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JACKSONVILLE, Florida (Reuters) - A north Florida school board has voted unanimously to change the name of a local high school honoring a Confederate general who made a fortune as a slave trader and was linked to the Ku Klux Klan. "It's time to move forward with the renaming of Nathan B. Forrest High ... it's time to really put it to bed," said School Board member Constance Hall, who asked the Board to finally begin the process of changing the name on Friday. Hall and the board's other African American member were joined in the 7-0 vote by four...

Born as a symbol of rebellion, the Confederate battle flag retains much of that symbolism to this very day. What is even more intriguing is the fact that the very commissioning of the original Confederate battle flag was itself, an act of rebellion. This little-known part of the flag’s story is told in a fascinating new documentary written and produced by historian Kent Masterson Brown.

Cruz, Lee, Gettysburg and Wet Cement by Colin Hanna and Ken Hagerty In July 1863 two armies converged around the little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Neither army foresaw a major battle on that ground, let alone the turning point of the entire Civil War. The Confederates were simply searching for a supply of shoes rumored to be in the town. When they stumbled across some Union cavalry, both sides called-in reinforcements, and then more, and before long a full-scale battle stood up. At no point on that first day in Gettysburg could either side have explained what the “end game”...

At a tea party rally in Washington Sunday billed as the “Million Vet March,” one idiot decided to bring Confederate flag, which was enough for liberals to paint the entire Republican Party as racist.

Will the initiative remain with aggressive Southern reactionaries, as their fellow Americans try to appease them or react on a case-by-case basis against a feint here or a diversion there? Or will an aroused national majority, tired of being pushed around by a selfish Southern minority of the shrinking American white majority, finally fight back?When I have described the well-considered, coherent political and economic strategies of the conservative white South, as I have done here, here and here, I am sometimes been accused of being a “conspiracy theorist.” But one need not believe that white-hooded Dragons and Wizards are secretly...

His leftist, politically-correct commentary during Sunday Night Football's halftime confirms his idiocy. He concluded that the name "Redskins" is offensive. No. It's not.NBC's removal of Keith Olbermann from SNF was not enough. Costas now must go.

The New York Times, in one more effort to paint the Southern states as hotbeds of racism, estimates that two-thirds of poor blacks and single mothers will be denied health insurance under Obamacare because the Southern states refuse to expand their Medicaid programs. The Times adds that more than half of low-wage workers without insurance won’t get any, either. Well down in the Times piece is this nugget: more than half of states in the United States have rejected Medicaid expansion, including Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, which are hardly Southern. To make the charge of racism stick, the...

The slave population, shown in the above map based on the 1860 census, was concentrated in counties where cotton plantations dominated the local economy. Whites in these areas today express more racial resentment and are more likely to vote Republican and oppose affirmative action than other Southerners, a new study finds. Whites who live in areas of the South once dominated by the plantation economy and slavery are much more likely than other Southerners to express colder feelings toward African Americans, to oppose affirmative action, and to vote Republican. Those are among the findings of a groundbreaking new study titled...

Beginning early on the morning of this day in 1862, Confederate and Union troops in the Civil War clash near Maryland's Antietam Creek in the bloodiest one-day battle in American history. The Battle of Antietam marked the culmination of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the Northern states. Guiding his Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River in early September 1862, the great general daringly divided his men, sending half of them, under the command of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, to capture the Union garrison at Harper's Ferry. President Abraham Lincoln put Major General George B. McClellan...

Relating to Syria:Not a blog or article authored by me (see link above), however, it puts into perspective the USA's own 4 year civil war....where experts estimate (and no one really knows, or can know...) 100,000 to 250,000 CIVILIAN DEATHS were caused by the war--the vast majority being in the South. Some historians estimate that as many as 50,000 civilians died of starvation as a result of Sherman's march to the sea alone.

This is the untold story of the Union's "hard war" against the people of the Confederacy. Styled the "Black Flag" campaign, it was agreed to by Lincoln in a council with his generals in 1864. Cisco reveals the shelling and burning of cities, systematic destruction of entire districts, mass arrests, forced expulsions, wholesale plundering of personal property, and even murder of civilians. Carefully researched largely from primary sources, this examination also gives full attention to the suffering of Black victims of Federal brutality.

Family TraditionSciple's Water Mill has been all in the family for nearly 200 yearsBy Nancy Dorman-Hickson Photography by Meg McKinney The honor box says a lot about Sciple’s Water Mill in De Kalb, Miss. Attached to a stand that’s filled with the mill’s stone-ground whole-wheat flour, fish fry mix, grits, and meal, the honor box means visitors won’t leave empty-handed even if the mill is closed. “Most people are honest,” says Eddie Sciple, the mill’s operator and owner. “Usually if meal is gone, there is money or an I.O.U. in the box.” People have been coming to the mill...

The NAACP in Lee County, Florida wants to picket the county over a portrait of General Robert E. Lee that hangs in the commission chambers because they deem displaying Lee's image to be racist. "It's a symbol of racism and division," Lee County NAACP President James Muwakkil said. According to Fox 4, "Muwakkil sent a letter to Lee County commissioners in early July, asking them to take down the portrait, but they voted to keep it up." On Sunday, Muwakkil fired off an email saying, "General Lee did not believe blacks should hold any positions in government." Muwakkil is reportedly...

The most popular Confederate flag, besides the Battle flag--the soldier's flag, was probably the Bonnie Blue flag that a song was made about.

It is reported that a Southern Heritage group has purchased land in Richmond, Virginia to fly a 10-by-15 foot Confederate flag on Interstate 95 in the city.

The NAACP has come forward in staunch opposition and anger about a heritage group’s plans to fly a 10-by-15-foot Confederate flag on a 50-foot pole south of Richmond, Va. — large enough to be seen from the corridor’s main highway, Interstate 95. The Virginia Flaggers say it’s to show respect for those on the South’s side who fought and died during the Civil War . . . But the NAACP sees differently. Virginia chapter executive director King Salim Khalfani told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the flag would show Richmond as a “backwater, trailer park, hick town.”

Views on abortion are becoming more entrenched in certain regions of the country, with New England residents more convinced of the pro-choice position and the Midwest and parts of the South becoming more pro-life, according to a new Pew Forum study. While abortion views have remained relatively steady when looking at the nation as a whole, the Pew study shows greater variation in a few regions of the country. The study compares views on abortion in 1995 and 1996 to views on abortion in 2012 and 2013 for eight regional areas – New England, Pacific Coast, Mid-Atlantic, Mountain West, Great...

During my childhood of the 50s, songs like “Swanee River”, “Mammy” and “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee”, all best sung by the late great Al Jolson, were very popular in the South and throughout the USA.

Rush Limbaugh would have sided with the confederacy during the Civil War, according to MSNBC analyst Dorian Warren. Warren, a Columbia professor and fellow at the progressive Roosevelt Institute, explained that Limbaugh “represents the Confederacy. He would have been on that side that went to war around the question of slavery.”

Do you remember that kid who went on YouTube to profess his love for the Confederate Flag a year or so ago? Well, Byron Thomas has taken his love for all things Dixie Mason to Capital Hill, where he is an intern for Tim Scott, the Republican Senator from South Carolina. Given that he has just been on the job for fewer than two weeks, you would think the young man would simply get settled in and learn his job. But not Mr. Thomas. He sent out an email–which was later sent to the Huffington Post–to fellow interns and staffers...