Posted on 08/30/2017 10:47:43 AM PDT by nickcarraway
The monument with a confederate soldier looking out over the town has stood for 100 years in front of the Bryan County Courthouse.
As monuments like it are coming under fire around the country, it is finding help from an unlikely ally.
“I’m trying to at least hold on and to claim the history and the heritage that is mine, not just white folk. But, that heritage belongs to me, too,” said Arlene Barnum.
If you see Barnum, you might do a double take.
She’s a black woman wearing a confederate flag on a necklace.
“I’ve been run off the road. I’ve been pushed on, spit on,” Barnum said.
But, Barnum said she doesn’t let it bother her.
To her, the flag and the monument are symbols of heritage, not hate.
Two of her ancestors fought for the confederacy; one was white, one black.
“He was the one that dug up the trenches to bury the confederates that died in the Battle of Mansfield," she said.
Now, Barnum has turned her attention to the confederate monument in Durant.
Two weeks ago, when protestors were supposed to show up and destroy the monument, she was one of dozens out there defending it.
“We were prepared to protect, because it is on government property or public property,” said Bryan County Commissioner Ron Boyer.
Boyer said cameras on the courthouse keep careful watch over the soldier.
He said most in the area do not see the statue as a symbol of racism.
“It’s not glorifying anybody. All it’s saying is 'We did this. We’re not proud of it. Let’s don’t do it again,'” Boyer said.
Barnum is also fighting for the preservation of the crumbling monument, starting a fundraising site to raise the $10,000-$15,000 it will take to fix it.
“This is erected in the memory of those who lost their lives for the southern cause. Then, I can say they’re talking about one of my great great grand daddy’s, too,” Barnum said.
And, she said, no matter the pressures, she’ll continue her mission of preserving her southern heritage.
So far, Barnum has raised a little more than $2,000.
She’s not the first black who has stood up to those lib haters.
That’s inspiring. Someone standing up for their beliefs, and face to face, not just while posting ‘sharp’ remarks online like me.
In Oklahoma, all the tribes joined the Confederacy, including the Osages in Kansas.
A few of those tribal members, known as “pins” joined the North.
After the conclusion of the war, all the tribes lost the western portion of their lands, and the Osages were forced out of Kansas and into area they are now in.
STAND WATIE is still a revered person in Oklahoma as he was the last Confederate General to lay down his arms.
God bless her.
We have a local elderly black man that sets up on weekends and sells Confederate flags from the side of the road. Our neighbor is a black pastor and his sons both have Confederate flags for curtains in their rooms and one flying in the yard. It is NOT a symbol of racism. It has been hijacked by skin-heads, KKK, and white supremacists for their evil purposes and has been lied about by the liberal media.
There were black soldiers that fought for the South and most of the Confederate soldiers neither had slaves nor believed in it. My family only got involved after Yankee soldiers burned their farms and destroyed or stole their crops and livestock just because they were Southerners. Most slaves belonged to wealthy politicians and plantation owners, not regular hard working people.
The reason I know this is because my great-grandfather was born in 1865 and lived to be 100. I was able to talk to him about the war when I was a kid. Not many kids can say they talked to somebody that was only one generation removed from the war. I trust his word over any of the revisionist historians of today.
Thosse who are endeavoring to stir up hatred between others, because they do not like the actual history of America, deserve a special place in Hell for their efforts.
Exactly but try getting those lib morons to wrap their pea brains around that bit of FACTUAL history.
The Osages had the last laugh. Osage county is on top of a lake of oil.
The National Community Agitator is behind all this.
It won’t end until he does.
Lone Watie:
“I didn’t surrender, but they took my horse and made him surrender.
They have him pulling a wagon up in Kansas I bet”.
I know my observation is anecdotal, but let's take a highly watched TV show some 30 years ago, "The Dukes of Hazzard". The Dukes car had a huge Confederate flag plastered on the roof. I heard no black person complaining or any complaints from the "civil rights" persons back then.
But even more to the point, I don't remember any black person giving a rat's a** about the Confederate flag until recently -- it was just a flag. So what's changed in under 30 years? Intense indoctrination by the Left.
Look at Free Republic. We have SJW pushing the meme that Confederacy was all about slavery and the war was all about slavery. Where did they go to school?
The left needs black voters. The best way to do that is to demonize everything and anything regarding the South and Republicans. The minorities they can’t brainwash into believing their lies they shame into voting Dem. It started with trying to revise history to convince voters that todays Republicans used to be racist Southern Democrats, the same Democrats that founded the KKK. Sadly, uneducated people will believe them, especially when promised enough. Democrats are the most racist people out there. They are counting on minority voters being stupid enough and poor enough to believe anything. Dems are still the party of slavery. The slaves now are the uneducated blacks and illegal immigrants.
The black people I mentioned that embrace the Confederate flag are mostly older and their kids have been raised with the truth. They live in the South and know the Dems are full of crap. They have white friends and know most whites in the South aren’t racists. They have white family. Heck, I have black relatives.
Before I retired, I knew some blacks at work that wanted to vote for Bush but were afraid to. The ones that did begged me not to tell anybody. Dems are proving that they are the party of racism, intimidation, shaming, violence, and anything else it takes to have control and push their evil agenda.
I’m glad they are showing their true colors. They will never win another election if they keep going down this road.
>>I trust his word over any of the revisionist historians of today.<<
As well you should, and very few people today can say that. We are so far past the War between the States that revisionism by the conquerors rules - it always does. The victors write the history. There are a few books left with the truth in them about Lincoln’s war on civilians, but not many. God bless you, and be sure to document your great-grandfather’s recollections. Pass them on to your descendants.
for later
Smart lady. She understands the importance of history, the importance of her ancestors.
Stand Watie is/was a revered Freeper..
Thank-you, and I will. I have been mocked online before when I tell what he said because it doesn’t allow for the narrative that all Southerners were demons, but I keep telling it. Most of my family live to be pretty old and I spent a lot of summers with my grand-parents in Chattanooga and my great-grandfather until he passed away in 1965. Chattanooga, and the surrounding area, is rich in Southern heritage. So many kids today don’t spend time with their grand-parents and they are missing so much. That is how history should be told. It comes naturally to my family I guess to tell stories from the past. My ancestors are Scottish/Cherokee. :-)
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