Posted on 03/03/2006 11:37:56 AM PST by Rebeleye
The removal of the Confederate flag from Amherst County's official seal has upset Southern heritage groups, who contend residents weren't told of the change. County officials acknowledge the image was quietly removed in August 2004 to avoid an uproar.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypress.com ...
One of my Great Grandfather's, who'd been a bugler in the war played at the dedication of the Indiana Soldiers and Sailers Memorial on Monument Circle in Indianapolis.
Believe it or not I know exactly how he felt ~ I was at the first dedication of the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial. I'd feared we'd have to wait half a century too, but we didn't.
“To many Native Americans, that [American] flag is no different than the Nazi flag or the Confederate flag.”
Bennish
"accepting the conclusion of the civil rights movements."
Accepting that conclusion is one thing, destroying history because "somebody MIGHT be offended" is something else.
Had it not been for the North and oppressive "Reconstruction", the South would be a far different and better place today.
LoL. That was one "secret" which was revealed as soon as the first document was stamped.
What is next some German outraged because the Swastica has been removed from state documents?
Buncha liberal blue-zone yankee doodle bull cr@p. 1961 was the centennial of the start of The War.
Because this county has undone the work of racists RATS it will be attacked by the Defenders of Slaverocracy.
Slavery ended over 140 years ago. Get over it. It must really piss you off that we have "slave owners" on our currency.
You are almost persuasive.
"You are almost persuasive."
Well, one must keep one's sense of humor. It's hard to deny that the momentum seems to be in the direction of the historical revisionists jihad against the confederate flag, however, since they are wrong, one can't help but laugh them off.
This has now become SOP at all levels of government. Selective non-enforcement of laws, selective enforcement of laws against certain individuals or classes of individuals, sneaking legislation through in the middle of night or by pre-arranged voice vote, cozying up to the lobbyists, and on and on. Distrust of government is reaching crisis levels.
They're all playing a dangerous game.
Without the destruction of the Slaverocracy you would be speaking German or Russian.
If allowed to kill and murder Blacks at will the defeated Slavers would have forever defamed the good name of America. And that is exactly WHY the South had to be occupied by United States troops in order to protect. It is a shame that any who ever took up arms against the USA were ever allowed to hold political office again. Except for such as Mosby and Longstreet who refused to join the RAT-led assault on the ideals of the US.
I would expect something like this up in the DC area – but in the Hills of Virginia? That’s a long way to commute.
When you only use part of the quote, "which was created in 1961", it looks as if the county of Amherst (in which my husband's ancestors lived) used the controversial symbol to push segregation. However, seeing that the seal was redone as part of the county's bicentennial, that assumption loses credibility.
I'm sorry, but there was a decision taken not just to design a new emblem or to celebrate the anniversary, but to ADD a visual of the Confederate Battle Flag at a time when other jurisdictions throughout the South were doing the same thing to protest the civil rights movement and desegregation. And Amherst County was right in the thick of it, because the South had delayed integration for years after Brown v. Board of Education and the issue was coming to a head.
http://www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=LNA%2FMGArticle%2FLNA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031775482320&path=
1959 was the year when the Prince Edward County government shuttered its schools rather than integrate--a closure that lasted until 1964. Important cases were argued through 1961 and 1962 in which black student appealed for the right to attend integrated schools in Virginia. As late as 1968, Amherst County's Commonwealth's Attorney was STILL arguing that Brown v. Board of Education was not constitutional and they should not be required to integrate their schools.
So when they decide, in the middle of this fight, to add the Confederate battle flag to their county emblem, at the same time that Georgia and South Carolina raised the flag over the state capitol or incorporated it into their state flag as a gesture of defiance against desegregation, you simply can not ignore the historical context.
Obviously you need some good Southern history lessons. Shall we start with Lincoln's invasion and then move on to Sherman's holocaust?
Russian or German indeed.
Yup. Much of Virginia is rural, undeveloped and poor. It's numbers look better because of a few very wealthy counties around DC. But go a little bit south, and you're basically in Mississippi.
And I'm not talking about the charming parts of Mississippi, but the crushingly poor segments.
See that incredibly teeny-tiny little blue cross in the center of the shield? Somebody or somebodies got offended over that.
}:-)4
I'm not going to deny Amherst County's history. My brother graduated from what I believe was the last segregated senior class at the high school in 1968. I attended what once was the black Central High School (then Amherst County Junior High School, and fully integrated) in 1978-79. And yes, it was considerably smaller than the white high school...but the black population is, according to Wikipedia, about 20% of the county. So it could afford to be smaller. Yes, they fought tooth and nail against integration. I'm not proud of that.
But I'll tell you this. I lived there until I went to college in 1984, and came back from 1990 to 1993 to live in Lynchburg. I still have friends in the county and my mom lives in Lynchburg. And in that time period, strides were made in race relations that you would not believe. Interracial dating happens, and now it's no big deal anymore. It wasn't even THAT big a deal in the early 1980s when I was in high school there. I never saw evidence of racism in the school. Never. You can believe it or not, but it's the truth.
Down there, the races mix, and mingle, and work with and for each other, and nobody gives the 1950s and 1960s much of a thought anymore except when someone of the perpetually-offended class decides to squawk about a tiny St. Andrews Cross in the middle of an obscure county seal.
That's because, white or black, we're Southern. We're Virginian. And y'know, it's damned hard to explain to somebody who didn't grow up with it, but sometimes, that just trumps what color your skin is. And there's a hell of a lot of blue states and blue cities that could learn a LOT about race relations from a place like Amherst County, Virginia, regardless of what they've got in the center of their county seal.
After all, it's worth noting that that symbol was on the county seal for forty-three years before somebody complained. Oh, and as for the seal itself...y'know the only place you really ever see it? On the tax stickers that go on the windshield of every car registered in Amherst County, a new one every year. They're about, eh, four inches on a side, so the seal's probably no more than three inches on a side. You'd need a magnifying glass to spot there was a St. Andrews Cross there.
}:-)4
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