HP Bails on Donating to RNC Convention for Trump

HP joins Coca Cola and Microsoft in either massively reducing their support or bailing out entirely. It is unknown at this point how many smaller companies may have bailed out as well in protest.

HP Inc. Joins Companies Declining to Contribute to G.O.P. Convention

Hewlett Packard Inc. has joined a growing list of major corporations that are declining to help pay for the Republican National Convention, aspressure builds on the business community to repudiate Donald J. Trump.

Before it split into two last year, Hewlett-Packard had been a generous contributor to Republican causes in the past. Meg Whitman, the company’s chief executive before the split and now the leader of HP Enterprises, is a former Republican nominee for governor in California. She has forcefully denounced Mr. Trump in the past, calling him a “dishonest demagogue” and condemning his statements on women, Muslims and others as “repugnant.”

The African-American activist group Color of Change, which has been one of the leaders of the campaign to get companies to cut their donations to the convention, said it had received word from Hewlett Packard last week that it would not be making any cash donations to the Republican or Democratic conventions this year. A company spokeswoman confirmed the decision.

HP Inc. joins Coca-Cola and Microsoft in deciding to either significantly curtail or eliminate its monetary support to the Republican convention.

Coca-Cola has declined to match the $660,000 it gave for the 2012 Republican convention, donating only $75,000 for this year and indicating that it does not plan to provide more.

Microsoft will provide only software and technical assistance to the Republicans’ event, while it plans to give that and monetary support to Democrats.

Political conventions and the cities that host them rely tremendously on corporate donations to fund their expenses, which can exceed $100 million when security costs are included. But companies have been wary of committing to the Republican National Convention this year given Mr. Trump’s provocative and offensive statements on women and minorities.

A Color for Change spokesman, Rashad Robinson, said Tuesday that it planned to keep the pressure on companies that have not yet said whether they would fund the convention, which starts July 18.

 

Rooter-Tooter Oklahoma Ride Along Wannabe Cop Gets 4 Years for Manslaughter

4 Years is a bit light in my view (I was thinking 6-10) – but at 74, this guy might not make it out of prison. And there is no freaking way a “Reserve Deputy” should be carrying a gun/.

Former Oklahoma ‘pay-to-play’ deputy Robert Bates sentenced to four years for manslaughter

A former Oklahoma reserve deputy convicted in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man being subdued by regular deputies last year was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison for second-degree manslaughter.

Robert Bates, an insurance executive who volunteered as a reserve sheriff’s deputy in Tulsa County, was found guilty in April of the charge stemming from the 2015 death of Eric Harris.Bates, 74, will receive credit for time already served. He has been held at the Tulsa Jail since his conviction.

Lawyers for Bates said he thought he had a Taser rather than a gun in hand when he fired at Harris, 44. But prosecutors said Bates’ actions were tantamount to professional negligence.

The shooting, captured on video, was one in a series that raised questions of racial bias in U.S. policing. Bates is white and Harris, who was fleeing from deputies in Tulsa during a sting targeting illegal gun sales, was African-American.

 

Alabama Teacher’s Racist Assignment

Hard to believe this guy wasn’t smart enough to realize he was going to get fired for this…

 

Alabama teacher busted for assigning ‘math test’ based on 30-year-old racist meme

A Middle school teacher in Mobile, Alabama was placed on leave for the remainder of the school year after a student revealed their use of a “math test” replete with racist stereotypes, AL.com reported on Tuesday.

The unidentified teacher assigned their class at Burns Middle School a version of a document known online as the “L.A. Math Proficiency Test.” It first came to light afterWALA-TV reported that one student took a picture of the assignment, then showed it to his mother, Erica Hall.

Hall then raised the issue with Burns officials.

The version of the “test” spotted at Burns was nearly identical to the one distributed online, with only minor changes to differentiate it. For example, one question stated:

Leroy has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells an 8-ball to Antonio for $320 and 2 grams to Juan for $85 per gram. What is the street value of the rest of his hold?

According to Snopes, the original “math test” has been spotted online since the mid 1990s, and was allegedly available in hard copy form since the 1980s. The questions revolve around topics like drug dealing, “pimping,” and drive-by shootings.

 

Faux News Racists “Blacken” Gorilla Cage Child’s Parents

Once again, when the victim is black, Faux News bigots can’t wait to blame the victim.

