Federal jury considering Confederate flag case / Knoxville, Tennessee - Breaking News, News, Weather, Sports and Traffic from VolunteerTV.com.

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Make sure you vote on our flag

Federal lawsuit over Confederate Flag ban being heard in East Tennessee / Knoxville, Tennessee - Breaking News, News, Weather, Sports and Traffic from VolunteerTV.com.

Federal lawsuit over Confederate Flag ban being heard in East Tennessee / Knoxville, Tennessee - Breaking News, News, Weather, Sports and Traffic from VolunteerTV.com.

I really like the cookie comment by Van Irion.

Why we don't all know........

The South started and won the American revolution!Southerners Madison and Jefferson chose the nation's capitol.Southerners won the war of 1812.Even after it was outlawed- New York remained the hub of the slave trade.The first prominent slave owner was Anthony Johnson..... a black man in Jamestown, Virginia.Northern states-New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware were the chief importers of slaves.20% of all the slaves in America, more than 100,000 were brought in to Rhode Island ports!The Emancipation Proclamation was not signed to free slaves, most slaves were not freed by it and those that were freed were only temporarily freed . It was not until Dec of 1865, eight months after the war ended and three years after the proclamation that slaves were 'freed' in America.

Lincoln said:"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."Lincoln also said: "I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man."Southerners did not fight to keep slavery, they fought to be free of what they saw as a King George-esqe tyranny.The Emancipation Proclamation was given to keep Europeans from recognizing the Confederacy as a legit trading partner.Lincoln sought to colonize American slaves in Liberia. He said, "It's better for us to be separated.....for the good of mankind"He suggested....."Colonizing free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States."Pick up any history book and you are not likely to find reference to these facts but they are all true and verifiable.

Walker County Messenger

Walker County Messenger
Get ready for war: Walker County plans Battle of Chickamauga’s 145th anniversary celebration

YouTube - Confederate Spirit (Actual Confederate Veterns Recordng)

YouTube - Confederate Spirit (Actual Confederate Veterns Recordng)

The Bonnie Blue Flag

Confederate heritage honored with flag

Saturday afternoon, under a blistering sun in Trimble, a passionate crowd estimated at around 300 from five different states attended the Confederate Battle Flag dedication. The Gen. Otho French Strahl, Camp 176 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans at Parks Cemetery Ridge Confederate Memorial Plaza presented the flag. The site was chosen by its highly visible location adjacent to the new Highway 69 corridor that will run between Canada and Mexico.
The flag, which is 20 feet-by-30 feet, can be seen for several miles in all directions as it sits atop an 85-foot flagpole, and overlooks the Obion River Bottom. It is at the Dyer/Obion county line at State Highway 105, in Trimble. This project is part of a 'Mega-Flags' project that will place the battle flag in prominent locations across the South.
Commander Bill Foster, lifetime member of the SCV, said that the flagpole itself was $13,000 and the flag was around $1,200. The estimated monthly cost of maintenance and electricity will be around $200. Funds were provided by the SCV. The flag will fly 24 hours a day, seven days a week and will be illuminated at night in the near future.
"This particular flag will last about a year before it needs to be replaced," said Foster.
The area will be landscaped and contain a granite marker from the old Richmond Theater in Richmond, Va. The marker will be inscribed to Confederate soldiers and contain the SCV charge. The Richmond Theater is where Jefferson Davis attended plays and John Wilkes Booth was a performer.
Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Parks II, of Trimble, donated the parcel of land. The flag is just north of where Mr. Parks' great-great-grandfather had a log cabin, and is subsequently located across from Pierce Cemetery, where 11 Confederate soldiers lie in rest.
Guests were presented with a program and CD entitled "The Truth Concerning the Confederate Battle Flag". They were also able to purchase Confederate ancestor memorial bricks that will be laid in the plaza. The 15th Tennessee, Company E, New Madrid Guards, performed the Presentation of Colors. Guest speakers were Mr. Greg Briggs, Dr. Michael Bradley and Dr. Lonnie Maness. Hamilton Parks II was the day's honoree and received a commendation award and medal.
Maness, retired UTM professor and author, spoke on the fundamental causes of the Civil War, during which he said, "We should never forget our heritage."
Following the speakers was a musket salute by the 15th Tennessee, Company E, New Madrid Guards. Then the Pillow Battery, Company K, 1st Tennessee Artillery, Camp 257, performed an artillery salute. Jan Hensley, president of the local OCR, then laid a wreath. A touching, "I Am Their Flag", was read by Dr. Bradley, Tennessee division commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The Retiring of the Colors was done followed by Taps, performed by Scott Reed. Musical guest was Rick Revel, founder of Heritage Keepers of America, who performed "Dixie". Also in attendance was Dennis Strayhorn, whose great-grandfather rode with Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.
After the ceremony, Dr. Maness noted that the flag is not a symbol of racism. "The Confederate battle flag is no more a symbol of racism than the U.S. flag, that flew over slavery for 89 years," said Maness. "Slavery was legal in all 13 colonies and the U.S. flag was not considered a racist flag. And surely the Confederate battle flag that flew for only four years shouldn't be considered as such." Also, Dr. Maness said that the Southern states were fighting for state's rights, the right to defend their homes and relatives and for the right of self-determination.
SCV commander Bill Foster stated that the flag is a soldier's flag based on St. Andrew's Cross (the national flag of Scotland), designed to distinguish it from the U.S. flag. "We, the Sons of Confederate Veterans are here to portray the South, not defend it," said Foster.
For more information concerning the Sons of Confederate Veterans visit www.scv.com or call 1-800-MYDIXIE. To purchase memorial bricks call 731-693-4469.

