They'll never drive Old Dixie down nor will they eradicate our heritage. We will fight to keep it alive ... THIS WE'LL DEFEND!
Posted on 11/25/2002 8:49:54 AM PST by stainlessbanner
(KRT) - Long before the phrase "women's lib" made its way into American consciousness, a group of genteel ladies from the South put their money together to build a women's dormitory at Vanderbilt University. They were the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the building they raised $50,000 for was Confederate Memorial Hall.
For almost 70 years the building has stood on the sprawling campus as a symbol of Southern heritage. When the student and faculty at Vanderbilt were all white, such a tribute seemed fitting. Now that the university_and the city surrounding it_has diversified, Confederate Memorial Hall, administrators say, has become a liability.
After years of controversy, Vanderbilt recently announced plans to remove Confederate from the name and call the building Memorial Hall, saying it was necessary to create a more positive, inclusive environment. The Daughters were outraged, and for the first time in their 108-year history, they filed a lawsuit.
"Nobody down here is for slavery, that was horrible and evil. But the dorm was placed there to honor the effort made during the Civil War. It was a very innocent act, and very progressive for that time," said Douglas Jones, the group's attorney. "This is not about money, it's about history. The South has a lot of it, and some of it is bad. But it is still a part of American history."
Across the South supporters of the defeated Confederacy are rising up to protect the last vestiges of the Civil War - symbols that have long represented their culture and heritage. With the Confederate battle flag at the forefront, they have crafted a broad movement to circumvent what they fear is an effort in America to erase from public view any reminders of the period leading up to the War Between the States.
It is cultural war between the Old South and the New South being fought in universities, courts, city councils and state legislatures. It is a struggle over simple things such as flags, phrases on license plates and names on public buildings as one side tries to cling to the past and the other fights to move further away from it.
"We are getting calls from people all over the place who are concerned about this campaign of oppression and censorship of anything pertaining to the Old South," said Charles Lunsford, president of the Heritage Preservation Society, a national organization based in Atlanta. "We started seeing it in the early 1990s, and now it has risen to a frightening level. People are terrified that their culture is being eradicated."
Though skirmishes over Confederate symbols have occurred for decades, the NAACP and civil rights leaders in the 1990s began demanding that Southern politicians make efforts to remove the Confederate flag from public grounds, where they were placed in the 1960s in protest of desegregation. For many African-Americans, Confederate symbols remain a painful reminder of slavery and are viewed as a hindrance to achieving racial equality.
In addition, heritage groups have been criticized for failing to take a stand against hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, that have adopted the Confederate flag as a symbol of racial intolerance.
"There are a large number of people engaged in what amounts to holocaust denial, a rewriting of history that eliminates the evils of segregation and slavery. It is not a benign project, but one whose ultimate aim is to justify present day racist attitudes," said Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "Not every person who supports the Confederate flag is a Klansman disguised. Nevertheless, there is a major political, organized neo-Confederate movement in this country."
Indeed, the Southern Cross has lost prominence in recent years as states bowed to economic and social pressures to remove the Confederate symbol from public buildings. But as Gov. Roy Barnes of Georgia can attest, changes sometimes are made at great political risk.
Barnes, who secretly engineered a plan to downsize the Confederate emblem on the Georgia flag nearly two years ago, lost re-election this month as rural voters made good on a promise to unseat him. According to many political observers, the flag issue - which has polarized much of the South in recent years - caused large numbers of voters to turn out for Republican Sonny Perdue, who promised to hold a referendum on the flag.
Similar struggles have erupted across the South. The Virginia Military Institute, where students fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, is considering banning all rebel symbols from campus at the request of minority students. Officials at the University of Mississippi, where people waving the Confederate flag filled the stadium during football games for years, angered fans when they tried to ban the flag. Rather than prohibiting the flag outright, officials banned sticks, which meant fans had nothing to fly the banner on.
The New Orleans' Confederate Museum got one of the biggest boosts in its 111-year history this summer when it was served an eviction notice. The University of New Orleans, which owns the property, had tried to shut it down, but supporters protested and raised more than $150,000 in donations to try and keep it open.
