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NIXA, Mo. —The Nixa school district is refusing to allow students to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the Confederate flag to memorialize a classmate's death. The Springfield News-Leader reports that students wanted to wear the shirts on the anniversary of a Colby Snider's May 1, 2012, death from carbon monoxide poisoning. Besides the Confederate flag, the shirts included the slogan "heritage

I by-and-large agree with the thrust of Jamelle Bouie’s recent American Prospect article, which argues that Republicans badly misapprehend the reason(s) African-Americans generally vote for Democratic candidates. Too many conservatives assert that African-Americans have developed a “false consciousness” and simply need to be shown the error of their ways before they’ll start supporting Republicans. Asking “What’s the matter with black people?” simply isn’t going to get the GOP very far in its minority outreach efforts. But in the course of this argument, Bouie makes the following statement: “White Southerners jumped ship from Democratic presidential candidates in the 1960s, and this...

“Like previous campaigns criticizing other Confederate Memorials, he sees the petition to remove the carving of Jefferson, Lee and Jackson as an attack on the truth.”

Let’s face it—on nearly every important issue, from gun control to immigration to gay marriage, red states are holding America back. Lee Siegel on why the South should get the hell out of the union. Let’s not be fooled by all the bipartisan rhetoric that has been streaming out of the GOP since Romney’s self-destruction. Hundreds of thousands of petitioners in a handful of red states still want to secede? Well, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. A solid block of Southern states continues to refuse to expand Medicaid, thus squashing one of the linchpins of...

A Way of Life Is Disappearing in Dixie Bert Rosenbush Jr. enjoys a bittersweet form of celebrity in his hometown of Demopolis, Ala.: He’s the last living Jew there. It’s a form of prominence he shares with Phil Cohen of Lexington, Miss. In Natchez, Miss., Jerold Krause is one of just a dozen Jews left. And Selma, Ala., a town that was central to the civil rights movement, is down to its last dozen, too. It’s a paradox, in a way. Because, as Stuart Rockoff, director of the history department of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Life, in Jackson, Miss.,...

8 things to think about as we mark the conflict's 150th anniversary. Some ring strong: of course the end of slavery, perhaps the worst disgrace in the nation's history. And the 620,000 ancestors lost. Other vestiges have weakened with the passage of time but are no less legacies of the four horrific, heroic years that shaped us as one nation. Here are eight ways the Civil War indelibly changed us and how we live: 1. We have ambulances and hospitals. The Civil War began during medieval medicine's last gasp and ended at the dawn of modern medicine. Each side entered...

My children have long been urging me to give them in a short story my experience in the Battle of Gettysburg. I was then a girl of thirteen, living on the Seminary Ridge which today is known to every child who studies the history of the Civil War. I shall never forget the June afternoon when I stood on the Seminary steps with my parents and other persons to see a Confederate host marching in the Chambersburg Pike. It seemed as if Pandemonium had broken loose. A more ragged and unkempt set of men would be hard to find. Many...

Did you know that three Memphis, Tennessee parks named for our great Southern leaders Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest-Forrest Park, Confederate President Jefferson Davis-Jefferson Davis Park and Confederate Park were changed?

Franklin County, Mississippi (CNN) -- Statistically speaking, Franklin County should be straighter than John Wayne eating Chick-fil-A. The middle-of-nowhere rectangle in southwest Mississippi -- known for its pine forests, hog hunting and an infamous hate crime -- is home to exactly zero same-sex couples, according to an analysis of census data. In other words: It's a place where gays don't exist. At least not on paper.

The 8th Alabama Irish Brigade made their mark in history fighting for the Confederacy and is remembered for their Erin Go Braugh! flag with a field of green.

