Bigotry Blooms at Macon's Cherry Blossom Festival – Commentary by Steve Scroggins
Southern culture, southern history and American veterans take another slap in the face this week and this time it comes from so-called “leaders” in my home city.
Macon’s Cherry Blossom Festival (CBF) invited a Living History exhibit to join their festival scheduled for late March. This Living History exhibit includes re-enactors wearing Confederate and Union uniforms and other period dress and setting up a small area complete with tents, replica military weapons, campfire cooking demonstrations and so forth. Essentially, they are educators who go around showing others how the people of that turbulent time lived and trying to explain the true history of America’s most significant and bloody war.
Everything was peachy keen until the CBF Board of Directors reviewed the plans recently and recoiled at the idea of a Confederate flag and a historical exhibit. In a kneejerk reaction, they decided to DISinvite the Living History reenactors.
I should point out that the President/CEO of the Festival is a friend of mine. He invited the Exhibit. It’s the Board of Directors that reversed the invitation. Their decision should NOT put a negative light on the hard-working staff and the many generous volunteers who go out of their way to show true hospitality. Unfortunately, this Board may bring shame on all their worthy efforts.
Macon Telegraph story Feb. 20, 2004
From the news reports I’ve seen on television, Board member and Festival Chair William A. Fickling, III, says that the exhibit just didn’t fit the overall theme of the festival.
According to their website, their core theme is love, beauty and international friendship. They will be honoring visitors from Australia, Ghana, Japan, Taiwan and the U.K. Apparently all cultures are welcome…except Southern American culture.
Sure there will be blues, bluegrass, country, gospel and opera music, but let’s throw a cover-blanket over our history from that certain time period…you know, the late unpleasantness.
I find it curious that the City of Macon (led by Mayor C. Jack Ellis) recently named a city in the west African nation of Ghana as a “sister city.” Ghana is documented, along with Mauritania, Ivory Coast and the Sudan, as continuing the practice of slavery today.
Slavery in Ghana Today || AntiSlavery.org
The so-called civil rights leaders of today, rather than dealing with real modern problems for black citizens such as fatherless children, poor education and black-on-black crime, choose instead to focus on removing Confederate flags from view. They are “painful reminders of slavery” they say. Aside from that being ridiculous and based on historical distortion, the big log sticking out of their eye is that slavery continues to this day on the African continent and they choose to ignore that, too. They complain about Confederate flags, then openly support slave nations like Ghana.
We see it everyday across America now. American culture and heritage is under attack from the relentless assault of political correctness that seeks to re-write American history to suit their socialist big-government agenda.
So when I read that Jeanie Enyart was the first CBF Board member to notice and remark on the Living History exhibit, I knew where she was coming from. She’s a newspaper publisher, you see. They are highly trained at spotting offensive things, like the truth, and rooting them out of their publications. She used the word “divisive” which is a code word that means it’s something on their censorship list.
If the CBF has problems with military themes, then they have a problem with their home and their 2004 schedule. Their events schedule includes aerobatic Air Shows (military aircraft), Armed Forces paratroopers and concerts from the U.S. Army Ground Forces Band, the U.S. Air Force Jazz Ensemble and the U.S. Air Force Reserve Band. They will undoubtedly play---{gasp}----march music. I grew up in Warner Robins, where I learned what the acronym EDIMGIAFAD meant. "Every Day In Middle Georgia Is Air Force Appreciation Day". The folks in Macon know that Robins Air Force Base is the economic engine that drives everything in our area.
No, I don’t think CBF has a problem with the military per se. Telegraph Reporter Liz Fabian or whoever wrote the headline for her story had it right: Confederate flag at heart of Cherry Blossom fest flap.
I should point out here that Confederate soldiers are recognized as U.S. veterans by act of Congress. They are entitled to equal honors, rights and privileges just as any US veteran. This fact is conveniently forgotten when anti-southern bigots insult the memory and malign the character of our Confederate ancestors. When they insult American veterans who happen to be Confederate, they also insult ALL American veterans.
One more note on this story that won’t make the news. CBF Festival Chair William A. Fickling, III, is the grandson of the man who started the cherry tree celebration here in central Georgia. He is also the great-great grandson of William Hampton Fickling, Sr. (1834-1907), who was also Confederate Major WH Fickling of Company C, 59th Georgia Volunteer Infantry (CSA). They saw action on the James River, at Gettysburg and all the major battles of the Northern Virginia campaign that followed.
Fickling Genealogy site
My great-great-grandfather, Thomas B. Theus, and six of his brothers enlisted in Company C of the Georgia 59th Infantry in May of 1862 in Butler, Georgia. Only three of the Theus brothers returned from the war.
Fortunately, Major Fickling, the commander of Company C, survived the war as well. He owned a grist mill and substantial properties in Taylor County and I believe he even had business interests in Macon after the war. His son became a dentist who is buried in Macon’s Riverside cemetery. His grandson, William A. Fickling Sr., would become known as the Father of the Cherry Blossom Festival.
Major Fickling is buried at Crowell Methodist Church in Taylor County Georgia. I wonder if he’s resting well knowing that his descendant is participating in the erasure of his memory---the insult to his memory---along with that of all his fellow Confederate veterans who risked everything to defend their homes against invaders.
Some people among us prefer to ignore the wisdom of the ages. They prefer instead to go wherever the wind blows them and not worry about any guiding principles or the sacrifices made by those who came before them that allow them to have that choice. Some are willing to sell their heritage for an extra buck. This does not bode well for our future.
"He alone deserves to be remembered by his children who treasures up and preserves the memory of his fathers." --Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision." --Gen. Pat Cleburne, CSA
"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today...The reputation of an individual is of minor importance to the opinion posterity may form of the motives which governed the South in their late struggle for the maintenance of the principles of the Constitution. I hope therefore, a true history will be written, and justice will be done them." --Gen. Robert E. Lee
"Any society which suppresses the heritage of its conquered minorities, prevents their history, and denies them their symbols, has sewn the seed of its own destruction."
-- Sir William Wallace, 1281 A. D.
I think the CBF folks are about to realize what they’ve stepped in. I have no doubt that they’ll get more feedback on this insult than they ever imagined. I’m afraid it’s too big now and even if the majority of the Board members wanted to reverse themselves and allow the exhibit, there are a few members of the Board who will feel obligated to go nuclear----to appease their militant black-racist constituencies. It will likely get out of hand. So, to avoid that, the Board will probably stick to their guns----oops----I mean, they’ll stick their heads in the sand and hope that a boycott does not hurt their attendance.
Another aspect they’ll have to consider is that the Corporate sponsors of the CBF include a number of renowned anti-Southern companies such as Coca-Cola and Georgia Power just to name a few. If this blows into a nuclear flap, the anti-Southern bigot companies may threaten to withdraw their sponsorships if any Confederate flags are visible.
Yep, the Cherry Blossom folks are going to be busy covering up all the historical markers in town that mention the word “Confederate” along with all those 602 Confederate grave stones in Rose Hill Cemetery and the 175 that are in Riverside Cemetery, and the Confederate statue on Cotton Avenue and the Confederate Building on Cotton Avenue and the UDC obelisk on Poplar Street, and....well, you get the idea.
Steve Scroggins
is Adjutant of the Lt. James T. Woodward Camp 1399, Sons of Confederate
Veterans, in Warner Robins, GA and a frequent GHC contributor of parody
and political cartoons and graphics.
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