 

 

America’s Enemies Endorse Trump!

North Korea, whose batshit crazy leadership alternately threatens the US with missiles armed with Nuclear Weapons, and their neighbors…

Has endorsed Donald Trump for President.

I imagine ISIS and Putin are licking their chops.

Donald just got a big endorsement — from North Korea

Donald Trump just got a big endorsement … from North Korea.

An editorial in the state-owned DPRK Today praised Trump as a “wise politician” and “far sighted presidential candidate” — specifically for his plans to pull U.S. troops out of the Korean Peninsula if South Korea doesn’t pay more to station them there.

 

Trump…And George Wallace

The Trump campaign and ideology is often compared to that of George Wallace in 1968.

In 1968, George Wallace ran as a third-party candidate against Nixon and Humphrey, on an explicitly segregationist platform. Humphrey had been the main champion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the Senate; Nixon, while no civil rights activist, rejected an overtly racist platform. Feeling abandoned by both parties, Southern white racists flocked to Wallace’s cause, winning him the Deep South states of Ark., La., Miss., Ala. and Ga.

In 1972, Governor Wallace returned to the Democratic Party for his third presidential campaign and, under a slightly more moderate platform, was showing promising returns when Arthur Bremer shot him on May 15, 1972. After his recovery, he faded from national prominence and made a poor showing in his fourth and final presidential campaign in 1979. During the 1980s, Wallace’s politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race. He contacted civil rights leaders he had so forcibly opposed in the past and asked their forgiveness. In time, he gained the political support of Alabama’s growing African American electorate and in 1983 was elected Alabama governor for the last time with their overwhelming support. During the next four years, the man who had promised segregation forever made more African American political appointments than any other figure in Alabama history.

Bremer’s diary, An Assassin’s Diary, published after his arrest, shows he was motivated in the assassination attempt by a desire for fame, not by political ideology. He had considered President Nixon as an earlier target. He was convicted at trial. On August 4, 1972, Bremer was sentenced to 63 years in prison, later reduced to 53 years. Bremer served 35 years and was released on parole on November 9, 2007.

Messing around with the extremist and racist right is a dangerous game. Some are already calling for Trump’s assassination.

Brad Thor on Glenn Beck: ‘If Congress Won’t Remove’ Trump from White House, ‘What Patriot Will Step Up’

(This is excerpted from the interview. Read the full thing following the link above.)

…BECK: When we’re looking at that, Brad, a lot of people will say he is not going – a lot of people in Washington believe this. A lot of people in the press believe it. Most Americans say, “He is not going to do that.” He is —

THOR: It’s ridiculous. How do they know? Trump is – listen, I —

BECK: Here’s how they say it, here’s how they say it. “Because he’s a businessman who always gets things done, so he knows he has to compromise.

THOR: BS, BS. Trump does not compromise. Trump has the ability to hire and fire people, to hire contractors, to fire contractors. People who work for Trump can work for him or stop working for him. If he gets into the White House, we have to deal with him.

And I’ll tell you, one of the best examples I have seen of who Trump really is – I have been mistakenly comparing him to a potential Mussolini. And about a week ago, Foreign Affairs did an amazing article about the Caudillos, the strong men of Latin America. And that is who Trump is. He is a Chavez. He is a Peron.

That is the type of guy he is and I guarantee you, Glenn, that during his presidency, during his reign if you will – he is going to petition the American people to allow a temporary suspension of the Constitution so he can help America get back on its feet again.

He is a danger to America and I got to ask you a question and this is serious and this could ring down incredible heat on me because I’m about to suggest something very bad. It is a hypothetical I am going to ask as a thriller writer.

With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that if, if, he oversteps his mandate as president, his constitutional-granted authority, I should say, as president.

If he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? And I don’t think there is a legal means available. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office because you won’t be able to do it through Congress.

BECK: I would agree with you on that and I don’t think you actually have the voices we’ve been talking about and we’ve been talking about this off-air for a while. I think the voices like ours go away. I don’t think we are allowed – especially if things, and I believe the economy is going to go to crap, even if Jesus was in office. It’s going to naturally reset. It has to.

THOR: Glenn, under the policies of Trump – again, Foreign Affairs – look up what a Caudillo is, C-A-U-D-I-L-L-O. Trump is promoting a protectionism, a nationalism in economics. It has destroyed Latin America. It has destroyed any hope of democracy down there. He will do the same thing here.