http://www.stategazette.com/story/1450398.html

Dyersburg, Tennessee ~ Saturday, August 9,
You should go to the site and read the comments

The Sons of Confederate Veterans recently hoisted the world's largest 'soldier's flag' in Tampa, Fla.

By Patrik Jonsson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the August 4, 2008 edition

TAMPA, Fla. - Chip Witte doesn't consider himself a Rebel. He doesn't hang Dixie battle flags in his living room, nor does he wear one on the back of his leather jacket.
Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-75 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents. "I think it's great that they're allowed to fly it," says Mr. Witte. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified the highway intersection.]
Despite years of boycotts, schoolyard bans, and banishment from capitol domes, the Southern battle colors are flying, higher than ever.
Indeed, the Tampa Confederate Veterans Memorial and its 139-foot flagpole features one of at least four giant "soldier's flags" flying over bumper-to-bumper interstates in Florida and Alabama. With more planned in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, and possibly South Carolina, the interstate show of force, experts say, highlights the potential backlash from banning nostalgic symbols from the public square.
Moreover, the giant flags are also the outward sign of a deeper struggle within the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a century-old organization historically more likely to hold battlefield reenactments than to stage political warfare.
What effect the flags will have on public perceptions and even tourism intensifies the issue as a political force here in the only part of the country to suffer the humiliation of total defeat.
"The battle flag "is a profound statement ... and the targets of our nerve-getting are the business community, the tourist community and the political community," says Marion Lambert, the Brandon, Fla., beekeeper who spearheaded the Tampa flag monument.
Unlike the flags that were taken down from the capitol domes in Columbia, S.C. and Tallahassee, Fla., these new auto dealer-sized flags – sewn in China – may be legally untouchable. Raised on private property, the Tampa flag was OK'd by county zoning officials and the Federal Aviation Administration.
"It's not going to go away," says Jim Farmer, a history professor at the University of South Carolina at Aiken. "There is a subculture within the white Southern population, of which the SCV is the most visible voice, that feels besieged by modern culture in general, and they identify the Old South and Confederacy as a way of life and a period of time before the siege began to really hit the South."
To Confederate sympathizers, opposition to the flag is misguided. They say the "soldier's flag" represents not slavery, but the valor of Southern men in their lost cause.
As proof of the flag's universality, SCV officials point to a tableau at the June 1 flag-raising ceremony in Tampa. As several older white men huffed trying to raise the 72-pound flag, two black men stepped in to finish the job.
"We have Indian, Hispanic, black, and white members of our camps, and if anyone espouses anything hateful or racewise, you're gone [from the SCV]," says group historian Robert Gates.
Flag opponents say the real offense is that Southern governors raised the flags during the Civil Rights era as a provocative gesture against attempts to desegregate Southern schools.
"I consider myself a Southern gentleman, but I just feel bringing this up now, it represents a painful and a hurtful time, and I don't think it's necessary to hurt people to make a point," says Hillsborough County Commissioner Al Higginbotham.
Partly in response to the beleaguered battle flag, the SCV has indeed become more politically active. A contingent of members called "the lunatics," including Aryan Nation holdovers, have for the past six years vied for power against the old-guard "grannies," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which investigates hate groups.
Yet under the current leadership of former Southern Partisan editor Chris Sullivan, who is widely considered a moderate, the SCV can't be considered a hate group, the SPLC has found.
"I think this is very likely to come back to bite them in the behind," says Mark Potok, editor of the SPLC's Intelligence Project in Montgomery, Ala.
"I don't think seeing some gigantic Confederate flag convinces anyone that the Civil War was not about slavery and that the antebellum South was really a wonderful place where everybody got along," says Mr. Potok.
But there's some evidence that flag proponents have the wind at their back. An attempt last week to reenergize the flag boycott in South Carolina faltered at the NAACP, with one member concluding the effort had lost its steam. Moreover, the NCAA recently got flak from some newspapers for banning championship games in South Carolina and Mississippi, but not in Alabama, which also has Confederate regalia as part of its official symbols.
"A flag may be a simple piece of cloth, but it's much more powerful than that," says John Clark, a political science professor at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. "[And] if you start turning people away, you're talking about a substantial investment in the local economy that's going to disappear."
Still, it's not clear whether the flag is actually that sensitive a topic. The economic effect of NAACP and NCAA boycotts in South Carolina has been minimal, according to state officials.
More recently, a Florida newspaper poll revealed that few drivers found the Tampa flag offensive, which surprised many officials.

