Confederates, but they might have been KKK, we just don't have documentation.

UPDATE: Map is online at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/dallas-streets.html

It is like Dallas has a Confederate infection.

Sat. Jan 6, 2pm 2400 Gaston Ave. we start the walk up Gaston Ave. and then back down on Junius St. I will have a sign and be taking video.

This is the Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/events/303683380120314/

We have information on the web pages for the two streets.
http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/gaston-avenue.html
http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/junius-street.html

Click to see whole image.

Dallas' Black Confederate Monument

There has been a lot of attention and ridicule paid to an effort by two Republican South Carolina legislators to have a monument to Black Confederates.

https://www.theroot.com/sc-republicans-want-to-build-stupidest-confederate-monu-1821710469

https://thegrio.com/2017/12/29/black-confederate-soliders-south-carolina-republicans/

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-lawmakers-surprised-learn-no-black-soldiers-served-under-confederacy

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/sc-republicans-try-to-sneak-confederate-propaganda-into-classrooms-with-memorial-to-black-civil-war-vets/

Of course the real point of this effort is to legitimize the Confederacy.

This effort for a monument didn't come out of no where. There has been an effort to promote this mythology in 2017 in South Carolina.

https://www.aikenstandard.com/news/family-of-african-american-confederate-veteran-of-salley-accepts-statehouse/article_56060e74-fa11-11e6-8923-0ba00a5347b5.html

Kevin Levin refused to acknowledge that there was a neo-Confederate agenda in this. Levin chose to portray this as just mistaken individuals.

http://cwmemory.com/2017/03/02/the-first-female-black-confederate/

I called him out on this.

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/03/levins-apologetics-for-neo-confederate.html#.WkzdBN_BqiM

What isn't generally known is that Dallas already has a monument dedicated to Black Confederates in Oak Lawn Park, formerly Robert E. Lee Park.

The Dallas Mayor's Task Force on Confederate Monuments was informed about it but chose to ignore it.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/two-overlooked-confederate-monuments-in-oak-lawn-park.html

Wrote Dallas Mayor Rawlings about it and copied it to all the city council members but they didn't care either.

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/10/letter-to-mike-rawlings-about-two.html#.WkzVUd_BqiM

So when you are laughing at South Carolina remember Dallas actually has a plaque to Black Confederate soldiers. Dallas knows about it and has chosen to keep it.

UPDATE: Route reversed. Protest Walk Jan. 6 on Gaston Ave. and Junius Street in Dallas.

UPDATE: The route will be reversed starting at 2400 Gaston Ave.

This is the next event, Jan. 6, 2018, 2pm starting at 7340 Gaston Ave. Walks will be done once a month in Dallas on the streets.

This is the "No Confederate Streets" page.

https://www.facebook.com/events/303683380120314/

The walk will be down Gaston Ave. until the end, then switch over and walk back up north east on Junius Street. I will be taking video of the entire walk. I am thinking of a Ricoh V camera.

UPDATE: The walk will be UP Gaston Avenue then down Junius Street.

I will be writing people on the street before hand to express support. I will be sending them a bibliography and a paper on why the street names need to be changed.

This is the link for Gaston Ave.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/gaston-avenue.html

This is the link for Junius Street.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/junius-street.html

Junius W. Peak besides being a Confederate soldier was a Ku Klux Klan member during Reconstruction in Dallas. Neo-Confederates celebrated the KKK in Reconstruction as the heroic effort of the ex-Confederate solider.

Both web pages have historical resources and they have a two-page bibliography on slavery and violence against African Americans in American history.

I will be including with my letter the bibliography and a position paper on why changing Confederate named streets is important.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/why-changing-the-name-of-confederate-streets-is-important.html

For both streets I am mapping historical items to individual addresses.

For Junius Street is it violence against African Americans.

For Gaston Ave. it is Moses Roper's slave narrative of his escapes. His sufferings along the way constitute a sort of stations of the cross.

You can view the tables of the mappings at the street web pages.

I will be filling in the tables and updating them over the next few months. The tables themselves also have resources that a person could look up on the web or read.

Once I get video of my walk, I will be producing a video in which the issues of neo-Confederates, Reconstruction KKK, and other topics can be explained in the video of the walk.

I am doing this as a project of remembering.

Along with the bibliography and position paper there will be a letter which I have yet to write. I will post it in this blog posting when it is finished.

I am thinking of asking people along the way to express their support either by walking with me or having at their house or on their lawn a symbol of support. I am thinking of maybe a poster of E.G. Porter, a Dallas African American who was attacked for trying to be a juror.

Or some symbol to represent support.

