Confederate History Month Proclamation Struck Down

This story just made my day. A few weeks ago the city of Griffin, Georgia passed a proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month. The public debate included a racist outburst by former Griffin City Commissioner Larry Johnson. Well, last night the community came together and demanded that the city council rescind the proclamation, which they did.

I can’t think of a better way to commemorate Confederate History Month than having local communities in the former Confederacy strike down the proclamations that acknowledge it.

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8 comments… add one
  • Rob Baker Apr 12, 2018 @ 11:28

    Question about your upcoming book Kevin: Are there any references to the black confederate narrative in the mountainous regions (Appalachia) of the American South?

    • Kevin Levin Apr 12, 2018 @ 11:51

      Hi Rob,

      Most of the accounts are confined to the Army of Northern Virginia. I have a few from beyond the Blue Ridge, but nothing in that specific area. Sorry.

  • John Sweeney Apr 11, 2018 @ 5:53

    I didn’t notice some typos and curious speed-check choices in my post above, but I don’t think I can edit it once submitted. So if you don’t understand what I tried to say, please ask.

    • John Sweeney Apr 18, 2018 @ 17:50

      Interesting, one of the curious spell-chrck choice above was”speed-check.”

  • John Sweeney Apr 11, 2018 @ 5:49

    It makes me glad to hear that she’s me people are coming to their senses, although lack of celebration does not equal condemnation or even acknowledgement of past or present evils.

    I also have to say that flags doesn’t kill people, people kill people. Flags are symbols, whose meanings can be subject to change. The swastika had been around for thousands of years before Naxis appropriated it as their symbol, and it remains as a symbol of the “master race.” The pink triangle of the Nazi era was appropriated by the gay rughts movement abs repurposed as their own.

    The Confederate flag was created as a symbol of a state admittedly based on racism and white supremacy. The flag of the United States was created as a symbol of a nation with higher ideals, but one that could not, as yet, get above some of the more base elements that were also embodied in the Confederacy.

    The flag of the US, then, has many more meanings, subjugation as well as freedom. As a whole, the nation, over the 250 years since its founding, has made progress toward its ideals, but still has a ways to go. (The Confederacy has its ideals right away.)

    The US flag, then, is not as offensive as the Confederate flag. This is not to minimize any experience that anyone endured, but to say that whatever happened, would have happened regardless of the flag involved.

    On a third, and related, point, I am. Evoking convinced that reparations, or, at least, large-scale public acknowledgement of these crimes against Natives, blanks, and others, ought to be made. If estates can sue people who caused the death of the person, and families collect damages, what is different here, except the time span?

    South Africa and Canada are countries that have made a concerted effort to bring all this into the light. But we persist in our comfortable mythology. Thank you to Mr. Levin for trying to help us find our way out of the fog.

    Thank you for your tine.

    • Andrew Karnitz Apr 11, 2018 @ 19:35

      “I also have to say that flags doesn’t kill people, people kill people.”

      While obviously literally true, it doesn’t much matter. Flags do not exist in nature. They are symbols in which humans state their histories and, quite often, their intentions good and bad.

      Flags don’t kill people, but people kill for flags.

  • Gregory Newson Apr 11, 2018 @ 3:40

    I have to say a tremendous thanks for the work that this website does to inform us about our misguided government decisions, my Afro American community has been programmed to feel and act like victims.
    I wish a movement would start around the American flag and what it did to Native Americans and their communities.

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