Mississippi's Confederate Heritage Month proclamation prompts outcry

stringer bell
stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/03/mississippi-confederate-heritage-month-backlash-phil-bryant
The Confederacy is rising again, this time using perhaps the final weapon in its arsenal: calendars.

Mississippi governor Phil Bryant recently proclaimed April to be Confederate Heritage Month, adding an official flourish to a longstanding tradition in his state and several others. April, he wrote in the proclamation, is “the month in which the Confederate States began and ended a four-year struggle”.

Bryant’s proclamation does not mention the central cause of the struggle – slavery – but instead announces the month as a chance to “gain insight from our mistakes and successes” and to “earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us”. It also sets aside 25 April as “Confederate Memorial Day”.

The proclamation set off an outcry around the state. Bryant may have expected less-than-universal acceptance of his declaration: he did not issue it on the official Mississippi state website, alongside other proclamations. Instead it appeared without notice on the site of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The SCV is a group dedicated to preserving the vestiges of southern rebellion – including the Mississippi state flag, which is the last in the nation to feature a version of the Confederate battle flag.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leaders in Mississippi reacted by proposing a civil war remembrance of their own: Union Army Heritage Month.

“These white and black Mississippi patriots fought for the continuation of the United States of America as one nation, under ? , indivisible with liberty and justice for all,” Derrick Johnson, president of Mississippi’s NAACP, wrote to the Clarion-Ledger.

“Should not these soldiers be honored, too?”

Scores rallied on the steps of the capitol, in Jackson. They were diverse. Kathleen Chambers personified a shift in the state’s mentality: she is young and white, and instead of a southern drawl she spoke with the universal up-talk of young people.

“Any white people I know? They’re not OK with this,” she said to the local television station WAPT.

Of Bryant, she said: “He’s trying to turn a Confederate heritage into a good thing, when it’s not. It shouldn’t be celebrated. Especially we shouldn’t celebrate owning people in the past.”

Other states around the south – Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and, until a few years ago, Virginia – celebrate similar months, with variations. Unlike Mississippi, Alabama’s proclamation keeps the cause of the war in view: “Our recognition of Confederate history also recognizes that slavery was one of the causes of the war, an issue in the war, was ended by the war and slavery is hereby condemned.”

Virginia may be a bellwether for the fate of the Confederate calendar. The last time Virginia declared such a month, in 2010, the backlash was immediate. On 8 April that year Governor Bob McConnell issued a lengthy apology to the citizens of his state and amended his proclamation.

“The proclamation issued by this office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission,” he wrote. “The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed.

“The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their ? -given inalienable rights, and led to the civil war. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.”

McDonnell injected this section into the middle of his proclamation: “WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their ? -given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history.”

In Mississippi, Bryant has showed no inclination to include such an acknowledgment. But Clay Chandler, the governor’s director of communications, told the Times-Picayune in Mississippi: “Like his predecessors – both Republican and Democrat – who issued similar proclamations, Governor Bryant believes Mississippi’s history deserves study and reflection, no matter how unpleasant or complicated parts of it may be.”

And, he said: “Like the proclamation says, gaining insight from our mistakes and successes will help us move forward.”

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Comments

  • The_Jackal
    The_Jackal Members Posts: 3,628 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I would be less offered of this revisionist would stop pandering the fairytale the the Confederacy split and ensuring civil war was over state right. Yes it was over states rights to choose if they could allow slavery or not with slavery being the underlying theme. Abe Lincoln and the Radical Republicans won fair and square and the Southeren Democrat's acted like whiny childeren.
  • blakfyahking
    blakfyahking Members Posts: 15,785 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I think Confederate history should be preserved tho

    mofos are so quick to try to wash away history that people forget history repeats itself


    I like it better when the enemy wears a uniform and proudly identifies himself
  • Recaptimus_Prime360
    Recaptimus_Prime360 Members Posts: 64,801 ✭✭✭✭✭
  • BobOblah
    BobOblah Members Posts: 9,324 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Preserve and teach history always, but giving it a month makes it seem like a celebration of people who were on the wrong side of history fighting for an evil institution, and who don't deserve to be celebrated.

    And not mentioning slavery is classic southern sugarcoated history and that ? drives me crazy. ? Sons of Confederate Veterans still dedicated to miseducating people and revising history I see.

    Do descendants of Nazis have this hard a time admitting that their ancestors were ? ? Some white people in the south really can't do it.
  • Will Munny
    Will Munny Members Posts: 30,199 ✭✭✭✭✭
    "We didn't lose! We just ran outta bullets" - southern people.