Ten Neo-Confederate Myths (+one) "Secession was not all about slavery." In fact, a study of the earliest secessionists documents shows, when they bother to give reasons at all, their only major concern was to protect the institution of slavery. For example, four seceding states issued "Declarations of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify Secession from the Federal Union". These documents use words like "slavery" and "institution" over 100 times, words like "tax" and "tariff" only once (re: a tax on slaves), "usurpation" once (re: slavery in territories), "oppression" once (re: potential future restrictions on slavery). So secession wasn't just...

One of the most vexing questions in African-American history is whether free African Americans themselves owned slaves. The short answer to this question, as you might suspect, is yes, of course; some free black people in this country bought and sold other black people, and did so at least since 1654, continuing to do so right through the Civil War. For me, the really fascinating questions about black slave-owning are how many black "masters" were involved, how many slaves did they own and why did they own slaves? The answers to these questions are complex, and historians have been arguing...

In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court arguments over the Voting Rights Act, the geography of racism is once again a topic of debate. None other than Chief Justice John Roberts kicked things off when he asked the act’s defenders—that would be the U.S. government—a 20-word question that brilliantly framed the entire debate: “Is it the government’s submission that the citizens of the South are more racist than the citizens of the North?” Roberts asked, pinning a very ragged tail on a very ugly donkey. Unlike most debates about this question, this one has real implications. The landmark act...

TAUNTON — State Rep. Shaunna O’Connell said she meant no offense when she posted a photograph on Facebook showing a snowman decorated with a Confederate flag bikini top. “It was just kids having innocent fun,” O’Connell said. “Nothing should be read into that at all.” O’Connell, R-Taunton, posted the image to Facebook on Sunday, along with photographs of her children playing in the snow and a U.S. flag against a snowy backdrop. The Confederate flag, regardless of the intent behind its display, can be a racially charged image for many Americans, said Michael Curry, president of the NAACP’s Boston chapter.

John B. Gordon believed in the South's Constitutional right to secession, but after the war, he worked to unite the nation and helped white and black Southerners the war made poor.

The common media view of the South is as a regressive region, full of overweight, prejudiced, exploited and undereducated numbskulls. This meme was perfectly captured in this Bill Maher-commissioned video from Alexandra Pelosi, the New York-based daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Given the level of imbecility, maybe we’d be better off if the former Confederate states exiled themselves into their own redneck empire. Travel writer Chuck Thompson recently suggested this approach in a new book. Right now, however, Northeners can content themselves with the largely total isolation of Southerners from the corridors of executive power. Yet even as...

I have lived in Las Vegas and Los Angeles for the past 5 years. I drove down to Huntsville, Alabama to work on some software, with a friend of mine. I have never been to the "deep South". I have been here for 24 hours. It is really a bit of a culture shock after spending a day sorting things out, here. Everybody is "Yes Sir" and "No Sir" with people differing to you with "Am I in your way?" and "Can I help you find something?" Well, this is exactly what happened to me today. I sat down to...

General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are forever memorialized and remembered along with Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the larger than life carving at “Stone Mountain Memorial Park” near Atlanta, Georgia.

I never had any problems in the short time I lived in the Deep South. My co-workers in Savannah, Ga., told me at times that I was nice for a Yankee, which is to say that thanks to Southern hospitality, I was very politely well-tolerated. Still, there were times I felt as if I needed a passport. I also had never seen an entire aisle at the grocery store dedicated to grits, the way they had it at the Piggly Wiggly. And while that life was a while ago, it was enough to give a sense of some of the...

A portrait of Robert E. Lee adorns the Georgia State Capitol where the Sons of Confederate Veterans held their first Lee birthday celebration in 1988.

". . . when I served as a Magistrate for the Commonwealth of Virginia, I was intrigued to find out that it was still a misdemeanor in Virginia to impugn a woman's "virtue and chastity . . ."

“News that Ann Rutherford, who played Scarlett O’Hara’s little sister, died Monday brought tears to the eyes of Connie Sutherland, director of Marietta Gone with the Wind Museum”—June 13, 2012 the Marietta Daily Journal, Marietta, Georgia.