Battle over the past rages on in an evolving South

By Patrik Jonsson Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

RALEIGH, N.C. – Bronzed Johnny Rebs, sprinting across a Capitol lawn, charging soundlessly for the ideals of the "lost cause," have long been seen as a quaint and largely harmless part of this region's heritage. Today, doubts rise alongside pride in regard to these sculpted heroes.
A school board declines to name a new high school in Cherokee County after Georgia's Civil War governor. Floridians question why Confederate soldiers adorn a water tower. Even the word "South," in some quarters, has become a slur - a convenient repository of national guilt over the exploitation of Africans in the Cotton Belt a century and a half ago.
Beyond Confederate flags coming down from statehouses, more-mundane symbols are increasingly being questioned on the local level: in town halls, college campuses, and even cemetery committees. It's part of a deepening homogenization of Southern culture that's causing anger and resentment among many in a proud region with perhaps 65 million people who consider themselves Southerners.
Some observers see a note of irony in the growing suppression of conservative Southern memorials at a time when old Confederate values like militarism, chivalry, gentility, and religiosity are gaining political prominence. It's a lesson, they say, in how a rebellious American region maintains its influence beneath pressure to rescind its mottoes and murals.
"The shooting war is over, but ... we're engaged in a cultural war for the heart and soul of the South and for America, too," says William Lathem, spokesman for the Southern Heritage PAC in Atlanta.
Indeed, beneath the ceaseless skirmishes over Southern symbols lurks a deeper debate over the potency and potential of a region shaped by Scots-Irish settlers who wanted a small, God-fearing government that stayed out of their lives.
Today's regional relations remind some historians of the War of 1812. New Englanders protested against the war, and it took Andrew Jackson to end it at New Orleans with a trouncing of the British by the Louisiana artillery. Witness the last presidential election, which revolved around the president's decision to invade Iraq and his muscular response to Islamist terrorism. The ideological "red-blue" borders almost perfectly traced the regional sentiments of the mid-19th century, with Ohio to this day in play.
"Why bother about this talk of separateness when you're arguably in a position - the South is - to dominate the Union as [Confederate unionist] Alexander Stephens envisioned it before the Civil War: the South in a political alliance with the West," says Jim Langcuster of Alabama, a moderate proponent of Southern heritage.
Still, even as Gambians and Swedes flock to cities like Raleigh and Birmingham, wizened black butlers still wait on gaggles of white golfers at certain exclusive clubs. And the disdain toward the South most often attributed (at least by Southerners) to "limousine liberals" is increasingly leading to action from the Florida interior to the hilltops of Georgia, most likely as a result of a massive in-migration of "those people," as Gen. Robert E. Lee called his foes.
Parents in Cherokee County, Ga., successfully urged their school board to refuse to name a new high school for Joseph E. Brown, the Confederate governor who, at the risk of his popularity, welcomed federal reform after the Civil War.
In Georgia, there's a tough fight brewing over bringing a bust of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from Jeff Davis County - where there are four Jeff Davis schools - to the Georgia Capitol.
And, in Charlotte, N.C., a decision was recently made to take down the battle flag - from a Confederate cemetery.
At old-line Southern colleges like the University of the South, regents are downplaying old Confederate-era rituals and even the word "South" so as not to scare away prospective students from up North.
"When people have a sense that things are unraveling, whether it's on the right or left, these questions come up again," says Ira Berlin, a Civil War historian at the University of Maryland.
But Southern heritage proponents are winning some skirmishes, too.
In Florida, the town of Brooksville decided not to change the image of Confederate soldiers on the water-tower logo after someone pointed out that an annual reenactment of the "Brooksville Raid" was a major tourist draw. In South Carolina, a bill is moving forward to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans their own license plate. Seventy-two percent of Georgians want to see a referendum on bringing back the pre-2001 Cross of St. Andrew's flag across the Peach State. Stone Mountain with its 90-foot carved images of Lee, Davis, and Stonewall Jackson is still Georgia's biggest tourist draw. "Part of Southern culture is the recognition that there are things worth fighting for," says Jim Thompson, editorial page director of the Athens, Ga., Banner-Herald.
Southerners say the region's critics often take not only historical but biblical references and meanings out of context - the result, they say, of biased schooling.
It remains a highly charged debate, since perceptions of past are also a lens on the present. Most Southerners today agree that blacks are also original settlers and inheritors of the South, and deserve their equal place in civic affairs. But critics worry that some of the worst elements of the "old" South may be rising again - their suspicions fueled by a nationwide weakening of affirmative action and an ongoing resegregation of public schools, especially in the South.
The last time "Dixie" was whistled officially in the capital was probably during Ronald Reagan's first inauguration. But last year, Bush supporter Robert T. Hines shot a cannon at Arlington National Cemetery on Davis's birthday.
"The culture of the South is an expanding thing rather than a xenophobic and dwindling thing," says John Hurley, president of the Confederate Memorial Association in Washington.

