Posted on 02/20/2004 3:13:58 PM PST by CurlyBill
As some Black people trace their family history, they may find Confederate soldiers related to them.
Some of them join a somewhat controversial Southern heritage group for various reasons after learning about their family connection to the Civil War.
In Long Beach, California, the Hollands didn’t join the Sons of Confederate Veterans to support the Southern heritage or the beloved blazing stars and bars.
As William Holland mined his family’s history, he found that their great grandfather, Creed Holland, a Virginia slave, worked as a teamster for the Confederate Army until the war’s end in 1865.
“Maybe he felt that he deserved something, so here’s our chance to do that,” said Holland, a 35-year-old genealogist from the Atlanta suburb, Riverdale.
The Hollands, however, aren’t the only ones who have found gray in their blood, as Blacks dig into family trees and find — oh, no — Confederate connections.
The Holland’s membership connection to the group may sound like an oxymoron for some: Black and Confederate. But historical data shows that Blacks served in the Confederate army, whether as cooks or combatants, enslaved people or freemen.
Historians just aren’t sure how many Blacks served for the Confederate army or to what extent they saw battle.
“In truth, no one will ever know how many Blacks fought for the South as individuals, but it is safe to say that the number was extremely small,” said Donald Pfanz, a National Park Service historian.
According to Pfanz, the Confederacy used slaves and free Blacks as laborers — chaplains, cooks, teamsters, blacksmiths, for example — but it was not until March 1865 that it authorized the enlistment of Black soldiers.
Although the South never fielded any Black regiments, individual slaves or freemen occasionally fought alongside Confederate units, but their stories are “rare and, for the most part, are not well documented,” Pfanz said.
The SCV has hopeful statistics about the role Blacks played in the Confederate army, saying on its Web site that “tens of thousands of blacks” served the Confederacy with 25 percent of free Blacks and 15 percent of enslaved people “actively” supporting the South during the war.
The SCV was founded in Richmond, Va., in 1896 with the purpose of honoring its heroes, opening membership to men who find familial bonds to Confederate soldiers.
“The Columbia, Tenn.-based group today has about 35,500 members,” said Ben Sewell, SCV’s executive director.
“SCV has Hispanic and Jewish members, as well as Black ones, but the SCV has no figures to say how many,” he said.
But there are a few well-known Black members throughout the SCV, like H.K. Edgerton, who was quoted in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s quarterly magazine, “Intelligence Report,” as saying:
“If every African American would pick up the Confederate flag, I would say ‘Free at last, free at last, God Almighty, I am free at last.’”
Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, said SCV members revise the Civil War by presenting slavery in rosy terms, and by using rhetoric that suggests enslaved people enjoyed their servitude, and that the war wasn’t about slavery but about states’ rights.
“That’s just an utter falsehood,” Potok said. “In the end, these guys are simply liars.”
While the SCV is not listed on the SPLC’s list of hate groups, the SPLC spurns the connection that some SCV executives appear to have with neo-Confederate groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South — both of which are on SPLC’s list.
William Holland thought joining SCV would send him back in time so that he could learn more about Creed Holland’s life.
But after the group appeared to stall on its promise to place a special Confederate marker at his great-grandfather’s gravesite, Holland began to feel slighted by the group.
“I think they’re trying to use us as a publicity stunt,” said Holland, who didn’t renew his membership with the SCV.
His brother, John Holland, however, is still a member, and their sister, Wanda Chewning of Penhook, Va., is a member of the women’s equivalent, the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
But Sewell said the SCV does not use Blacks as a tool to legitimize their beliefs: “We’re just interested in trying to have the history of the war told accurately.”
Stan Armstrong has found truth in the SCV, said the 43-year-old Las Vegas filmmaker and college instructor. Armstrong, who is Black, joined a SCV camp in Memphis, Tenn., in 1997 after learning that a white relative served in the Confederate Army.
When people tell him he’s being used, Armstrong retorts, “Read your history.”
“The Civil War is not as Black and white as one may make it,” Armstrong said.
Other Blacks who have joined the SCV have their own reasons to ally with the group.
John Holland, 49, a Roanoke, Virginia tire finisher, wanted to learn more about the Civil War, particularly to piece together the kind of life his great grandfather may have lived as he served in the war.
“It’s a good education of what happened back then and it’s an education of what’s going on right now,” he said.
William Casey, a 42-year-old major in the military, enjoys being a part of living history as he reenacts a Black private in the Confederate army, saying it intrigues him to relive the 1860s. Casey, part of a Fredericksburg, Va., camp, said he could just as well be both a SCV member and an NAACP member.
“I don’t even see it as a conflict,” he said.
Nelson Winbush carries show-and-tell Civil War artifacts that belonged to his grandfather, a Black man who served in the Confederate Army and attended 39 Confederate reunions after the war.
The collection includes newspaper articles and his grandfather’s reunion cap and jacket.
“It’s always been a part of my life,” said Winbush, a 74-year-old retired school administrator living in Kissimmee, Fla. “You got all these politically correct folks sweeping it under the rug like it didn’t happen.”
Armstrong said he is proud to belong to an organization that seeks to tell the truth about the Civil War’s often forgotten veteran: the Black Confederate soldier.
If more Blacks peered into their family histories — the white side or the Black — they may find that they, too, have rebel blood, he said.
When people tell him he’s being used, Armstrong retorts, “Read your history.”
“The Civil War is not as Black and white as one may make it,” Armstrong said.
Getting past the revisionist history of 'it was all about slavery' is the first step.
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
http://12thman.us/media/jihad.rm (Requires RealPlayer)
History is supposed to be an accurate record of what happened, first and foremost. It can also be other things, a celebration, a regret, but always in accord with the truth of what happened.
Those who would re-write history to suit their personal agenda are beneath contempt.
And your evidence is? I guess the logic is that if the CSA didn't have segregated units, they must have integrated black troops in with whites. But what factual support do you have? A few wealthy freed blacks contributed to Confederate war loans. Mulattoes in New Orleans trained in their own units but weren't mustered into service by the Confederacy, though they later were by the Union forces. Had free African-Americans been soldiers in integrated units, wouldn't we have heard more about it?
If a personal servant, or barber, or teamster, or slave laborer picked up a gun at one point, did that make him a combatant in a "NON-segregated unit?" Curiously, at the very end of the war, it was reported that African-Americans were being drilled -- but as part of all-Black detachments -- an indication that there was something wrong with the claim that the Confederacy was somehow more integrationist than the rest of the country.
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
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Not when it's being taught by the same people who apparently taught you...
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