I am also studying street name changes in South Africa where they are getting rid of apartheid street names. Contacting some scholars, getting some papers, reading articles.

Christmas dawn protest of Dallas Plantation Christmas. UPDATE: UPDATE 2: Sunspot video interview at Arlington Hall.

UPDATE 2: Sunspot video interviewed me and you can see it on Facebook at this link.

https://www.facebook.com/sunspotvideo/videos/1561764790572078/

UPDATE:

We did the event. An activist DFW group Round Table showed up and did a video interview.

This is my first video attempt. I am going to be using the Tripod next video. The video is also on the Facebook event page and will be put up on the www.templeofdemocracy.com page in the Dallas section.

This is the event starting at 7:20 am. dawn.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1740278132945526/

Will be reading slave narratives from this book.

 

In our letter published in the Dallas Morning News, at this link. https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy

We had this to say:

"Organizations that meet at the replica plantation house show contempt for African-Americans as well. When the owners of properties like The Claridge, 21 Turtle Creek, 3525 Turtle Creek, The Mayfair, The Vendôme and The Wyndemere take part in lighting up Lee Park, we see how the upper classes of Dallas embrace a duplicate Robert E. Lee plantation and adorn it to celebrate the birth of Christ. What does it say about the Dallas Christian community that this doesn't raise a cry of disgust?"

This is how Dallas celebrates a Confederate Christmas at the one-third replica Arlington Hall. This is not just an old building, it was built to celebrate Robert E. Lee.

We have a web page on Arlington Hall also. http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/arlington-hall-and-oak-lawn-park.html

There is a web page on Arli

Following the example of the American Anti-Slavery Society mailed every residence in the Mayfair a letter asking them to support changing the name Lee Parkway to something else.

Click on photo to see the entire image. The Mayfair page is at:

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/mayfair.html  At this page you can read all 142 pages.

This is the Lee Parkway page. http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/lee-parkway.html

Went to the post office on Dec. 21, 2017 and mailed 142 individual letters to each residence of the Mayfair condominiums. This was a followup after a Lee Parkway Protest.
http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/11/protest-at-lee-parkway-dallas-texas.html#.Wj_Qld-nGiM

Click on image to see the entire image.

Each letter was different in that it referenced a different account of slavery and contained a page or two photocopy of the account from a book of slavery narratives. The letter also had a one page bibliography of books on slavery.

The books used were, “American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses,” editor Theodore Dwight Weld, 2011, A DocSouth Book Edition, Univ. of North Carolina, originally published in 1839 by the American Anti-Slavery Society and “Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies,” edited by John W. Blassingame, Louisiana State University Press 1977.

These books are available. https://lsupress.org/books/detail/slave-testimony/ for Blassingame's book. For "Anti-Slavery As It Was," there are reprints, but you can also download it from http://www.archive.org. You can download it as a PDF or in other formats.
https://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3A%28American%20slavery%20as%20it%20is%29

It was based on a mailing campaign of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1835 where the Society mailed anti-slavery pamphlets to leaders in the slave states. A mob attacked the post office and burnt the Society's mail in the street. This is a link to the story.

http://postalmuseumblog.si.edu/2010/07/americas-first-direct-mail-campaign.html

It was also based on "Saturday Night Live" skit "Tech Talk" spoofing critics of the iphone5.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/tech-talk-iphone-5/n27749?snl=0


This is part of a larger project mapping narratives of slavery to addresses on streets named after Confederates in Dallas. There will be a pdf file of the map for download. On the backside will be the assignments of the slave stories.

I will be walking the streets named after Confederates and will be writing people along the streets asking them to join in.

The first two streets will be Gaston Ave. and Junius Street. Junius was a Klansman in Dallas during Reconstruction and so the historical narratives assigned to Junius will be those of white terror attacks on African Americans during Reconstruction. I am going to be using this source.

http://freedmensbureau.com/texas/index.htm

The web pages for Gaston Avenue and Junius Street are still under development but these are the URLs.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/gaston-avenue.html

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/junius-street.html

The page for Ervay Street is an example of a more developed web page. You will notice that the street pages will often supply historical information.
http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/ervay-street.html

I will be publishing a position paper on Confederate named streets.

This is the Facebook page for De-Confederating Dallas.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1983418798539308/

On Dec. 25th at dawn I will be reading slave narratives at Lee Parkway and around Arlington Hall in protest of Dallas monument to a plantation Christmas. I will have a separate posting on it.

Will the residents of Mayfair reconsider their position? They might. I can't preclude that they won't give it their consideration. I think though a message has been sent out that the superficial narratives crafted by the Mayor's Task Force on Confederate monuments will not be accepted by everyone and they will be challenged.