Have any fellow FReepers seen this movie yet? If so, what did you think and would you recommend it?

New Movie Propagates Lincoln Historical Myths If you are planning to see the new, Steven Spielberg directed, Lincoln movie you might want to invest in an accurate history book instead. While it is successfully dramatic, the movie rehashes several 150 year old myths about the Lincoln presidency and America’s most horrible war. First, to the movie’s credit, the script avoids a key, blatant lie that is currently being taught throughout American public schools today. The script focuses correctly on explaining how slaves were freed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation did...

A Virginia company filed a lawsuit after it was forced to stop its construction of a monument in Alabama honoring a noted Confederate general, who also was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The federal suit, filed by KTK Mining of Richmond, claims that the company received the necessary permits to do the work on the monument in Old Live Oak Cemetery honoring Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, The Selma Times-Journal reported. However, the city of Selma, Alabama, suspended the permits when the project drew protests. The KTK mining company claims it had not received notice prior to the...

On the Sunday, October 28 edition of ABC's This Week, Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Beast claimed that Obama might lose this election because the whole south is filled with racists that are somehow just like the Old Confederacy. As George Will noted, according to Sullivan all the whites that were not racist in 2008 suddenly are racist in 2012. In a discussion of the "racial gap" in this year's election, Sullivan declared all southerners to be racists and are sliding back into the civil war. "If Virginia and Florida go back to the Republicans, it's the Confederacy, entirely. You...

If you think comparing Mitt Romney’s supporters in the American South to the Civil War’s Confederacy would be irresponsible and racially suggestive, Daily Beast “Daily Dish” blogger Andrew Sullivan apparently disagrees with you. “If Virginia and Florida go back to the Republicans, it’s the Confederacy, entirely,” Sullivan declared on this weekend’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”“You put a map of the Civil War over this electoral map, you’ve got the Civil War,” he added. That comment drew the ire of Washington Post columnist George Will, who said the president’s policies — not racism — are influencing voters in states like...

For the third consecutive year, Area Development magazine’s editors have conducted a survey of a select group of highly respected location consultants who work with a nationwide client base. We asked the consultants to name their top-5 state choices in 14 site selection categories. States were ranked in each of the 14 categories based on the number of times they were named as a "top-5" choice by the responding consultants. According to the results, the top-10 states for doing business are Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Indiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, in that order... The top-five states...

Just 50 years after ending its notorious segregation policy, Ole Miss finally has a black homecoming queen. The school just crowned Courtney Roxanne Pearson as their queen, with the student receiving the crowning during the halftime ceremonies of the Ole Miss-Auburn football game. “I am still in shock, but I am definitely very excited,” said Pearson.

America mourned the death of Gen. Robert E. Lee on Wednesday, October 12, 1870 and Friday, October 12th marks the 142nd anniversary of his death.

Political Reporting, Buzzfeed style, or, as @benk84 calls it, "The Chive With Politics." @ZekeJMiller Romney motorcade just passed a hill flying a large confederate flag in rural SW VAAh. His motorcade just passed a hill flying a confederate flag. Numinous. Sets the stage. Novelistic detail, we call that. The single well-chosen telling detail that implies larger ones. That's the local color he supplies for Romney. And for Obama? Pool: Obama insisted on taking a photograph in front of the sign that read "Michelle's Bakery."Obama per pool: " And she spells it the right way, with two Ls. That’s the correct...

America mourned the death of Gen. Robert E. Lee on Wednesday, October 12, 1870 and Friday, October 12th marks the 142nd anniversary of his death.

To many, the Confederate flag is a reminder of slavery and a symbol of racism. But to famed Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Confederate flag is just about rememberin’ their roots.In an interview with CNN earlier this month, the only remaining original band member, Gary Rossington, said that the band would stop flying the flag at its shows because it was often misconstrued as racist.“Through the years, people like the KKK and skinheads kinda kidnapped the Dixie or Southern flag from its tradition and the heritage of the soldiers, that’s what it was about,” Rossington said at the time. “We didn’t...