Blackinformant.com Web Poll: Confederate flag « The Black Informant

Blackinformant.com Web Poll: Confederate flag « The Black Informant

Legal argument against reparations

Many legal experts point to the fact that slavery was not illegal in the United States prior to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified in 1865). Thus, there is no legal foundation for compensating the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors when, in strictly legal terms, no crime was committed. Chattel slavery is now considered by many to be highly immoral in the United States, but perfectly legal at the time. However, opponents of this legal argument contend that such was the case in Nazi Germany, whereby the activities of the Nazis were legal under German law; however unlike slavery, the German activities were precedented by the Allied Powers following WWI, which could not rule against the German government then due to lack of precedent-- but could do so afterward following WWII on the basis of this established WWI precedent.
Other legal experts point to the fact that the current U.S. government did not exist prior to June 21, 1788 when the United States Constitution was ratified. Therefore, the U.S. government inherited the institution of slavery, and cannot be held legally liable for the enslavement of Africans by Europeans prior to that time. Figuring out who was enslaved by whom in order to fairly apply reparations from the U.S. Government only to those who were enslaved under U.S. laws, would be an impossible task.
Some areas of the South had communities of freedman, such as existed in Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans, while in the North, for example, former slaves lived as freedman both before and after the creation of the United States in 1788. For example, in 1667 Dutch colonists freed some of their slaves and gave them property in what is now Manhattan. The descendants of Groote and Christina Manuell -- two of those freed slaves -- can trace their family's history as freedman back to the child of Groote and Christina, Nicolas Manuell, whom they consider their family's first freeborn African-American. In 1712, the British, then in control of New York, prohibited blacks from inheriting land, effectively ending property ownership for this family. While this is only one example out of thousands of enslaved persons, it does mean that not all slavery reparations can be determined by racial self-identification alone; reparations would have to include a determination of the free or slave status of one's African-American ancestors, as well as when and by whom they were enslaved and denied rights such as property ownership. Because of slavery, the original African heritage has been blended with the American experience, the same as it has been for generations of immigrants from other countries. For this reason, determining a "fair share" of reparations would be an impossible task.
The most effective legal argument against reparations for slavery from a legal (as opposed to a moral standpoint) is that the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits has long since passed. Thus, courts are prohibited from granting relief. This has been used effectively in several suits, including In re African American Slave Descendants, which dismissed a high-profile suit against a number of businesses with ties to slavery. Perhaps the most cogent argument against reparations (though this is not a legal argument) is that few African-Americans are of "pure" African blood since the offspring of the original slaves were occasionally the progeny of Caucasian masters.

Congress Apologizes for Slavery, Jim Crow

Well fellow Americans it's time to get out your wallet, it will not be long now,

REPARATIONS

July 30, 2008 · On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the institution of slavery, and the subsequent Jim Crow laws that for years discriminated against blacks as second-class citizens in American society.
Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, drafted the resolution. Cohen explains the apology's long journey for Congressional approval and the significance of its timing.