This is one of the 142 letters. You can read all of them at the page for Mayfair given previously. The bibliography I mailed follows the letter.

December 19, 2017

Edward H. Sebesta

Resident

Dear Resident:

This letter is inspired by a campaign of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS) in 1835 in which they mailed anti-slavery printed materials to leaders in the slave states. It is also inspired to some extent by the very famous Saturday Night Live comedy skit, “Tech Talk,” about the iphone5 in response to the Mayfair resident complaints about the inconvenience of having Lee Parkway name changed.

I think that there is a failure in Dallas to understand the importance of changing the name of streets named after Confederates since antebellum slavery remains too much an abstraction and not enough a horror that happened to real people. So I enclose a short account, “L.M. Mills’ Story,” pp. 502, from Blassingame’s “Slave Testimony,” LSU Press. It tells of the vile degradations of slave trading. On page 504 is this account, “At Glasgow, Mo. I saw a woman sold away from her husband. She had a two month old baby in her arms and was crying. A driver asked what she was bellowing about. She said she didn’t want to leave her husband. He told her to shut up, but she couldn’t and he snatched her little baby from her and threw it into a pen full of hogs.” This account might be something to consider while you gaze down on the one-third Arlington Hall replica, a monument to Dallas’ plantation mentality.

I also enclose a bibliography of books on slavery to provide an opportunity to learn about the history of slavery. My plan is to try to assign a slave story, or an appropriate story from history, to every address on a Confederate named street in Dallas. For Cabell Drive I have gotten a list of the members of the 1st Kansas USCT killed at Poison Springs, for Junius Street a very long list of African Americans murdered in Reconstruction Texas.

However, let’s not forget the grievances expressed by the Mayfair Residents Nov. 1, 2017 at city hall. (http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/mayfair.html) I have been informed that the City of Dallas will automatically change the address for your water bill. Many bills you get have a box in front in which you can check for address changes which you write on the back. Further the post office will continue to deliver mail using the old address for some time. Hopefully this will provide a relief from any night terrors you might have over the address change.

I think if you take the suffering of millions of slaves seriously, if their lives mattered to you, a street named after a Confederate would be intolerable as would be an obscure Himmler alley even though that alley might out of the way, short, and not be known to the general public.

There is an opportunity to learn from the South African experience where they have changed over 800 places named after apartheid leaders. A list of links to news articles is at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/street-name-changes-in-sou….

On November 1, 2017 the president of the Mayfair HOA could have stated that the Mayfair residents support this great historic change happening in the former slave states and though it would be a minor inconvenience they would like to see the Lee Parkway name changed.

A person might assume that no one wants to live on a street named after someone who fought to preserve the loathsome institution of slavery. A person might assume that residents on a street named after a person who fought to preserve slavery would be repulsed by the name that and they would want it changed whether anyone else was concerned or not. Evidently the residents aren’t that bothered by a street named after Robert E. Lee nor that repulsed. Instead on November 1, 2017 the president of the Mayfair HOA and five others confirmed the worst stereotypes of what the attitudes of affluent white Dallas residents might have.

I think also the November 1, 2017 Mayfair speakers before the Dallas city council have provided a window into the mentality of Dallas elites. We should not be surprised that the racial issues of our city persist generation after generation. If a street name is too much a bother, can it be expected that any challenging effort will be taken to address Dallas’ racial issues?

Given the obvious expressed indifference to the moral issues involved in the Lee Parkway name I don’t think it is surprising that juries again and again let police officers get away with the murder of African Americans.

However, the future is still to be made. The Mayfair HOA could ask the city to expeditiously change the name of Lee Parkway. They could set an example for the city and indeed the nation.

James Mellon’s dedicates his 1988 book, “Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember,” with the following, “For All The Slaves, White and Black, Living and Dead, And Especially For Those Whose Suffering Was Never Known Or Has Been Forgotten.” Perhaps over this holiday season you can reflect on the suffering of the slaves.

Sincerely Yours,

Edward H. Sebesta

This is the bibliography:

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS ON SLAVERY – Compiled by Ed Sebesta 12/11/2017.


1. “The Slave Trade,” by Hugh Thomas, 1997, Simon and Schuster. An excellent book on the slave trade from late medieval times to the 19th century. Reveals that the so-called age of exploration was driven by the slave trade and not very much by spices.

2. “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition,” by Manisha Sinha, 2017, Yale University Press. Excellent book.

3. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, with introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Modern Library Edition.

4. “Narrative of the Live of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave,” by Frederick Douglass, with related documents, edited by David W. Blight, 2016, Bedford Series in History and Culture, Bedford/St. Martins.