Michelle Obama:’Back when our great-grandparents were riding that Underground Railroad’Written on September 24, 2012 at 9:12 am by FPP **SNIP** Now, back when our great-grandparents were riding that Underground Railroad, back when John Lewis was marching across that bridge in Selma, and Jim Clyburn was sitting in an Orangeburg jail, the injustices we faced were written in big, bold letters on the face of our laws. And while we may have had our differences over strategy, the battles we needed to fight were very clear.

Now the band has suddenly decided to become political correct. Gary Rossington, the only original member, grovelled to CNN's Fredricka Whitfield. He says he doesn't want to offend anyone by using the Confederate flag. He said the band will no longer display the flag. Lynyrd Skynyrd "Sweet Home Alabama" in 1977. This was three months before the plane crash that killed three of the original members. --SNIP-- The band released a new studio album just days ago ironically titled "Last of A Dying Breed." The band is preparing to go on tour to support their new album. However, there is...

A century ago, nine out of ten black Americans lived in the South, primarily in formerly Confederate states where segregation reigned. Then, in the 1920s, blacks began heading north, both to escape the racism of Jim Crow and to seek work as southern agriculture grew increasingly mechanized. “From World War I to the 1970s, some six million black Americans fled the American South for an uncertain existence in the urban North and West,” writes journalist Isabel Wilkerson, the author of The Warmth of Other Suns. Principal destinations in the Great Migration, as the exodus came to be called, included...

On this morning 150 years ago, Union and Confederate troops clashed at the crossroads town of Sharpsburg, Maryland. The Battle of Antietam remains the bloodiest single day in American history. The battle left 23,000 men killed or wounded in the fields, woods and dirt roads, and it changed the course of the Civil War. It is called simply the Cornfield, and it was here, in the first light of dawn that Union troops — more than a thousand — crept toward the Confederate lines. The stalks were at head level and shielded their movements. Cannon fire opened the battle with...

<p>As the 150th anniversary of the Civil War continues to be commemorated, progenies of those who fought in the bitter battles between the North and South have converged to remember the sacrifices on both sides.</p> <p>But tucked inside an exhibit in Frederick, Maryland is a two-page document from Robert E. Lee – found wrapped around a case of cigars – that could have changed the course of the entire war, and led to victory for the Union.</p>

Fear not, Dukes of Hazzard fans, no one is going to mess with the General Lee. After a forum post on HobbyTalk.com indicated that Tomy Toys, manufacturer of all official Dukes of Hazzard merchandise, would no longer produce scale models of the show's famous 1969 Dodge Charger with its Confederate battle flag displayed on the roof, Warner Brothers has issued a statement to the contrary. The original story reportedly came courtesy of an anonymous worker with Tomy Toys, who said the Stars and Bars livery would be excised from the models beginning on January 1, 2013. The news incited substantial...

Gulf Coast residents are getting a history lesson after a mysterious ship popped up on the beach after Hurricane Isaac. The wreckage of a presumed Civil War warship washed up in Fort Meyer, Alabama, near Mobile, after the Category 1 storm barreled down on the Gulf Cost.

Why are we here? Why did the Obama reelection team pick North Carolina for the Democratic convention? As the convention begins, prominent Democrats are still grumbling about that question. They fear the Tar Heel State is no sure win for the president. Recall that in 2008, Barack Obama won North Carolina by 0.4 percentage points over Arizona Sen. John McCain (R). Before that, the state had gone Republican in every presidential election since 1976. Current polls have Obama and Romney tied in the state. When then-President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he famously told an aide...

