Neo-Confederate – the other N-Word

To my knowledge, no one has ever called me a “Nigger,” but a few misguided, uncouth rednecks have called me "Nigger-lover."  That was back in the 1960s and early 1970s, when I was a young man, very active in fighting for integration during the civil rights movement.  Nigger-lover is a term defined by the Urban Dictionary as "A white person in the southern United States who has empathy with or is a friend with Black folk."   Although I eschewed the "N" word, "Nigger lover" was a badge I wore with honor.

It happens that I am a lover of mankind – all God’s children, just as I was taught while a kid growing up in Sunday School in Tennessee, “Red, yellow, black and white, they are precious in His (God’s) sight.”

Having descended from Scotch-Irish, German and Cherokee stock, I am an all-American hybrid. My father before me was a civil rights activist minister, going all the way back to the 1930s in Georgia.  My own color-blindness has been evidenced by the fact that when I was single I dated more than one girl of African descent, and I have been very happy to welcome Blacks, Chinese and Hispanics into my own family and the families of my siblings, either by marriage, birth or adoption.

That said, I have recently been surprised when a few readers of my this blog have called me the other “N” word – "Neo-Confederate." Whether spoken of me or someone else, that term is virtually always used as a pejorative political epithet – a term of ridicule and accusation - usually unjustified.

I did a Google search for “Neo-Confederate,” and in the first 50 pages to come up, every one of them used the term in a derogatory or negative light. Of all my many friends and acquaintances who love and venerate the cause of the Confederate States of America, I have never heard any of them refer to themselves as a Neo-Confederate. It seems to be a term used primarily in hate speech by people who despise those of us who honor and venerate our Southern heritage.

The prefix, neo, implies that defenders of the South are revisionists, trying to gloss over past sins and fabricate a new history of the Confederacy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The so called Neo-Confederates are most often those of us who are well educated concerning our own history and culture and think it only proper to defend and preserve that proud and noble tradition of self reliance and resistance to an out of control federal empire. Our ideals are the same as those expressed by America's founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence.  They may be called “original” or “classical” but not “neo."  Politically correct moderns who hurl the “Neo-Confederate” epithet are either downright mean and nasty, or more likely, they are just ignorant folk who don’t know true history and have no idea what they are saying.

You may call me a “Southron.” You can even say I’m “Unreconstructed.”  But the Confederate ideals I espouse are more than 150 years old. They go all the way back to the secession movement of 1776.  There’s nothing "Neo" about it.

Black Senator Proposes Confederate Holiday

South Carolina State Senator Robert Ford - Associated Press Photo

By Carmen Dixon

Black Voices

A South Carolina state senator has proposed making mandatory a state holiday honoring Confederate war dead. Sen. Robert Ford, who is black, believes that such a holiday would help improve race relations by inspiring a fuller understanding of history. Here's what's going on:

Ford's bill won initial approval from a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. It would force county and municipal governments to follow the schedule of holidays used by the state, which gives workers 12 paid days off, including May 10th to honor Confederate war dead. Mississippi and Alabama also recognize Confederate Memorial Day.

Years ago, Ford said he pushed a bill to make both that day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day paid holidays. He considered it an effort to help people understand the history of both the civil rights movement and the Confederacy in a state where the Orders of Secession are engraved in marble in the statehouse lobby, portraits of Confederate generals look down on legislators in their chambers and the Confederate flag flies outside.

"Every municipality and every citizen of South Carolina should be, well, forced to respect these two days and learn what they can about those two particular parts of our history," Ford said Tuesday.

I understand Ford's point, but I also think that a Confederate day only matters if people are ready to engage in honest, informed, sometimes heart-pulling dialogue about everything, from secession and states' rights to the gangrene of slavery in our nation's past.

In a state steeped in a segregationist past, "there's no love in this state between black and white basically," he said. That's not apparent at the statehouse, where black and white legislators get along, "but if you go out there in real South Carolina, it's hatred, and I think we can bring our people together."