People say Hillary is worse? I hate Hillary Clinton’s guts. Hillary Clinton will not do the damage Trump will do. And people are going to come back and say to you and say to me, “You guys were right. We should have listened to you. And you know what? All of those cowards that are throwing in behind Trump because he’s the Republican nominee and they say “it’s too late to do anything.” Shame on you.

He has not been to the convention yet and guess what? If more of us stood up and we took a stand and said we are not going to vote for him. We’re going to make sure he doesn’t get elected, maybe that egomaniac Trump would want to opt out.

If he doesn’t think he can win the presidency because all of us were standing up against him, maybe he would beg off. Maybe he wouldn’t do it. But you know what? All of these go-along-to-get-along Republicans have fallen in behind him and I say shame on you and to hell with every one of you.

BECK: But really, stop being such a wallflower and tell us what you really — what are you gonna do, Brad, I mean, ’cause we had Austin Peterson on. He’s a libertarian I could vote for. Have you heard Austin Peterson?

THOR: I spoke with him this morning. I spoke with him this morning. I am spending the weekend with — I will not say who, because I promised I would not — but I am spending the weekend with probably one of the greatest conservative thinkers of my generation. And I am spending the weekend talking with him about what it is, because write in Ted Cruz, write in Mickey Mouse–…

 

Trump’s “Billionaire” Lie Unravels

I had posited in a previous piece that Donald Trump is not actually a billionaire, as he loves to claim – and based on the type of business he is in (Real Estate) that any realistic evaluation of his actual net worth (assets minus liabilities) would probably place him in the under $250 million range. Real Estate deals tend to be heavily leveraged. Meaning the “Bank” owns 90% or more. Indeed in Trump’s normal deal he winds up actually owning not much more than his name on the side of the building.For someone willing to take the risk of punitive litigation by Trump – it isn’t very hard to puncture that veil, and get a true picture.

And I should mention that $250 million may be an optimistic figure – based on the rate he now appears to be borrowing money. That indicates a sinking ship…Of his own device.

Now, the press is beginning to go after this issue…And it isn’t going to be pretty.

Shady accounting underpins Trump’s wealth

The GOP nominee is rich. But how rich depends on odd accounting and subjective criteria.

Donald Trump claims a net worth of more than $10 billion and an income of $557 million. But he appears to get there only by overvaluing properties and ignoring his expenses.

POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen financial experts and Trump’s fellow multimillionaires about the presumptive Republican nominee’s financial statement. Their conclusion: The real estate magnate’s bottom line — what he actually puts in his own pocket — could be much lower than he suggests. Some financial analysts said this, and a very low tax rate, is why Trump won’t release his tax returns.

“I know Donald, I’ve known him a long time, and it gets under his skin if you start writing about the reasons he won’t disclose his returns,” said one prominent hedge fund manager who declined to be identified by name so as not to draw Trump’s ire. “You would see that he doesn’t have the money that he claims to have and he’s not paying much of anything in taxes.”

Trump is certainly wealthy. But in a campaign where the New Yorker has portrayed himself as the biggest, the richest, the classiest and the best at everything, disclosing that he is less rich than he lets on could be damaging. And it is a line of attack Democrats are already using and hope to pound away on until November.

The case against Trump’s accounting of his wealth: His businesses apparently generate a lot of revenue but may not put much cash in his pocket; he assigns himself a net worth that is impossible to verify and may be based in part on fantasy; and he is selling assets and increasing debt in ways that suggest a man scrambling for ready cash.

In response to a list of questions for this story, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks emailed: “The report speaks for itself.” If it does, the report does not speak clearly.

The financial disclosure form showed Trump adding fresh debt of at least $50 million, though a campaign news release said Trump is using increased revenue to reduce his debt, which is now at least $315 million and possibly more than $500 million. The disclosure also suggests that Trump sold fund assets to raise as much as $7 million in cash and individual securities to raise up to $9 million more…More Here…

 

 

 

Battling the Government Beast

In a number of jurisdictions around the country, local boards or councils have tried to raise money by obscenely increasing fines. In a local county, they actually increased the fine for a Parking Ticket from $25 to $300, and started aggressively enforcing. Local businesses took a hit, as a lot fewer people decided to visit the restaurants and shops in the area, and the local citizenry started raising hell.

