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.

Peter S. Carmichael, Director of Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College is effectively defending local Gettysburg industry.

What is the local Gettysburg industry? It is the selling of stuff like this.

Click on photos to see the entire photo.

Peter S. Carmichael, Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College has this article.

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/27/civil-war-historian-peter-carmichael-keep-the-statues-focus-on-racial-injustice/

The article shows how clueless Carmichael is and how he is denying the rather clear record on Confederate monuments and their purpose. I am sure the Gettysburg Chamber of Commerce is grateful that he is making this effort. I am sure that Carmichael is not consciously defending these items. I think the Civil War Institute needs to think if they will be relevant by 2030.

When I visited Gettysburg April 2017, the story I was repeatedly told is that a very large fraction of the visitors are from the South and that in 2015 they did a tremendous business in Confederate flag memorabilia. People actually believed the Confederate flag would be banned. However, now the sale of Confederate junk is way down. You have to wonder what type of people would think they urgently needed to buy Confederate flags after the massacre in Charleston, but that is what evidently puts food on many tables in Gettysburg.

Also, that Confederate reenacting is down. The Civil War Sesquicentennial seemed to be the last hurrah.

The city of Gettysburg is already switching to ghosts tours and that seems to be the coming industry. However, it seems to me you could do ghost tours anywhere there were old buildings and gullible people which is most anywhere. Dallas only has one of the two components. Having a ghost in Dallas would be seen as anti-real estate development which is Dallas's highest moral value.

Peter S. Carmichael represents the Civil War historians whose efforts will make the Civil War of little interest to future generations.

Gettysburg College should consider, along with the city of Gettysburg that they owe John Sims an apology.

They have white nationalism in the bag.

This was one of the shopping bags from the store at the Gettysburg National Military Park center.

Notice the gray and blue and how it is made to be exactly equal and equivalent. The bag colors represent America and the Confederacy. Then there is the statement, "Our Common Ground."

I have a statement to make to the Gettysburg National Military Park, the National Park Service, and the Gettysburg Foundation. I don't have any common ground with the Confederacy or its principles.

I don't have a common ground with slave holders. Evidently the Park and the Foundation do think that they have a common ground.

If they think it means something about national unity, we have national unity among Americans. The South and the Confederacy is not equivalent. To even assert that it is or imply it is an erasure of African Americans in the South.

This is banal white nationalism, so every day that it hides in plain sight.

The National Park Service talks about a "high ground" but it clearly is just a lot of self-flattering rubbish. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/rthg/intro.htm

National Civil War Museum, teach your child a neo-Confederate view of history

One of the books I purchased at the National Civil War Museum is, "Who Was Robert E. Lee?" It is by Bonnie Bader with a cover illustration by Nancy Harrison. The interior illustrations are by John O'Brian. The book is published by Grossett & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Books and it meant to children.

Slavery is mentioned. There is a section on Robert E. Lee's views on slavery. We learn that:

"Some historians say that Robert E. Lee was against slavery." And we are told that, "... other historians say that Robert E. Lee did not object to slavery."

The section concludes with, "Robert thought that the only one to decide to free the slaves should be god." An interesting spin on this letter by Lee.

Of course Lee made it abundantly clear that he thought slavery was best for African Americans. In an 1865 letter by Lee to Andrew Hunter Lee writes:

“Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would depreciate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both.”

There was a slave hunt where African Americans in Pennsylvania were rounded up and taken as slaves.

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2013/06/30/Confederates-slave-hunt-in-North-a-military-disgrace/stories/201306300221?pgpageversion=pgevoke

Finally the book discusses Lee being a university president after the Civil War but not his hostility to African Americans as documented by Robert E. Lee Jr., testimony to the congressional committee on Reconstruction, and Lee's infamous White Sulphur Manifesto.

This book is the equivalent of Holocaust denial.

For information about what Robert E. Lee said and believed you can go to this website and use the search term "Robert." http://www.confederatepastpresent.org

This museum in promoting this book commits an outrage against the humanity of African Americans. It is no wonder that it proves to be a challenge in America to have people recognize truly that Black lives matter.


http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/07/books/lee-without-tears.html

National Civil War Museum and Kevin Levin

I was down in Harrisburg, PA to visit and review the National Civil War Museum and listen to Kevin Levin's presentation. CLICK ON ALL PICTURES TO ENTIRELY SEE THEM.

I think this photo ably summarized the essential nature  of the museum. It was offered in the museum store. Didn't find videos about slavery and certainly not Django.

I am sure there will be those who will point to the various exhibits and things which acknowledge slavery and African American soldiers, but these are token gestures. To give narratives of the Civil War they had James Robertson Jr., a supporter and endorser of Southern Partisan magazine.  The exhibit on Reconstruction was telling with displays talking about how "harsh" policies of "radical Republicans" caused resentment in the South. It is like reading Hodding Carter's, "The Angry Scar." The museum management seems to have a curation of the Civil War out of the 1960s but with concessions and accommodations to local criticism which they are getting. But this statue in front of their museum really sums up their mentality.

