“Treason in Defense of Slavery” month

Blue Texan at FDL, many links.

Group that Lobbied Republican Governor to Honor Confederacy Tied to White Supremacists

The interwebs are buzzing today with the news that GOP Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia has declared April “Treason in Defense of Slavery” month.

But what’s not getting enough attention is the fact that the group that convinced McDonnell to sign the declaration are a bunch of neo-Confederates.

This year’s proclamation was requested by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. [...]

They must be pretty old by now...

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a dossier on the SCV.

Although the 31,400-member SCV has always billed itself as a “non-political” and “non-racial” heritage organization devoted merely to preserving the legacy of Confederate soldiers, SCV leaders have long been tied to segregation and white supremacy.

But you’ve got to see this quote from an article in the May/June, 2008 edition of the SCV’s newsletter, The Southern Mercury.

It is very clear to me that if Barack Obama should be elected President, he would be extremely anti-white and would demand reparations for slavery and press hard for affirmative action to the degree that it would hurt young whites who were seeking jobs or admission to College and Graduate Schools. Even if he were elected, I would think he would be a one term President and the Congressional Republicans with a “corporal’s guard’ of Democrats would stop most of the radical and unjust laws he would propose. However, I believe that his rhetoric and anti-white legislative proposals would stir up racial riots. If he were running for re-election, these riots would turn into an extremely violent nature that would seriously damage race relations in America, and leave entire sections of some of our cities in ruins.

Real nice people you’re keeping company with, Bob.

From Raw Story:

Virginia's Confederate History Month debuted under Governor George ("Macaca" - G) Allen, a Republican, in 1997, causing "a national uproar," the Post notes. Allen's proclamation made no mention of slavery, but his successor, Republican James. S. Gilmore, added language referencing slavery in his own proclamation.

The month-long historic event was then dropped entirely by two subsequent Democratic governors, and had been absent from Virginia for the past eight years.

There are a lot of fine people in Virginia and The South. Unfortunately for them and for us, none of them are in charge right now.

A coupla personal anecdotes. I spent about two years in North Carolina in '65 and '66. They had odd drinking laws there, and to get a beer on Sunday we had to go to a town called Swansboro. 'Town' mighta been pushin' it a little bit, but it had a saloon that was open on Sunday.

The black Marines who were from The South wouldn't go there with us, they went to black bars in black towns, but the splibs from Up North didn't have the Jim Crow upbringing and would. Once. There were usually a couple of locals in the joint and they weren't down with Civil Rights just yet and didn't like blacks in "their" bar. They didn't have quite the lack of common sense to take on a bunch of young Marines, so there wasn't much they could do about it.

What they could do was put nickels (yes, I'm that old) in the jukebox. They played such songs as "Cajun Ku Klux Klan" and "NAACP Flight 105" which was about an airport flight controller directing a plane carrying Freedom Riders to crash in a swamp. Nice, huh? Both of these songs, and there were others I am sure, were on Rebel Records although I don't think they are still in the catalog. That they were probably on jukeboxes in "white" bars all over The South is indicative of the times.

The black Marines wanted to kick the crackers' asses for playing these race records, but we convinced 'em that a) they weren't in Chi town or Philly, and b) they were stickin' their fingers in whitey's eye just by being there and that they didn't want to rot in some redneck lockup and neither did we for backin' 'em up. It kept them from doing something that would have felt good but would have gotten us all in trouble.

Switchin' gears here. I got transferred from electronics school at MCRD San Diego to Camp Lejeune in March 1965. I drove my car and as luck would have it, my route went right through Selma, Alabama. I had heard, of course, about the Freedom Marches across the Edmund Pettus bridge there earlier that month, but when I blazed through Selma it was very quiet and peaceful. Deader'n a carp, actually. I decided to send a postcard home and stopped at a store to buy one.

I was driving a 1948 Plymouth with California plates and a Loyola University sticker in the back window. To the casual observer in Alabama it must have looked like another commie agitator was in town. I wasn't in the store one minute before the biggest fuckin' cop I've ever seen was right in there taking a look at me. The cop had a state Alcohol & Beverage Control patch on his uniform shoulder and was mighty well armed for a booze cop! He saw my haircut, and maybe the base sticker on my bumper, and put two and two together and decided I wasn't a problem and left. Those Alabama cops were on it, though. If there was any more civil rights trouble, they were gonna nip it, nip it in the bud! (Thanks to Barney Fife. Heh.)

That was 45 years ago, at the very dawn of the attempt at equality in this country. Some people have not accepted it and are not over it to this day. The old ways die hard, but they were and are pure evil, and die they must even if they have to be helped along their way to hell by the rest of us.