Lonnie Randolph, president of the state conference of NAACP branches, objected to that reasoning."Here Senator Ford is talking about the importance of race relations by forcing recognition of people who did everything they could to destroy another race -- particularly those that look like I do," Randolph said. "You can't make dishonor honorable. It's impossible."

Ron Dorgay, a Sons of Confederate Veterans member from Elgin, said race relations have moved far from hatred, but he hopes Ford's bill brings more understanding of the state's past."

Even in school systems, they don't teach the correct history," Dorgay said.

Once again, this debate looks like it may all come down to one color: green!

Large and small counties say they'll have put up more cash to cover holidays they don't now recognize, largely for law enforcement and emergency worker overtime, municipal and county association lobbyists said.

Ford says the cost is not the key issue here, and maybe he can convince his colleagues that he's right.

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See the source article here: http://www.blackvoices.com/blogs/2009/02/06/black-senator-wants-proposes-confederate-holiday/

NAACP Objects to Azalea Trail Maids at Obama Inaugural

These beautiful young ladies, many of them from minority ethnicities, are being criticized by the NAACP, which says they are a reminder of slavery. An official NAACP spokesman says the Azalea Trail Maids will become the "laughing stock of the Inauguration." I say the NAACP has lost all relevancy and such absurd claims make them the true laughing stock.

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Photo from the official Presidential Inaugural Committee website

Montgomery, Ala. (WSFA) -- They're part of a long standing tradition that will soon become a part of Presidential history.

The head of the Alabama NAACP, however, wants Mobile's Azalea Trail Maids to stay home on Inauguration Day, claiming the group reminds him of slavery.

"These are not just regular costumes. These are the costumes that remind someone of the plantation in Gone with the Wind," Edward Vaughn said in a phone interview.

Vaughn went on to say the group would be the laughing stock of the Inauguration. County leaders say nothing could be further from the truth.

"We want everyone to know that these young ladies do not need to be identified with slavery," said Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine.

"I don't see what the dresses have to do with racism. I don't see it. It's just a regular dress to me. Just a dress they wore back in the day," said Carolyn Tius of Montgomery.

Organizers stand behind the tradition, but opponents say tradition is the problem.
"We needed something that could show Alabama's great progress rather than something that shows a shameful past," Vaughn said.


See the original story and television clip here: http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=9655036&nav=menu33_2

William Johnson, Black Slaveholder of Natchez

There are more than 50 antebellum homes which can be toured in Natchez, Mississippi. The first one of the seven that my wife, Karen, and I personally visited on a Christmas vacation trip to Natchez was the William Johnson House.

William Johnson was a prosperous businessman and the owner of 16 slaves. He was also a free black man. Those with only a superficial knowledge of the American South often think that all blacks were slaves and all (or at least most) whites were slave owners. In fact, only 4.08 percent of free southern whites owned slaves, while there were literally thousands of free blacks, and among them 28 percent were slave owners. Far more free blacks lived in the south than in the north, and they owned slaves in disproportionate numbers to the white population.

A National Park Service employee in Natchez told us that when the William Johnson house was being restored, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was very enthusiastic about being involved in the process. Then, when the NAACP discovered that Johnson had been a slave owner, they immediately withdrew from the project. It seems that the NAACP is only interested in perpetuating their own "politically correct", albeit incomplete, story of the black man in the antebellum South.

William Johnson was born a slave but freed by his master as a young man. He became a barber, and eventually owned four barber shops in Natchez. He hired others to work for him, and he also bought slaves who worked in his home and businesses. The slave quarters are in a separate building behind his home, which is now owned by the National Park Service.


Inside the house are exhibits which tell Johnson's story. William Johnson kept a detailed diary for many years and quotes from those journals provide an amazing source of information about the often misunderstood realities of what it was like to be black and free in antebellum America.

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Photos and Article by J. Stephen Conn