Texas Republicans along with Democrats take down Confederate plaque in Austin

A Children of the Confederacy plaque with its neo-Confederate propaganda has been taken down from the Capitol building in Austin, Texas. The following is a photo of the plaque that I took.

CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO SEE THE FULL THING.

These are some news stories about it being voted to be taken down.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/01/11/texas-confederate-plaque-vote-greg-abbott-dan-patrick/

https://www.statesman.com/news/20190111/preservation-board-votes-to-remove-confederate-plaque-at-capitol

I had sent elected officials background information, but I don't know if they paid it any attention.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/10/letter-to-texas-rep-eric-johnson-about.html#.XDnugFw2qiM

I told them about the Children of the Confederacy essay published a few months later after the plaques installation in the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine gleefully describing the massacre of African American soldiers in Reconstruction Florida.

What is important in this story is that both the Republicans and Democrats decided it had to go and among the leadership of both parties they decided it had to go.

It wasn't the story where an African American Democrat was wanting to get rid of the plaque but white Democrats representing whiter districts were making up excuses.

It wasn't the story in which the Democrats wanted to take down the plaque but the Republicans were defending it.

Both Democrats and Republicans wanted the plaque gone, and it didn't take a big campaign to convince them.  Granted that the plaque was in the Capitol building and the plaque had inanitites that were particularly offensive, but still it is a major change in the politics of deConfederating the landscape.

This sends out a message to all of Texas that glorification of the Confederacy is much less acceptable than it was. That doesn't mean that the battle is over,or that all glorification of the Confederacy is going to be rejected.

What it means is that if your town wants to keep its Confederate monument it will be seen as backward and out of touch and aberrant. Industries wanting to locate there will see your Confederate monument and think twice. People thinking of accepting a job offer there will have second thoughts.

As I have pointed out before one removal leads to another.

Letter to Texas Rep. Eric Johnson about a Children of the Confederacy essay gleefully telling of the slaughter of African American troops UPDATE

UPDATE: I mailed a letter about this Children of the Confederacy essay to Joe Straus, speaker of the Texas House. Today I mail a letter to Texas Governor Abbott about this essay.

I am mailing this letter today. I will be mailing other elected officials in Austin, Texas and I will be letting others know. I will have some extracts of the essay in this blog.

UPDATE2: I sent out a press release to a lot of media in Austin. Next I will be sending out some press releases to media in Dallas.

                                                                                    October 24, 2017

                                                                                    [Address was here.]

                                                                                    edwardsebesta@gmail.com

Texas House Representative Eric Johnson

Room 1N.7

P.O. Box 2910

Austin, Texas 78768

Dear Hon. Johnson:

I applaud your efforts to have the Children of the Confederacy plaque removed from the Capitol building. They are a pernicious organization that is run by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).

I enclose an essay by a member of the Children of the Confederacy published in the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, March 1960, in which the massacre of African American troops is celebrated and thought humorous.  This article was published just a few months after the Children of the Confederacy plaque was put on the building. I enclosed the cover of the magazine issue, and the table of contents. The article celebrating the slaughter of African American troops is titled, “Hog and Hominy Lick Carpetbaggers.” The UDC though highly enough of this essay to publish it in their magazine.

This essay isn’t an anomaly, but is consistent with the values of the United Daughters of the Confederacy promotes. They have in South Carolina a museum to the violent Red Shirts which they call a shrine. The UDC for decades in the early 20^th century celebrated the KKK as heroes. In the 21^st century they have less directly promoted books that celebrated the KKK as heroes.

My curriculum vitae is online. http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/curriculum-vitae.html. I am published by the Univ. of Texas Press, Univ. Press of Mississippi, peer-reviewed academic journals, last one at Cambridge Univ. I was awarded the Spirit of Freedom medal by the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, D.C.

I have additional information about the Children of the Confederacy and their instruction about the Ku Klux Klan.

I have a lot of research information about the Capitol Confederate monuments also.

                                                                                    Sincerely Yours,

                                                                                    Edward H. Sebesta

Some sections from the article. 

Interviewed for Nationally Syndicated article by the McClatchy newspapers about public school American history textbooks and the Civil War

Nationally Syndicated article by the McClatchy newspapers about public school American history textbooks and the Civil War. The link is:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article27527029.html

The article has run in about a dozen papers across the nation.

For historians, however, there is little question that slavery was the driving factor in sparking secession and later the war. Teaching history incorrectly, they say, allows people to justify supporting the Confederacy without addressing related questions of racism. 

“If you don’t understand what the Civil War was about, you don’t have anything to argue against Confederate nationalism,” said Sebesta. “It’s an erasure of African-Americans in the South by saying the Confederacy was the South. It’s creating a Southern identity as a white identity.”

 It was interesting how the Children of the Confederacy was unwilling to explain what they were doing.

But with the exception of three attendees who like Shelby and her grandfather, Martin Schaller, agreed to interviews, it was hard to learn what the Children of the Confederacy conference teaches its members about the history of slavery and the role it played in sparking the Civil War. 