Carl Galmon, head of the Louisiana Committee Against Apartheid, has worked for a decade to change the names of public schools in New Orleans named after slave owners. He successfully changed 26, but has met opposition in an effort to change the remaining 25.
"We have a school system that is 90 percent African-American, and this has a psychological impact on the kids. How can they have self-esteem going to a school named after someone such as Benjamin Morgan Palmer, who was one of the cruelest slave-owners known to mankind?" Galmon said. He was accused of going to far when he tried to rename a school honoring one of the Founding Fathers, President George Washington.
There have been other name changes. The Wings Over Dixie Air Show changed its name to the Great Georgia Air Show, after sponsors expressed concern over the word "Dixie." The Sons of Confederate Veterans won a victory this year when a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled it was unconstitutional for the state to prohibit the group from displaying its logo on specialty license plates. The NAACP and other groups have criticized Southern mayors for issuing routine proclamations declaring April as Confederate History Month.
And in South Carolina, the NACCP conducts "border patrols" to urge motorists not to spend money in the state to protest the rebel flag that flies on the Capitol grounds. The Legislature voted two years ago to remove the rebel flag from the Statehouse dome and place it on the grounds of the Capitol.
Such incidents have helped to mobilize large numbers of Southern whites who feel disenfranchised as America becomes less white and more diverse.
"Political correctness is now very much in vogue," said Ron Casteel, chief of staff for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "Instead of the country celebrating its true diversity and become an inclusive society, it chooses to eliminate the Confederate side of its heritage, forgetting that there are at least 8 million people in this country who could claim Confederate ancestors."
It is unlikely that those who support the symbols and those who want to put them away will ever reach a compromise, experts on Southern culture said.
"The problem is when you pull away all the rhetoric and passion, these are ambiguous symbols," said Mike Martinez, an attorney and author of "Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South." "The traditionalists argue that the symbols are about heritage, the chivalrous South and the Constitution. But they are being disingenuous. It might be about those issues, but they were so intertwined with slavery that it is difficult to separate them."
free dixie,sw
All of this crap is the work of marxist staff or racial extortionists like the Dees/Potok crew. How they plan to rid VMI of "rebel symbols" is beyond me. They will practically have to raze the place and start over. Ole Miss.....well..they've become PC softass for some time now. I could care less...they can call it Marcus Garvey University for all I care.....and it's my alma mater. VMI on the other hand is my dad's alma mater and they've already wounded the institute by forcing women and now this assault. It is very very sad. There is not much more hallowed ground left. I know a number of well heeled alum who are pulling out. Just remember all you self righteous do-gooders who will be on this thread soon enough. When they are finished with "us", they will come for you and your less than perfect heritage as well...if you even care.
Southern whites do not feel disenfranchised because America has become less white and more diverse. Southern whites feel disenfranchised because we are being told where we can't pray, what symbols we can't display and what restaraunts we can't eat at.
They'll never drive Old Dixie down nor will they eradicate our heritage. We will fight to keep it alive ... THIS WE'LL DEFEND!
That's the entire point. That is why, when Constantinople fell, Turkish soldiers raped Greek nuns on the altar of Santa Sophia. This kind of struggle over symbols is total, and the test of intelligence is whether you get it.
When they are finished with "us", they will come for you and your less than perfect heritage as well...if you even care.
Not caring is exactly the point. The Yacht Clubbers celebrate not caring as "focussing" on the "real issues". They're focussed, all right -- on business's bottom line. They take pride in their focus, like the Carthaginian businessmen who stiffed Hannibal in Italy and did "whatever it took" to "get it done". They welshed on his troops' pay and much else, because they didn't want to pay the tax to pay for their own safety. They were focussed, you see, like lasers -- on their bottom line. Ruin came after them, fourteen years later, riding the arm of Scipio Africanus -- but they were focussed on the bottom line.
Always with the Nazis.
And it's always the other guy, with liberals.
Someone once asked Rabbi Schneerson, the prominent Lubavitcher rabbi, whether Jews could ever behave like Nazis. His reply was "fruh morgen!" -- "First thing tomorrow morning!"
But with liberals, it's always the other guy, and he's always a Nazi.
Little Marxist toads, when will people realize that their drivel is poisonous?
Well then the self righteous do gooders who abound on this forum obviously haven't a clue.
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