5. “Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress,” William Lee Miller, originally Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for hard cover and Vintage Books for paperback. A dramatic reading.

6. “Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery,” by Leon F. Litwack, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in hardcover and then paperback Vintage Books, 1979. All of Litwack’s books are engaging and well worth reading.

7. “Frederick Douglass,” by William S. McFeely, W.W. Norton & Co. 1991.

8. “The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s Boston,” by Albert J. von Frank,” 1999, Harvard University Press.

9. “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,” by Edward E. Baptist, Basic Books, 2016.

10. “Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies,” edited by John W. Blassingame, Louisiana State University Press 1977.

11. “American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses,” editor Theodore Dwight Weld, 2011, A DocSouth Book Edition, Univ. of North Carolina, originally published in 1839 by the American Anti-Slavery Society.

12. “Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery,” The John Hope Franklin Series in American History and Culture,” Heather Andrea Williams, 2012.

Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue removed in Memphis, Sons of Confederate Veterans efforts for naught.

The Nathan Bedford Forrest statue and the Jefferson Davis statue were both removed and the land on which they stood sold.

There are TWO major issues here. One is the impact of the statue removal. The other is the removal of the statue in defiance of the Tennessee Historical Commission.

Some news coverage.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/us/memphis-confederate-bedford-davis-statues/index.html

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-statues-removed-memphis-sells-public-parks-51926430

http://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/memphis-removing-confederate-statues-from-downtown-parks/51-501227211

It has gotten attention from some international media.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/21/memphis-tennessee-citizens-cheer-overnight-removal-of-two-confederate-statues

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42441875


PART ONE:

This is very important for multiple reasons.

First, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) invested a lot of effort to keep this statue in place and the statue is being removed anyways. Second, it should tell the Sons of Confederate Veterans that they really don't have much influence in keeping a statue in place nor any real support in an urban public.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans just have the courts where they can make up claims and get them dismissed promptly.

This is really going to demoralize the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Also, it is going to affect the composition of their membership since with Confederate monuments coming down, membership in the SCV is not going to be normalized and the membership remaining will be more extreme as the members who really aren't that much into neo-Confederate ideology leave.

Third the vote for removal was unanimous and included both statues. It sets a precedence that the goal is to get a complete de-Confederation of the city and that it is something everyone should support. It rejects foot dragging like in Dallas and half-way measures like in Dallas.

Fourth, the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue in Memphis was the most important monument to Forrest. It was a large metal monument, probably bronze, and it was in a major city.

Fifth, it makes all the other efforts to memorialize Forrest seem anomalous. In various locations where there are items to memorialize Forrest, the local municipalities accommodation or support of memorializing Forrest will be less acceptable and recognized as the racist agenda that it is.

Sixth, it gets the ball rolling in Confederate monument removal moving again. It puts more pressure on Dallas and also Richmond where I think the establishments thought the issue was going to die down and they could just stall some more or hope it goes away. The Richmond establishment's retention of Confederate monuments will really show Richmond's true nature.

As each statue comes down elsewhere it will become more and more apparent that Richmond's establishment mentally live in a metaphysical Confederacy in which Richmond is the capital.

PART TWO:

It seems that this statue removal was done by a legal means to avoid a Tennessee law put in place to keep Confederate monuments in place.

Earlier the Tennessee Historical Commission issued a denial of the request to remove the statues. It is becoming fairly common story that the local and state historical societies and commissions are defenders of the Confederacy. Here we have Preservation Dallas with its maneuvers to keep the Confederate memorial in Pioneer Park. Their name really should be Preservation White Dallas.

What judge will be willing to make the ruling to put it back up?  What will happen if city council members are jailed? What would be the public's response to an attempt to put a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest back up? It could put the nation into turmoil. I can only imagine the Republicans in Tennessee are thinking carefully about what they do and the 2018 elections, especially after Roy Moore has gone down to defeat.

I am sure that there are Alabama mayors and city council members paying close attention to Memphis and what happens next.

If this method of removing the Confederate statues works, I think there will be renewed calls in other Tennessee cities to remove monuments. Elected officials who point to Tennessee law will have pointed out to them the example of Memphis and be told, "Where there is a will there is a way."

De-Confederation is still unfolding. It may seem stopped, but things are happening here and there and there are only pauses.