So how do you fight back against the machine? Here is one guy’s solution.

 

Mississippi John Hurt – The Ballad Of Stagger Lee

Just for the fun of it…

 

19th Century Black Woman Author Discovered

Don’t believe everything someone says about “the only” or “the first” when it has to do with 19th Century black achievement.

In my personal book collection, I have books going back to the 1840’s. I know of, have seen (but do not own) and read a book of poetry published by a black woman (a distant cousin) named Anne Drummond, back in the 1850’s. She was a free black woman, and I don’t recall the story about how she learned to read and write. Being free, of mixed race, and living in Virginia – I don’t believe she was ever identified as “black”, at least by the people who published her work. I will have to get a scan of that and publish it from one of her descendants.

So I am not convinced, as this article claims, there  were only 4 black authors in the 19th Century.

Part of my personal collection includes a 19th Century Set of these McGuffey’s, and a copy  of the EPAMINONDAS AND HIS AUNTIE –

“True Love”: The Victorian (re)discovery that transformed our understanding of black women’s literature

Overlooked by historians, Sarah E. Farro was the lone black novelist of her era to write for a white readership

Two years ago, I was in the United Kingdom working on a follow-up project for my books “Black London” and “Black Victorians/Black Victoriana.” While looking through old British newspapers, I was astonished to read an 1893 announcement in The Daily Telegraph proclaiming Sarah E. Farro to be “the first negro novelist” with the publication of her novel “True Love.”

 I wondered: who was this woman? And why didn’t we know about this reportedly groundbreaking novel?

The Daily Telegraph didn’t get it exactly right: we know now that Farro wasn’t the first African-American novelist. Nonetheless, she appears nowhere in the canon of African-American literature.

After doing more research, I soon realized that Farro had made her mark writing about white people – and that this may also be the reason her work was forgotten. Learning of a black woman whose race was documented, whose novel was published – but who disappeared in the historical record – can change how we think about African-American literature.

Farro joins a small club

Searches of American census records show that Sarah E. Farro was born in 1859 in Illinois to parents who moved to Chicago from the South. She had two younger sisters, and her race is given as “black” on the 1880 census.

Her novel, “True Love: A Story of English Domestic Life,” was published in 1891 by the Chicago publishing house Donohue & Henneberry. It was one of 58 books by Illinois women writers exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exhibition (World’s Fair) in 1893. Newspapers in the U.K. and the U.S. heralded the book. Toward the end of her life, in 1937, Farro was feted at a celebration of Chicago’s “outstanding race pioneers.” Apparently, she never wrote another novel.

“True Love” disappeared from the historical record, and for decades historians recognized only three other 19th-century novels written and published by African-Americans.

One other, “The Bondswoman’s Narrative,” was recently found in manuscript and published, even though the author, Hannah Crafts, is only circumstantially (although convincingly) identified. With my discovery, Farro becomes only the second known African-American woman novelist published in the 19th century. And she now joins William Wells Brown, Harriet E. Wilson, and Frank J. Webb as the only African-American published novelists in the entire century.

When I returned to the U.S. from the U.K., I was able to track down only two copies of “True Love” in libraries – one at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago and the other at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – and headed to Chicago to read it. To briefly summarize: the novel tells the story of a man whose quest to marry his love, Janey, is thwarted by Janey’s selfish sister and mother. Generous and beloved Janey nurses her sister through a fever, only to catch it herself and die.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign later digitized it for me, and now it’s available online for anyone to read. Just two weeks ago I found an original copy on eBay and immediately bought it for US$124.

The eBay listing makes no mention of her race; nowhere except in early newspaper pieces is she identified as a black woman, so this important piece of history has remained invisible until now.

An unexpected subject matter?

The reason for “True Love’s” disappearance might be simple: it takes place in England, a place Farro probably never visited, and all of its characters are white….Read the Rest Here…

 

 

Rediscovering Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Perusing my parents record collection back in the day, I remember albums by the Platters, Dinah Washington, Marion Anderson, Brooke Benton, Ray Charles…

And Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Listening to those on the old mono Console Stereo probably formed my appreciation for, and developed my tastes in music.

The First Badass Female Guitarist: Meet Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll

She influenced Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and countless others, but Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a legend in her own right.

