For many years after the Civil War, the symbols of the Confederacy were not much seen outside local museums and burial grounds. The late general Robert E. Lee, a reluctant but revered Confederate hero, rejected any post-war fetishizing of the Stars and Bars, which had actually originated as the battle flag of his Army of Northern Virginia.
Lee believed it “wiser … not to keep open the sores of war.”
But such admonishments were cast aside by the exponents of white supremacy, whose own patriotism was certainly suspect. When the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia were revived as racial terror organizations in the 1930’s and 1940’s, carrying out a spree of cowardly lynchings, their grand wizards found natural allies among the leaders of the German-American Bund — whose funding and fealty were eventually traced to Nazi headquarters in Berlin.
Indeed, the Klansmen burned their towering crosses alongside swastika banners at rallies sponsored by the Bund to attack President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Fearless Journalist And All-Round Badass Ida B. Wells Honored With Google Doodle
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was a journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She documented lynching in the United States, showing that it was often used as a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites, rather than being based on criminal acts by blacks, as was usually claimed by white mobs.
She was active in women’s rights and the women’s suffrage movement, establishing several notable women’s organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician and traveled internationally on lecture tours.
When Ida B. Wells was 22, she was asked by a conductor of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man. She refused, and the conductor attempted to forcibly drag her out of her seat.
Wells wouldn’t budge.
“The moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself.
He went forward and got the baggage man and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out.”
The year was 1884 — about 70 years before Rosa Parks would refuse to give up her seat on an Alabama bus.
Wells’ life was full of such moments of courage and principle. Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, Wells was a vocal civil rights activist, suffragist and journalist who dedicated her life to fighting inequality.
On July 16, Wells’ 153rd birthday, Google honored the “fearless and uncompromising” woman with a Doodle of her typing away on typewriter, a piece of luggage by her side.
“She was a fierce opponent of segregation and wrote prolifically on the civil injustices that beleaguered her world. By twenty-five she was editor of the Memphis-based Free Speech and Headlight, and continued to publicly decry inequality even after her printing press was destroyed by a mob of locals who opposed her message,” Google wrote in tribute of Wells.
~~GALLERY~~
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The journalist would go on to work for Chicago’s Daily Inter Ocean and the Chicago Conservator, one of the oldest African-American newspapers in the country. As Google notes, she “also travelled and lectured widely, bringing her fiery and impassioned rhetoric all over the world.”
Wells married Chicago attorney Ferdinand Barrett in 1895. She insisted on keeping her own name, becoming Ida Wells-Barnett — a radical move for the time. The couple had four children.
Wells died in Chicago of kidney failure in 1931. She was 68.
Every year around her birthday, Holly Springs celebrates Wells’ life with a weekend festival. Mayor Kelvin Buck said at this year’s event that people often overlook “the historic significance of Ida B. Wells in the history of the civil rights struggle in the United States,” per the South Reporter.
“The white man’s dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.”
“In fact, for all kinds of offenses – and, for no offenses – from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same.”
“The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.”
“OUR country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.”
“The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.”
“Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this wholesale slaughter.”
Today (16th July, 2015), the Search engine Google is showing a Doodle on its home page in U.S, for celebrating 153rd Birthday of the Fearless Journalist Ida B. Wells.
Ida B. Wells, was an American journalist, newspaper editor, sociologist, and an early leader in the civil rights movement.
Ida Bell Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, just before United States President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Marion County Commission votes unanimously to fly Confederate flag once again
There’s always got to be the one place where they buck the trends, right?
Contrarian Marion County, Florida, is that place. Commissioners voted unanimously to put the confederate flag right back up the flagpole, with the excuse that it represents “history.”
I suppose that “history” depends on which perspective you’re looking through, doesn’t it?
Officials in Florida’s Marion County have decided to buck the national — not counting Mississippi — trend of removing the Confederate battle flag from government buildings by restoring the one they took down after the June shootings in Charleston, South Carolina.
At the Marion County Commission meeting Tuesday morning, “several” members of general public argued that the flag ought to be restored, and the commission voted to do exactly that.
Members of the commission assured the Ocala Star Banner’s Kristine Cane, however, that the flag would be accompanied by an informative display that would outline its historical significance.
At the time of its removal, a spokeswoman for Interim County Administrator Bill Kauffman said that it was necessary because of “perceived connotations of displaying the flag at governmental agencies.”
The collage pictures are actual pictures of the people of Marion County celebrating
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~Why the Marion County Commission voted to raise Confederate flag~
~~Published on Jul 8, 2015~~
We sent FOX 13 Chief Investigator Craig Patrick to ask why, and Commission Chairman Stan McClain sat down with him.
McClain said the decision was based on history. So Craig asked him to explain the history, and his vote.
~HERE IS HIS LAME ANSWER~
“There are five flags that flew over Florida during periods of time and this is one of the five flags,” he said, later conceding, “you could probably add more.”
Three weeks after a gunman massacred nine worshippers in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the Confederate battle flag that has flown for decades at the state Capitol is gone.
The flag issue has ignited fierce passion on both sides, from those who say it honors Southern heritage and sacrifice and those who call it an ugly symbol of racism and slavery.
Members of a South Carolina Highway Patrol honor guard lowered the flag for the final time.
“In wake of the tragic massacre of nine members of the AME Emanuel Church in Charleston, Gov. Nikki Haley is calling for the removal of the Confederate flag which flies on the premises of the seat of our government.
It’s long overdue and a no-brainer that this divisive symbol has no place on Statehouse grounds.
Put it in a museum, put in in your backyard, put it on the back of your truck, but don’t let it fly on Statehouse grounds.
The Confederate flag is an anachronism — a thing that seems to belong in the past and not to fit in the present — and a contradiction in the direction South Carolina seeks to go.
This is an opportune time to capitalize on tragedy. It’s sad that it took such a horrific event to bring Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham to this stark realization.
But “the arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice.”
It must be kept in mind that this is the removal of the flag from the state Capitol. There are many of them all over the South. There are decals on vehicles, there are personal flags, there are souvenirs … you name it.
This is an ingrained value, a feeling of “heritage” and pride in some people.
Maybe because they don’t know the real meaning behind it, maybe because they truly believe in white supremacy, maybe because they are racist, maybe because they are just plain mean.
This is a “step” …. the first step in a long journey.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Lao-tzu
Born and raised by underpaid public school teachers in Sanford, Fla., Andy Marlette graduated from the University of Florida and became staff editorial cartoonist at the Pensacola News Journal in 2007.
Marlette received a priceless editorial cartoon education while living with his uncle and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette in Hillsborough, N.C.
Doug’s tragic death in July of 2007 made evermore poignant the elder Marlette’s fierce and faithful devotion to the art form of editorial cartooning as a cornerstone of American free speech. With this in mind, Andy works daily to learn and uphold the disciplines and values passed on to him by his late uncle.
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War — its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis.
In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
An exceptionally astute politician deeply involved with power issues in each state, Lincoln reached out to the War Democrats and managed his own re-election campaign in the 1864 presidential election. Anticipating the war’s conclusion, Lincoln pushed a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. On April 15, 1865, six days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer.
Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents.
These words, spoken by Mr. Lincoln, are as true today as they were when he first said them
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?
Never!
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?
I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad.
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
It Is What It Is 