It is a Confederate soldier giving a wounded Union soldier water on a battle field. This suggests that the museum is mentally living in the early 1900s.

Kevin Levin is an able speaker and had a fairly good presentation. A school teacher, his presentation involved asking his audience questions which is a good method. On the historical side he missed an opportunity or perhaps didn't realize that one Confederate monument's reference to "Anglo-Saxon civilization" wasn't just white supremacy, but represented prejudice against non-Anglo-Saxon white people. There has been in the South this whole self-identification of being un-corrupted by European immigrants. His presentation was informative in many ways.

He did make it clear that the monuments were about race. He was really big about local decisions be made about monuments, no outside agitators wanted. However, he didn't make it clear that these monuments were about racializing the landscape. He is a historian and not a cultural geographer. He really needs to read Billig's "Banal Nationalism."

He did refer to the statue in front of the museum as an erasure of the issues of the Civil War. There is another very similar statue at a park somewhere in the South and Levin explained that the Mercy story wasn't published until the 1880s and isn't verified historically and is about erasure of history. He didn't use the term "erasure" but that was his argument. He then referenced in the statue in front of the museum which was very similar. So credit to that. I doubt though it will change anything.

Regarding Monument Ave. in Richmond, he might well refer to British Gary Younge's writing on the avenue.

I turned around to walk back up Monument Avenue, feeling angry and confused... I had spent about an hour walking along a road in which four men who fought to enslave me... have been honoured and exalted. I resented the fact that on the way to work every day, black people have to look at that. Imagine how black children must feel when they learn that the people who have been raised and praised up the road are the same ones who tried to keep their great-great-grandparents in chains. [Gary Younge, "No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey through the American South," Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002, pg. 67] 

This would be better than what Levin did, which was to self-reference himself as a "white privileged" person looking at Monument Ave. as to establish that he was conscious of racial issues. Though in reading Younge's passage, I do see Levin as not seeing the avenue like Younge because of his "white privileged" self.

The lecture concluded with his proposed idea that Confederate monuments remain in place and additional counter monuments be added. He had photos of "Fearless girl" from Wall Street to demonstrate this idea.

He did discuss some proposals for additional contextualization. He also presented how Eastern Europe handled communist statues, which was to put them in a museum.

Putting the monuments in a museum as part of the history of racism in the locality is what should be done.

I didn't introduce myself to anyone. I was their to document the museum and assess Levin. He is exactly what his blog presents himself to be, that is Levin's blog is an honest representation of himself.

Levin needs to consider whether presenting at this museum legitimizes it, but it might be argued you need to reach out to people and talk to them. However, there has been protests against the museum in Harrisburg, at least one. Then, there has been no boycott called that I know of.

For Levin's audience I think the questions he raised probably got some people thinking and relative to Civil War Round Table thinking represents some type of step forward, but maybe into a cul de sac, that is self-satisfaction with the status quo.  It will likely be a shock to them to learn of the hostility to the monuments by African Americans who aren't situated inside the white establishment. It will be similar to the shock of slave owners in the South who discovered that their slaves were supporting the Union.

Visited white nationalist Park in Pennsylvania

I visited a white nationalist park in a city dedicated to maintaining that interpretation. I spent three days there. Did plenty of pictures and did some video also. Purchased a lot,  I mean bags full of junk showing the mentality of the town and the park management.

What is the essence of the city of Gettysburg I think this picture will suffice to represent the spirit of the town. Lots of Confederate garbage for sale. I wonder how they explain to their families that they earn their living off of pandering to white nationalism. Notice the picture at the top. Unfortunately there is a reflection on it, but it is a print praising American veterans. These merchants who pander to racists have the effrontery to think they are patriotic. CLICK ON PICTURES TO SEE THE ENTIRE PICTURE.

The people who run Gettysburg Military Park are maintaining the white nationalist interpretation in the book store.  Here in the bookstore is a Southern nationalist understanding of geography. The South is made equivalent to the Confederacy. There isn't the use of Union versus Confederacy.

The pandering to neo-Confederates is non-stop. This mug tells us that Lee is "revered." Books on slavery are hidden away in a small section.

I am going to do a video of Gettysburg Park and city.  The park service wonders why there is declining attendance and why there is little minority interest in going to the parks.

Of course one factor is that when driving to a park in a rural setting a minority person would have to worry about cops stopping them. An audiologist here in rural Pennsylvania when visiting her fiances house was stopped a couple blocks before she got there by a police officer who decided to yell at her and tell her to stop lying about being legally in the country.

Even if a minority person decided to visit a park in a rural setting they would find themselves at a park and city with a white nationalist ethos. It should be no surprise why there isn't much interest in the Civil War by African Americans.

One good development is that business is declining. The generation with a white nationalist interpretation of the Civil War is getting old and becoming much less active.

I am going to do a video with the pictures and video I took there.

Perhaps the National Park Service could hire a competent historian that doesn't see history in a white nationalist framework and do its job competently.

What is really amazing is that Civil War historians haven't given the town and park a scathing criticism.