The woman featured is none other than Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” who has one of the more enviable legacies in music. Her musical disciples and descendants reads like a who’s-who of legendary ‘50s and ‘60s figures, her personal history bears the earmarks of a classic outlaw, and her music is richly powerful and evocative—soul-stirring in the truest sense of the term. What a legacy that is—but that legacy has long been obscured.

For decades, fans and critics tended to gloss over pre-1955 music as compared to the music of the late 20^th century, and the fact that she was a gospel star likely places her in a certain niche in the minds of the general public. While names like Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis became etched into the culture’s collective consciousness, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was rarely mentioned in the same breath—or even as an obvious forbear—to her rock ‘n’ roll offspring who would carry the genre into the mainstream.

Born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, her mother, Katie Bell Nubin, was a singer, preacher, and mandolin player for the Church of God In Christ (COGIC) who encouraged little Rosetta to play and sing for services. A clear prodigy, it was through her association with COGIC that Rosetta would evolve into one of the most amazing gospel performers of her time. It was a church that believed in musical expression and was progressive in its view of gender roles within the church, encouraging women ministers and musicians. After moving to Chicago, little Rosetta and her mother became fixtures within the city’s gospel music scene.

At 19 years old, she would marry a minister named Thomas A. Thorpe in 1934, but the union would be short-lived. Though they divorced, Rosetta would keep his last name as her stage name—slightly altering “Thorpe” to “Tharpe.”

Upon signing with Decca Records, Tharpe issued singles that are instant smashes. Her versions of Thomas Dorsey tunes like “This Train” made her a household name—in particular, her reworked version of “Hide Me In Thy Bosom” (retitled “This Train”) was a breakthrough for her as a recording artist. Backed by Lucky Millinder’s jazz orchestra, the song raised her visibility with secular and white audiences and set the stage for a remarkable run that saw her perform at Carnegie Hall (as part of John Hammond’s “Spirituals to Swing” showcase) and record music with Cab Calloway and the Jordanaires. She also made recordings for U.S. troops stationed overseas; Tharpe was one of only two black gospel artists included on these “V Discs”—along with the Dixie Hummingbirds. But it was her song “Strange Things Happening Every Day” that proved a major leap forward for both her career and gospel music; it was the first gospel hit on the Billboard R&B charts, peaking at #2.

She would team up with gospel singer Marie Knight, whom she’d seen perform in Harlem with Mahalia Jackson, and the two would tour together throughout the 1940s as “The Saint (Knight) and the Sinner (Tharpe).” By 1951, she’d become so popular that 25,000 people paid to watch her wedding to her third husband, Russell Morrison, in Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. That same year, Tharpe and Knight would make an ill-fated attempt to forge a career in straight-ahead blues.  …Read the Rest Here...

 

 

On This Memorial Day – Remembering Those Who Fought to End Slavery

There are a lot of Southern Myths about the Civil War and Antebellum South, and what life was like in the period leading up to the War. The root of the war was economic. By 1860, over 60% of the GDP, and near 80% of the trade was generated by the South. And just about every penny of that money was built and fully enabled by slavery. It is no mystery why the Articles of Secession by every Southern State lists the cause of their actions as to maintain slavery.

The South was by no means monolithic as the Southern Myth would have you believe. And it was a dangerous place, with rebellion seething just under the surface. One of the few things which kept the slave master’s cruelty in check was the distinct possibility that ol’ Massa might “fall off his horse and break his neck”. There were hundreds, if not thousands of slave rebellions, and the risk was so great that during the Revolutionary War the Southern States supplied few troops to fight the British…Because they were needed at home to keep the slave rebellions in check. The sight of Haitian Troops marching to Savannah to attack British forces holding the city must have sent chills down the spines of Southern slave owners.

Further the South wasn’t monolithic. Large regions, especially the Appalachians, had no real economic ties to slavery, making the western Southern States a battleground between pro and anti-slavery forces. If you examine the maps of the Shenandoah campaign between Union General Phil Sheridan and confederate General Stonewall Jackson, you will find that there are areas conspicuously avoided by the rebs, You will find the same in certain areas of North Carolina. Those areas weren’t “confederate friendly”.

This Memorial Day we should celebrate those who fought to put down the rebellion, and ultimately end slavery. Over 100,000 of whom were white Southerners, and 260,000 of whom were black, often escaped slaves.

100,000 From Dixie Fought for the North in the Civil War

In all the recent debate about erasing Confederate history, no one talks about the history the South itself has erased, such as the many Southerners who fought for the Union.

