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The Confederate debate is heating up once again, and now vandals have taken to defacing confederate soldier monuments at one metro cemetery. The Sons of Confederate Veterans is a group which only relatives of those who fought in the war can join. While they recognize that, today, the Confederate Flag is not popular, the group say it’s no excuse for defacing a memorial honoring soldiers who died. ‘Rest in peace’ is the purpose of cemeteries everywhere. But that peace was disturbed sometime Wednesday night into Thursday morning. “I want to be forgiving, but it really hurts us to have our...

“Then arose that do or die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.” ~ Confederate Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade There are few aspects of the Civil War which have been engrained in American culture and remembrance more than the Confederate soldiers’ Rebel Yell . . ."

I've been called a racist. I've been called a bigot. I've been called a non-Christian. When the controversy over the Confederate flag erupted last month, the owner of a Huntsville flag company said her business would make the flags even if no one else would. And that's apparently what's happened. "I'm not aware of another company in the United States making these flags," said Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag & Banner, in an interview Thursday with AL.com. So now you know why the website for the Governors Drive business near downtown Huntsville cautions visitors that all Confederate flag orders...

JULY 17--But who will care for all those Confederate flags? The North Carolina man who responded to the South Carolina church massacre by further covering his property in the rebel flag was arrested and jailed this week on a probation violation charge, records show. Edward Lee West, 69, is locked up in the Nash County jail in advance of an August 5 court appearance. Seen in the adjacent mug shot, West was collared Wednesday afternoon. According to court records, a judge issued an arrest warrant for West after he failed to show up last week for a court hearing on...

WEST POINT, N.Y. ─ Following the decision of the South Carolina government to remove the Confederate flag from a state memorial, and the subsequent, nation-wide uproar over all things Confederate, West Point has announced that it will posthumously revoke the diplomas of all cadets who graduated from the Academy and fought for the South during the Civil War. “This sends a clear message to slave-owners and those who would fight for such a horrific cause that 150 years after most of them died we will not tolerate such atrocities on American soil,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Jackson, a spokesman for...

The California Legislative Black Caucus has added its voice to a call for Fort Bragg officials to rename the Mendocino Coast city, potentially breathing new life into a debate that had been largely dismissed as silly by residents and officials in the former logging town with some 7,200 residents. On Thursday, the caucus sent a letter to the city signed by eight of its 12 members. “Fort Bragg is known for its strong sense of community, natural beauty and forward vision. It is also a very diverse community, with residents of many ethnicities and nationalities. But the name Bragg comes...

The Fresno City Council president vows the Confederate battle flag will never legally fly over Fresno City Hall. Not that it’s ever likely to happen. Not that it’s ever happened as far as City Hall veterans can recall. Council President Oliver Baines on Thursday is proposing a law that would prohibit the city from displaying or selling the Confederate battle flag. The law would not apply to private organizations or individuals. California lawmakers last year passed a similar law that applies to state government agencies. The Confederate flag on South Carolina’s State House grounds was recently removed. Baines’ proposal comes...

Reverend James David Manning opens by saying, “There are men that are ready right now to defend the nation against the liberals in the north.” He says, “I want this to be clear, they are men, you may call them Confederates, you may call them southerners, you can call them what you choose…They are ready to defend this nation. Not only to defend their own home, their own states, that’s not just their cause.” He continues, “They’re not only ready to defend their way of life, to defend their children from having to go to public schools where their children...

The late Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and led the filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act Petitioning West Virginia Governor To remove the name of the late Senator and Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd from the public space, road ways and government buildings (including schools). Sign Petition

In an historic move that will forever be remembered as the day racism finally came to an end, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has signed into law a measure removing the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds. The culmination of weeks of debate, the flag’s removal has had a series of ripple effects. The Southern Poverty Law Center declared racism “dead,” the NAACP officially merged with the Ku Klux Klan, and Southerners everywhere denounced their heritage of black oppression. Or not. Instead of focusing on the heinous crimes of one disturbed murderer, South Carolina and the rest of the...

In American letters and mythology, there are few characters as noble as Atticus Finch. The gentleman, lawyer, and single father from Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” has been the very model of masculine decency for decades. Whether through the dulcet delivery of the classic novel or the buttoned-up dignity of Gregory Peck’s movie portrayal, Atticus has been loved as few figures of fiction have. As reviews trickle out for Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman,” written before, but taking place after, her masterpiece, one bit of news has dominated: Atticus Finch is a racist. Had he been a historical figure,...

This 1938 Jackson Daily News article tells the story of how the Southern governors fought to level the playing field with the North when it came to railroad freight rates. The railroad commissions kept the freight rates very slanted towards the North. Canada, yes- Canada, enjoyed lower freight rates on railroads than did the South; so slanted weighted against the South were the rates. Thus a builder in New Orleans could get steel shipped more cheaply from Pittsburgh than he could from Birmingham....

SEATTLE - A Confederate monument in Capitol Hill's Lake View Cemetery is in the spotlight as a local group calls for its removal. For more than a century, Lake View Cemetery has been the final resting place for many of Seattle's pioneers. Only a short walk from one of the cemetery's most visited grave sites - that of Bruce Lee - a 14-foot granite monument memorializes Washington state's Confederate veterans and their families. "Just because it's a military memorial doesn't justify it," Charlette LaFevere says. "It's offensive." LeFevere is part of a small group calling on Seattle City leaders to...

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She’s not going to be bullied. A lonely voice of reason was heard in Texas last week — one that wasn’t infected by the national hysteria to wipe all vestige of of the Confederacy from the South after the tragic mass shooting at a traditionally-black Charleston, S.C. church. And it came from an African-American — and a Democrat — and a woman. San Antonio Councilman Alan E. Warrick II sent an interdepartmental memo Wednesday asking that city’s mayor to appoint a task force to inventory all Confederate flags, monuments and statues in public areas. “It often takes an unspeakable tragedy...

While the Confederate battle flag is coming down from the State House grounds in South Carolina and around the nation, it continues to fly here in St. Mary's County, at the center of a privately owned monument next to the largest burial site of rebel soldiers in Maryland. Clinton Cole took pictures of the private monument last week and shook his head. "That flag stands for nothing but hate," said the 49-year-old Longview Beach man, who is black. "This is 2015, and we're still dealing with this?" But Jim Dunbar, who heads the group that built the monument, says the...

It's really this simple, the correct answer is "this is a democrat party issue, the democrats created the confederate battle flag. And democrat governors and state legislatures pssed the bills that flies these flags over various state houses." Bill Clinton in Arkansas for example

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that what we see happening in the United States today is an apt illustration of why the Confederate flag was raised in the first place. What we see materializing before our very eyes is tyranny: tyranny over the freedom of expression, tyranny over the freedom of association, tyranny over the freedom of speech, and tyranny over the freedom of conscience. In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a prophet. He said if the South lost, “It means...

Why did the southern states reward a racist murderer by making him the most significant southern political figure since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Are southern politicians so ignorant that they don’t understand that the people who commit such crimes do so to get attention? Why are they aiding and abetting his effort to steal the Confederate Flag and make it a symbol of racism? Why are they trying to cause whites to be mad at blacks and possibly hate them?

Memphis, Tenn., city leaders unanimously voted on Tuesday night to exhume the body of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader who is buried in the city’s Health Sciences Park, and move him to a private cemetery, Fusion reports. According to the report, the City Council also voted to move his wife’s body from the park and to take down the statue of Forrest sitting on a horse that currently stands in the park. The action is just one of the more recent moves of city and state leaders pushing for the removal of Confederate...