The General Lee – Bo and Luke Duke’s vehicle of choice from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard‘ – is a classic and instantly recognizable Hollywood car. But it’s about to get a little less recognizable as Warner Bros., the studio that owns the theatrical, DVD and licensing rights to ‘The Dukes of Hazzard,’ has decided to remove the confederate flag from all future versions of the car. The news has reportedly been floating around the hobby community over the past few days as ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ collectors became aware of a new regulation. A collector on HobbyTalk.com was told by a...

On 6 November 1860, the six-year-old Republican Party elected its first president. During the tense crisis months that followed – the “secession winter” of 1860–61 – practically all observers believed that Lincoln and the Republicans would begin attacking slavery as soon as they took power. Democrats in the North blamed the Republican Party for the entire sectional crisis. They accused Republicans of plotting to circumvent the Constitutional prohibition against direct federal attacks on slavery. Republicans would instead allegedly try to squeeze slavery to death indirectly, by abolishing it in the territories and in Washington DC, suppressing it in the high seas, and refusing federal...

The 150th Antietam-Sharpsburg Reenactment is pleased to announce we will be hosting a Remembrance Illumination scheduled for Saturday evening, September 15th at 7PM. The Antietam Illumination Committee in conjunction with Michael Wicklein will be placing 3654 (Union KIA 2108, Confederate KIA 1546) candles on the reenactment battlefield in remembrance of the number killed in action on September 17, 1862 at the Battle of Antietam. Lasting approximately one hour, the program will include an artillery salute.

At the height of the holiday shopping season of 1860, a bookseller in Richmond, Va., placed a telling advertisement in The Daily Dispatch promoting a selection of "Elegant Books for Christmas and New Year's Presents." Notably, the list of two dozen "choice books, suitable for Holiday Gifts" included five works by the late Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott in "various beautiful bindings." Sir Walter Scott not only dominated gift book lists on the eve of the Civil War but also dominated Southern literary taste throughout the conflict. His highly idealized depiction of the age of chivalry allowed Southern...

In 2010, the Alabama legislature went Republican for the first time in 136 years. In 2011, Republicans won the Mississippi statehouse and Louisiana’s legislature—for both, a first since Reconstruction. That leaves Arkansas as the Holdout State. But Arkansas is wobbling. If its legislature falls to Republicans this year—the odds are 50-50 or better—all 11 states of the old Confederacy will be in GOP hands. And the political current that is transforming the South from a Democratic bastion into the bedrock of Republican strength nationally will be nearly complete. In Arkansas, the ever-so-slow Republican trend accelerated in 2010. Republicans not only...

Video from the Smithsonian of what must be octogenarian Confederate veterans calling up the past.

ATLANTA — Food has always been a complex issue in the South, where the country’s most distinct culinary region often eats its supper against a backdrop of race and religion. So for a Southerner like Justin Breen, whether or not to go to Chick-fil-A is not as simple as choosing sides in a national cultural war that has pitted people who support the chain’s biblical position on homosexuality against those who do not. For Mr. Breen, a young motion graphic designer with many tattoos, a baseball cap and a best friend in the gay pornography business, the chain’s chicken sandwiches...

On this day in 1861, the U.S. Congress passes the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, declaring that the war is being waged for the reunion of the states and not to interfere with the institutions of the South, namely slavery. The measure was important in keeping the pivotal states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland in the Union. This resolution is not to be confused with an earlier plan, the Crittenden Compromise, which proposed protecting slavery as an enticement to keep Southern states from seceding; the plan was defeated in Congress. Many Northerners initially supported a war to keep the Union together, but had...

Aging rocker and reality TV personality Ted Nugent is emerging, even ahead of Donald Trump, as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s most embarrassing public supporter. Nugent is at it again, reacting to the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act by writing in the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times that America would have been better off had the South won the Civil War. A full Nugent rant, which might be subtitled “Robe Rage”: “The bottom line is that Chief Justice Roberts’ traitor vote will ensure more monumental spending and wasted taxes and put almost 15 percent of the...