Earlier this past week a judge ruled that the city of Louisville, Kentucky can proceed with the removal of a Confederate monument near the campus of the University of Louisville. Arguments against removing Confederate monuments over the past year have often claimed that in doing so communities run the risk of erasing history. What has been universally overlooked, however, is that the push to establish monuments to the Confederacy during the postwar years helped to erase the history of those white and black southerners who remained loyal and were willing to give their lives to save the Union.

Southern Unionism took many forms during the Civil War. Some disagreed with the right of a state to secede from the Union at the war’s outset while others grew weary of the Confederacy in response to a number of factors, including a Conscription Act in 1862 that exempted large slaveowners, the impressment of horses or mules for the army, and a “tax-in-kind” law that allowed the government to confiscate a certain percentage of farm produce for military purposes. Others in places like Appalachia and other highland regions that included few slaves saw little value in supporting a government whose purpose was the creation of an independent slaveholding republic.

Resistance to the Confederacy also took many forms throughout the war. The release of the movie, The Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey next month, will introduce audiences to Newton Knight, who led an armed rebellion against the Confederacy in Jones County, Mississippi. Some joined clandestine political organizations such as the Heroes of America, which may have contained upwards of 10,000 members. Networks of communication kept resistors in touch with one another and their activities throughout the region. Unionists risked arrest by Confederate officials, ostracism from within the family, and violent reprisals from the community.

It is impossible to know just how many white southerners remained loyal to the Union during the war given disagreements over its very definition, but we do know that somewhere around 100,000 southern white men from Confederate states, except for South Carolina, served in the U.S. military. East Tennessee supplied somewhere around 42,000 men, but other Confederate states yielded significant numbers, including 22,000 from Virginia (and West Virginia) and 25,000 from North Carolina. The First Alabama Cavalry, which was considered one of the toughest units in General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army, took part in his “march” through Georgia and the Carolinas in 1864-65.

The decision to express one’s loyalty to the Union by joining the army was often a painful one to make from the lowliest private to some of the highest-ranking officers. While the story of Robert E. Lee’s decision to resign his commission in the U.S. army, rather than betray his home of Virginia, is often told and re-told in tragic prose, others grappled with the same decisions and yet chose to remain loyal. The man who offered Lee command of the U.S. army in 1861 was another Virginian by the name of Winfield Scott. Scott, whose military career stretched back to the War of 1812—including a failed presidential bid in 1852—was the highest-ranking general at the beginning of the war. Scott’s decision was no less difficult than Lee’s and yet he remained loyal and although too old to take command in the field, he helped formulate military policy that ultimately proved successful in subduing the rebellion.

General George Henry Thomas, also from Virginia, became one of the most successful generals in the war and saved the Union army from being completely routed on September 19, 1863, earning him the nickname the “Rock of Chickamauga.” His loyalty to the nation cost him his family, who refused to speak with him ever again and even turned his picture against the wall. Very few monuments to the service of these men and others like them, who defied family, friends, and community for the sake of the nation, can be found in the former Confederate states. And yet the removal of some Confederate monuments has caused some to worry about erasing history.

The other significant Southern bloc that voiced their loyalty to the Union and commitment to crushing the rebellion was the region’s slave population. From the beginning of the war, and in the shadow of a Supreme Court that as recently as 1857 ruled that free and enslaved blacks could not be citizens of the United States, African Americans offered their services to the military. Beginning in 1862 along the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, former slaves rushed into the first all black regiments. By the end of the war roughly 150,000 former slaves fought and died to save this nation. They did so under the most harrowing conditions. Black soldiers were massacred on battlefields and even sent back into slavery at places like Fort Pillow in Tennessee and at the Crater in Petersburg, Virginia by Confederates, who refused to treat them as legitimate soldiers. As if that wasn’t enough, their own government refused to pay them what white soldiers earned. Only sustained protests that lasted more than a year and continued demonstrations of bravery on the battlefield led Congress to correct this injustice in the summer of 1864.

Southern Unionists, both black and white, may have celebrated Confederate defeat, but they continued to be persecuted owing to their wartime beliefs and actions by terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Life was especially difficult for former slaves, who fought for the Union and now hoped to exercise the right to vote, own land, or run for public office. Their sacrifice for the Union ended in the rise of Jim Crow state governments by the turn of the 20^th century.