Transcript: Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) Introduces U.S. Apology for Slavery, Jim Crow
July 29, 2008
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and Mr. Chairman. It is with pride that I introduce this resolution with 120 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. It is with pride that I serve as a member of this institution, in this building that was built with slave labor, and for which the new Visitors Gallery will be known as Emancipation Hall. It was a gentleman from this side of the aisle, the party of Lincoln, Representative Zach Wamp from my state, and this side of the aisle, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., who eloquently spoke to a subcommittee of which I'm a member, urging the remembrance and recognition of the work of the slaves who helped construct this magnificent capitol building and have the entryway named Emancipation Hall.
This country had an institution of slavery for 246 years and followed it with Jim Crow laws that denied people equal opportunity under the law. There was segregation in the south and other places in this country, at least through the year 1965 when civil rights laws were passed. There were separate water fountains for people, marked white and colored, there were restaurants, there were separate hotels, there were job opportunities that were not available to African-Americans. There were theaters that were segregated.
It's hard to imagine, in 2008, that such a society existed and was sanctioned by law, that the laws of the nation provided for segregation and enforced slave fugitive slave laws. In fact, the history of slavery goes not just through the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to our constitution, but as so eloquently written, just yesterday, in "The Baltimore Sun" in an editorial by Mr. Leonard Pitts Jr., that slavery existed up until about World War II, but it was a form of slavery where people were bought and sold for debts, it was slavery by another name. In a book called Slavery By Another Name by Douglass Blackman, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, when he talked about a convict leasing system in the south where in poor black men were routinely snatched up and tried on false petty or nonexistent charges by compliant courts, assessed some fine they could not afford, and then put into the servitude of an individual who bought them. This system continued up until World War II.
The fact is, slavery and Jim Crow are stains upon what is the greatest nation on the face of the earth and the greatest government ever conceived by man. But when we conceived this government and said all men were created equal we didn't in fact make all men equal, nor did we make women equal. We have worked to form a more perfect union, and part of forming a more perfect union is laws, and part of it is such as resolutions like we have before us today where we face up to our mistakes and we apologize, as anyone should apologize for things that were done in the past that were wrong. And we begin a dialogue that will hopefully lead us to a better understanding of where we are in America today and why certain conditions exist.
In 1997, President Clinton talked to the nation about the problem this country had with race. And he wanted a national dialogue. He considered an apology for slavery. I happened to run into President Clinton at that time, at the Amtrak station here in Washington and discussed with him having an apology for Jim Crow as well as slavery. I encompassed that in a letter dated July 2, 1997 that as a state Senator in Tennessee I wrote to President Clinton. In that letter, I urged him to have a slavery apology and a Jim Crow apology and to mark it on the 30th Anniversary of the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and that event tragically took place in April of 1968 in my city and that the appropriate time for President Clinton to have that apology would be on that 30th anniversary.
In going through my papers as I was elected to congress, I found this letter and I thought about it and I said to myself, you're a member of congress, you don't need to wait on a response from the President of the United States, which my friend, the president's office, failed to make a response. I can take action myself. So I introduced the resolution in February of 2007 with 120 sponsors joining me as time went on. It is important on this day that we admit our error, that we apologize. I've been in this body and voted with the rest of the body on unanimous voice vote to encourage, this past year, the Japanese Government to apologize for its use of Chinese women as "comfort women" during the war. And not a voice was raised questioning that resolution which passed unanimously on us calling on a foreign country to apologize for its use of "comfort women." Twenty years ago this congress passed a bill apologizing for the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II. In fact, subsequent to the consideration of this resolution, the distinguished lady from California, Ms. Matsui, has a resolution recognizing and celebrating the 20th anniversary of the passage of that bill.
This Congress did the right thing in apologizing for the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and in encouraging the Japanese Government to apologize for the use of "comfort women." But the fact that this government has not apologized to its own citizens, African-Americans, for the institution of slavery and for the Jim Crow laws that followed and accepted that fact and encouraged changes in our dialogue and understanding in the actions of this country to rectify that is certainly a mistake. And today we rectify that mistake. This is a symbolic resolution but hopefully it will begin a dialogue where people will open their hearts and their minds to the problems that face this country, from racism that exists in this country on both sides and which must end if we're to go forward as the country that we were created to be and which we are destined to be. So it is with great honor that I speak on this resolution and urge the members of this body to pass this historic resolution, recognize our errors, but also recognize the greatness of this country, because only a great country can recognize and admit its mistakes and then travel forth to create indeed a more perfect union that works to bring people of all races, religions and creeds together in unity as Americans part of the United States of America. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time and I urge my colleagues to vote unanimously to pass this resolution today. Thank you.

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Who is Congress apologizing to, when most Americans cannot afford a tank of gas, Congress decides to waste taxpayer dollars on an apology.

I believe if an apology is due it is to the southern states for an illegal invasion of the south,

maybe congress will finally pay to rebuild my country,

The Confederate States of America

I'll take my share in gold bullion considering the value of the American dollar