Conference organizers declined to share conference materials with anyone not registered for the conference. They said members of the organization could not speak to the news media without approval from the organization’s director general, who could not be located Thursday, the convention’s opening day.

Eventually, the general manager of the hotel where the convention is being held through Saturday ordered two McClatchy reporters to leave.

The impasse was perhaps predictable. More than 10 phone calls throughout the week leading up to the conference, and several emails to the organization’s director general, went unreturned.

The group’s unwillingness to share its approach to Civil War history makes it hard to know how its program fits into what a growing number of historians and experts say is the perpetuation of dangerous myths about the war and the antebellum South that are common in public school texts and are fueled in seemingly innocent war re-enactments.

 It is always interesting when a group is secretive about what they do.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article27527029.html#storylink=cpy

Court Street United Methodist Church Scheduled to host Children of the Confederacy in Lynchburg, Virginia

COURT STREET UNITED METHODIST CHURCH SCHEDULED TO HOST CHILDREN OF THE CONFEDERACY

The Children of the Confederacy (CofC) is a group run by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to teach children that the Confederacy and its leaders were glorious.

They have an annual convention. The next is scheduled in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The Court Street United Methodist Church is scheduled to host the CofC Thursday, July 16, 2015 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm.

I am looking for someone in the area to help me in convincing them not to host. I think that if they knew that it was likely to come to the public's attention they would probably dis-invite the CofC.

I wrote them this certified letter:

April 25, 2015
Rev. Dr. Mark A. Tinsley
Court Street United Methodist Church
621 Court Street
Lynchburg, VA 24504

Dear Rev. Dr. Tinsley:

I am an investigative researcher of the neo-Confederate movement. I am published internationally in peer reviewed academic journals and by university presses as well as in Black Commentator. I enclose a copy of my online curriculum vitae which is also available athttp://www.templeofdemocracy.com/curriculum-vitae.html.

Recently I had a byline for an article at Politico, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/civil-war-american-south-still-loves-confederacy-116771.html#.VU4Fu_lVikp

I am writing regarding your hosting the Children of the Confederacy 61st Annual General Convention memorial event on Thursday, July 16, 2015. This is an organization run by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to indoctrinate young people that the Confederacy was glorious and not that it was an effort to perpetuate slavery and white supremacy. I enclose documentation that your church is chosen for this event.
Please find enclosed an article from the Richmond Free Press regarding churches hosting the 2014 UDC National Convention in Richmond, Virginia. In the article is the account of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church deciding that even though they have hosted the UDC eight times since 1994, they disinvited the UDC in 2014 and will not be hosting them in the future. This is the church that was attended by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. The article is online at http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2014/nov/07/confederates-hold-service-downtown-church/

The United Methodist Church is the denomination 2nd most frequently hosting UDC national convention events and the only Methodist denomination hosting UDC national events. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Christian Methodist Church have not hosted since 1990 a single national convention of even of the UDC or the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). In fact I haven’t run across these other three denominations ever hosting a neo-Confederate event of any type at any time. I enclose two bargraphs of denomination hosting mentioned.. You can see these bargraphs online at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/churches-of-the-confederacy.html. 

This is somewhat surprising that the United Methodist Church hosts any neo-Confederate groups given that John Wesley was an abolitionist.

Given that it may well be that the Episcopal Church is going to stop hosting neo-Confederates, the United Methodist Church runs a risk of going forward starting in 2013 of becoming one of the leading denominations hosting neo-Confederate groups.
One concern I have developed in investigating neo-Confederate groups is how they are enabled by mainstream organizations such as corporations, churches, government bodies and others. So I have decided to ask these groups to reconsider their relations with specific neo-Confederate groups. It is all well and good that I have written on extremist Confederate Christian nationalist for the Canadian Review of American Studies. (http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/uploads/3/5/2/3/3523099/confederatechristiannationalism.pdf), but I have realized that the enabling of a racist historical consciousness in the general public and racist neo-Confederate groups by mainstream churches is as detrimental to America as these fringe churches.

The UDC has a lengthy history of supporting white supremacy going back to the early 20th century shortly after they had finished organizing. You can see many primary documents regarding their racism atwww.confederatepastpresent.org and use the search term “daughters.”

However, their racism is not confined to the past. This is an organization that currently runs a Red Shirt Shrine to glorify a violent white supremacist group in 19th century South Carolina and of which they are proud of as documented in the June/July 2001 UDC Magazine article, pages 23, 24, and the cover of their magazine. In an article in the Dec. 2012 UDC Magazine, pages 11-14, is an appalling racist article in which the infamous post-Civil War Black Codes of the former Confederate states are defended, African American men are represented have been potential rapists, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution is argued to be misguided, freed African Americans are asserted to have been incompetent to be citizens. The article asserts, “Newly liberated Negroes were not prepared for their freedom…” In a Nov. 2007, UDC Magazine article, page 15 article the pro-KKK book “Southern By the Grace of God,” is recommended as a “treasure” to be given to members’ children. These are but three contemporary examples of the UDC’s racism. Documentation enclosed.