After the war, as white Southerners erected monuments to their Confederate dead they also erected monuments to their former slaves, only they recalled not brave men who fought to preserve the Union, but their loving former “servants” who remained loyal to master and their Lost Cause. The very act of monument erection helped to erase this history for much of the 20^th century.

The removal of Confederate monuments need not result in the erasure of history. In fact, it may for the first time create the intellectual and physical space to commemorate and remember a new narrative of the past, one that corresponds more closely to the long and rich history of service and sacrifice to this nation that is recalled each year on Memorial Day.

 

The White Right Done Gone Crazy! Chairman Candidate at Libertarian Convention…Strips!

This is a video of he National Convention of he Libertarian Party. The guy who starts speaking was running to be the Party Chairman.

 

Tim Wise on the How of Trump’s Racism Appeal

Time Wise is a well know anti-racism speaker and writer. His analysis of how Trup attracts and motivates white racists…

Anti-racism expert explains Trump’s scapegoating appeal to whites — and it will give you chills

Anti-racism educator Tim Wise explained on Sunday how presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump used “racialized scapegoating” to appeal to white voters while “othering other people.”

“If the only reason for Trump’s support was economic anxiety then people of color should be flocking to Trump,” Wise told CNN’s Brian Stelter. “Because black folks, for instance, are twice as likely to be out of work as white folks, three times as likely to be poor, have 1/15 the net worth, nine years less life expectancy in large part due to economic inequality.”

“There’s a link between the kind of economic anxiety that white folks are feeling and this larger political or racial anxiety,” he said.

Wise likened Trump’s rhetoric to Southerners who say that “the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it’s about states rights.”

“Yeah, but the right you were fighting for was the right to own people,” he noted. “So when the folks in the Trump camp say it’s not about race, ‘Well, I like the fact that he says what’s on his mind.’ Yeah, but you like that he says things about Mexicans and about the Chinese and about black activists in the streets protesting police brutality and he says things about Muslims.”

“In fact, all of those things that people say Trump is about — economics, the straight-shooting, straight-talking guy — all of that still comes back to his perspective on othering other people and saying, ‘They’re your threat, they’re the ones who endanger your job, they’re the ones who are to blame for your lack of safety in the streets.’”

According to Wise, Trump was successful largely because he had been able to combine “racialized scapegoating” with his economic message.

The activist also challenged media to “start being honest” with their reporting on race issues.

“How many in the media have asked Donald Trump or any of his key supporters, ‘Hey what does that hat mean?’” he wondered. “You’re wearing this hat that says ‘Make America Great Again’ — when exactly was America great? And not just for white men with money like Donald Trump.”

“Name a year for me because I want to know… Because any year you pick is not going to be a great one for anyone but the dominant group.”

 

UNC Folds on “Bathroom Law”

Facing losing over $1 billion in Federal Research Grants…UNC President reverses course.

University Of North Carolina Won’t Enforce Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill

The UNC system president wrote in a court filing that she had “no intent” to enforce the new law.

The University of North Carolina system will not enforce a state law that mandates people use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificate, UNC System President Margaret Spellings told a federal court Friday.

“I have no intent to exercise my authority to promulgate any guidelines or regulations that require transgender students to use the restrooms consistent with their biological sex,” Spellings wrote in an affidavit filed as part of a motion to halt civil legal proceedings against the university system, The Associated Press reported.

Spellings has avoided giving her personal opinion on House Bill 2, also known as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, which passed in March.

And though she sent out a memo in April advising campuses to follow the law, her memo hinted that she had no clue how to actually enforce it. UNC lawyers suggested the same thing in a court filing, writing that the system has not “changed any of its policies or practices regarding transgender students or employees” and that HB2 doesn’t provide any guidance on enforcement.

Multiple plaintiffs are taking the UNC system to court in response to HB2, saying it’s discriminatory. The law states that when it comes to multiple-occupancy bathrooms in government buildings or public schools and colleges, everyone must use the restroom corresponding with the sex indicated on their birth certificate. In other words, a person who was assigned female at birth and now identifies as a man would still have to use the women’s bathroom.

The law also removed legal anti-discrimination protection for LGBTQ people.

The UNC system is asking the court to postpone the civil case, pending the outcome of a separate case in Virginia involving a teen suing a county school board over a policy barring him from using the boys’ bathroom.