Republican Moore defeated by Democrat Doug Jones is super Republican State. Neo-Confederacy, Steve Bannon defeated

I stay up last night until 100% of the precincts were in to make absolutely sure that Roy Moore was defeated. Turns out that Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore by 1.5% so there won't be an automatic recount. Roy Moore didn't concede but started talking about God being in control. Well maybe God is in control and he wanted Moore defeated.

https://www.politico.com/interactives/elections/2017/alabama/special-election/dec-12/?lo=ap_b1

However, before celebrating too much, Roy Moore did win with the white electorate. It was the turn out of the African American community which saved us. Moore won white voters "by more than-2-to-1 margin, 68 to 30 percent," according to the article of the following link.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/13/alabama-jones-moore-exit-polls-294159?lo=ap_c1

The article referenced by the above link said that African Americans voted for Doug Jones by "96 to 4 percent." Hopefully Doug Jones appreciates fully that fact. Perhaps the Republicans are not going to defend the Confederacy so much.

This is a big loss for Steve Bannon whose Breitbart has campaigned strongly in defense of Confederate monuments as well as for Donald Trump who has also campaign strongly in defense of Confederate monuments.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-think-bannon-made-an-ass-of-himself-republicans-rejoice-in-breitbart-chiefs-alabama-humiliation


This is Politico's take on the election. Key item is that Republicans are now fearing what the 2018 mid-terms will bring. Though it is a long ways away.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/13/alabama-senate-jones-moore-takeaways-294163

I can tell you that it has energized Democrats. Locally on Facebook they see 2018 mid-terms as having a tremendous potential.

David A. Love in "The Grio" reports on Roy Moore

Mentioned in this article in The Grio.

David A. Love has been kind enough to reference my work on the Confederate Christian nationalists and give a link to the pdf of our paper at the Canadian Review of American Studies at the Univ. of Toronto.

https://thegrio.com/2017/12/12/alabama-senate-race-future-of-south/

Roy Moore perhaps might be our first neo-Confederate U.S. Senator

The following article by Matthew Sheffield brings to the public's attention that Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore is a neo-Confederate.

https://www.salon.com/2017/12/12/never-mind-the-sex-scandals-roy-moore-is-a-son-of-the-confederacy/

The public is going to discover that there is an ideology against the 17th Amendment which has U.S. Senators directly elected and not selected by state legislators.

The public is going to discover that there is an ideology against women voting.

The public doesn't realize to the extent neo-Confederate ideology is percolating through the conservative movement.

This development is not without precedent. It used to be Republican office holders pandered to or joined the Council of Conservative Citizens and many were interviewed in the Southern Partisan.

The mainstream media wasn't interested. They were concerned about shaking out an extra electoral vote in some former Confederate state.

"Virginius Dabney and the Problem of the White Moderate"

An excellent article by

https://altrightorigins.com/2017/10/25/problem-white-moderate/

What is interesting is that even though the evidence is overwhelming about the racism of Virginius Dabney, there is someone who is willing to obscure and mislead regarding the historical record.

I am glad to see that Phil Magness, a history professor at Berry College, is being called out on this.

Dixie Outfitters article, "Donald Trump As President Of The Confederacy."

The capitol letters are exactly as used in the title. Dixie Outfitters are a neo-Confederate retailer of pro-Confederate merchandise.

They have published a lengthy  article, "Donald Trump As President Of The Confederacy" online at this URL.

https://dixieoutfitters.com/2017/07/14/donald-trump-as-president-of-the-confederacy/

I think in some sense they are correct.

Sons of Confederate Veterans Votes a resolution of thanks to Donald Trump

In the Nov./Dec. 2017 issue of Confederate Veteran, the official journal of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), is a resolution passed at the 2017 National Convention of the SCV held in Memphis, TN.

This is the resolution is as follows:

Resolution 3

A  Resolution Regarding President Donald Trump

WHEREAS, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has shown his recognition of the importance to society of the preservation and teaching of the history of the United States and of honoring the heroism of all military veterans, including Confederate veterans as American veterans, and

WHEREAS, President Trump has been an example to all citizens by pledging a portion of of his salary as President for the maintenance and enhancement of National Battlefield Parks, and especially most recently the Battle of Sharpsburg National Park in Maryland, and continuing to honor the presidential tradition of honoring Confederate veterans in Arlington Cemetery.

THEREFORE, the history honor society, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, expresses its gratitude and appreciation to President Trump for his commitment to American history and all veterans.

Submitted by David R. McAllister, Judah P. Benjamin Camp 2210, Tampa, Florida.

Dallas, Texas goes for a Confederate Jesus

This is the event on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/201595480384028/

The house is a one-third replica of Robert E. Lee's Arlington Hall. It isn't just an old plantation home being re-purposed. It was build in the 20th century to glorify the Confederacy and Robert E. Lee.

Dallas doesn't need a plantation Christmas or a Confederate Jesus. It says a lot about Dallas Christianity that this isn't considered an outrage.