The British academic, Michael Billig in his landmark book, “Banal Nationalism,” discusses the fact that the discussion of nationalism usually revolves around extremists to the exclusion of seeing the banal nationalism in everyday life. Billig contrasts the focus of the usual analyst of nationalism to the analyst of banal nationalism as follows:

The analyst of banal nationalism does not have the theoretical luxury of exposing the nationalism of others. The analyst cannot place exotic nationalists under the microscope as specimens, in order to stain the tissues of repressed sexuality, or turn the magnifying lens on to the unreasonable stereotypes, which ooze from the mouth of the specimen. In presenting the psychology of a Le Pen or Zhirinovsky, ‘we’ might experience a shiver of fear as ‘we’ contemplate ‘them’, the nationalists, with their violent emotions and ‘their’ crude stereotyping of the Other. And ‘we’ will recognize ‘ourselves’ among the objects of this stereotyping. Alongside the ‘foreigners’ and the ‘racial inferiors’, there ‘we’ will be – the ‘liberal degenerates’, with ‘our’ international broadmindedness. ‘We’ will be reassured to have confirmed ‘ourselves’ as the Other of ‘our’ Other.

By extending the concept of nationalism, the analyst is not safely removed from the scope of investigation. We might imagine that we possess a cosmopolitan broadness of spirit. But, if nationalism is a wider ideology, whose familiar commonplaces catch us unawares, then this is too reassuring. We will not remain unaffected. If the thesis is correct, then nationalism has seeped into the corners of our consciousness; it is present in the very words which we might try to use for analysis. It is naïve to think that a text of exposure can escape from the times and place of its formulation. It can attempt, instead, to do something more modest: it can draw attention to the powers of an ideology which is so familiar that it hardly seems noticeable. [Billig, Michael, Banal Nationalism, Sage Publications, London, 1995.]

I extend Billig’s concept to a concept of banal white nationalism. My paper on it is online at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/breaking-the-white-nation.html.  The presentation of racist groups in sensational media reports are of largely marginal individuals who we will socially never run into, who have belligerent attitudes and behaviors, use racial slurs, have poor middle class decorum, and who perhaps wear funny clothes. Like Billig’s extremists, they reassure us that we aren’t racist since we are not like them. However, if we realize that racist attitudes and practice need not be confined to belligerent individuals shouting racial slurs or confined to physical assaults, we should not be so self-assured ourselves and have to examine a much wider range of practices and consider if we are involved. Suddenly it can be people that we know and who socially circulate in the circles in which we circulate.

The UDC as a well-mannered genteel group is largely not perceived as racist despite their ongoing practice as mentioned earlier in this letter.

I am writing you to ask you to not lend your facilities to the UDC for their 2015 Children of the Confederacy convention or for any unit of the UDC for any event. When a church lends their facility to the UDC or other neo-Confederate organization besides enabling them by giving them the use of their facility they also lend the prestige of their denomination and often a prominent historical church.

Sincerely Yours,
Edward H. Sebesta

Churches which host Children of the Confederacy national convention services added to Churches of the Confederacy web page

I have a table of churches which have hosted the Children of the Confederacy (CofC) which is an organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).

It has been added to the main page tracking the campaign regarding churches enabling neo-Confederate groups.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/churchesoftheconfederacy.htm

The reporting on the national conventions of the Children of the Confederacy is a little uneven and so for some years it isn't known whether they had a church service and if so where.

The three denominations stand out: Episcopal Church, Presbyterian USA, and the United Methodist Church.

This upcoming year the Children of the Confederacy will be using the First Presbyterian Church of Texarkana, Texas.

http://www.firstprestexarkana.org/

Writing and researching. Children of the Confederacy

Spent much of the day finding out which churches hosting the Children of the Confederacy. Entered into EXCEL. Have some more work to do before it goes online. However, again the Episcopalians come out as a leading hosting denomination of neo-Confederates.

Wrote four more religious leaders, two in Dallas and two in Richmond. There are still some churches to write. By the end of March though I should be done writing churches. I am going to switch to writing religious social justice organizations, religious publications, civil rights groups, newspapers, etc.

I am not finding any churches or religious groups that want to defend the Confederacy or their association with neo-Confederate groups. It seems their strategy is to avoid discussing the matter and hope that it doesn't come before the public.

By end of next week I plan on having www.templeofdemocracy.com/churchesoftheconfederacy.htm updated with the new letters and information.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral of Jackson, MS hosts neo-Confederate function. Update:

The St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral of Jackson, MS hosted the 59th annual Children of the Confederacy (CofC) convention memorial service. The Children of the Confederacy is a youth group run by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to indoctrinate their children in their neo-Confederate beliefs. It is open to both men and women.

Their website is at:

http://standrewscathedral.org/

They express many fine sentiments on their web page, but evidently it doesn't preclude assisting neo-Confederate groups.

I haven't yet compiled all the churches that hosted the national convention memorial services of the CofC. It is one of the compilations that I am going to work on.

UPDATE:

I contacted them and they informed me that St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral isn't a breakaway church. So this isn't just an activity of breakaway Episcopal groups.