Who Died and Made these People Kings? -- Bill Vallante

Bill Vallante

Bill Vallante, wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com, is an associate member of the Jeb Stuart Camp 1506, a reenactor in the 9th Va. Inf., Co. C, and is living "behind enemy lines" in New York.
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"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." --John 8:32

Who Died and Made these People Kings?
by Bill Vallante, 4/22/2011

"There are two world histories. One is the official and full of lies, destined to be taught in schools – the other is the secret history, which harbors the true causes and occurrences." --Honore de Balzac

Recently, a columnist named Dwight Ott wrote a piece about “Southern celebrations of the War Between the States,” a piece which appeared in several newspapers (text below). I learned many things from this article.

I learned that the NAACP is displeased with such celebrations and that it is “taking a stand against them.” I learned that Lonnie Randolph of the South Carolina NAACP was very unhappy over the Secession Ball that was held in that state last December, because, among other things, he considers the Confederacy to have been a “terrorist organization.” He is also displeased at the prospect of further celebrations and seems to be making plans to make life as miserable as possible for those of us who see value in such celebrations.

I also learned that a man in New Jersey named Sollie Walker is displeased. I am not sure who Sollie Walker is or why his feelings demand national attention but apparently his feelings are very important, or at least more important than mine.

I learned that “to many”, such celebrations commemorate “the invasion of the U.S. government by a terrorist organization which had as its objective, the preservation of the buying and selling of human beings.” I learned that this buying and selling constituted something called “theft of services.” As in all cases like it where the words “to many” appear, no one says how “many” is “to many.”

I learned that Nat Turner was the great great great brother in law (or something like that) to Amina Josey Turner of the North Carolina NAACP. Amina seems to be proud to be related, at least by marriage, to ole Nat, but isn’t too happy about those white folks who are related to Confederates being proud of their relations.

I learned that there is a tourist boycott of South Carolina which has been successful in frightening away NCAA tournaments, but which has had limited success in scaring away tourists, particularly black tourists. The article says that the reason African American tourists still visit that state is that they are unaware of the boycott.

I also learned that South Carolina and Mississippi are two states that still fly the Confederate flag at their capitols and that this is a very bad thing. Derrick Johnson, head of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP could not be reached for comment on this matter. This is very strange, as NAACP officials usually love cameras and interviews.

I learned that the white man is still “keeping da’ black man down” and prisons, which are full of black inmates, are nothing more than “Jim Crow” reincarnated. Apparently the black prisoners in those institutions are serving hard time for nothing more than drug-related misdemeanors – and this is a very unfair and bad thing.

I learned that there are over 1000 “hate groups” in the United States, that the number of such groups is growing daily, and that this is very very bad. I know this because the Southern Poverty Law Center tells me so.

I learned that during the Reconstruction Period, white southerners worked toward “redeeming” and “restoring” their states, and that this was “white supremacy.” “Redemption” and “restoration” are very bad things, you see.

And I learned that Al Sharpton knows how to do the Nazi salute.
Heil Sharpton!

Let’s see, did I forget anything? Nope! Ok, want to know what I think of all this? I thought you’d never ask!

Who invaded who? As I recall, it wasn’t the United States government that got invaded, it was the United States government that did the invading. For one thing, the South seceded legally, it wasn't treason. For another, the Confederate government sent three representatives to Washington in March 1861 to meet with Lincoln and discuss the peaceful removal of Federal troops from Fort Sumter. Lincoln ignored them for a month and instead sent a fleet of a dozen heavily armed warships and hundreds of troops on an alleged “take out” food delivery. And I do not remember the South invading the North. What I do remember is many Southerners saying, “all we ask is to be left alone!” Hardly sounds like the words of a people hell bent on invading someone. I wonder if Mr. Ott ever read Lincoln’s April 1861 proclamation calling for 75000 volunteers to invade the Southern states, or if he is aware that Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina and Virginia seceded because they saw that invasion as an infringement upon liberty itself? Yet somehow, it appears, at least according to NAACP doctrine, it was the Confederacy that did the invading?

Ott makes a point of saying that Amina Josey Turner and her husband are related to Nat Turner. I wonder if either Ott or the Turners would enjoy reading an unedited account of Turner’s uprising, complete with infant brain bashing and child beheadings? I wonder if they know or care that out of the 61 white people killed by their relation and his followers, that 47 of them were women and children? Talk about a “painful reminder”!

And the South Carolina boycott has had limited success in keeping black tourists out because these tourists are unaware of it? Sure, whatever you say guys. I guess these two babes didn’t get the word either.

When it comes to the Reconstruction period, Ott and others don’t seem to care for the words “redemption” and “restoration.” I guess that no one wants to hear that the Reconstruction governments, whose political offices were filled with illiterate black men fresh out of slavery, left the South with four times the debt that it had when it finished the war, and that the collective job performance of these men would make Marion Barry look like Fiorello LaGuardia! To dump such men on their collective asses sure seems like “restoration” or “redemption” to me. Let’s ask a few questions – how is it that an illiterate field worker who was picking cotton 2 or 3 years ago can make such a giant leap of progress, that in that time he can become a competent judge, legislator or commissioner? The answer is obvious – he can’t! How is such a leap of progress, unheard of in all of human history, possible? The answer is obvious – it isn’t! And what kind of job does the record show that such men did? The answer - see my Marion Barry reference. I have the facts and figures to support my contentions, but I don’t think that Ott, Randolph or those of their ilk are going to want to see them. It would be yet another “painful reminder!”

And oh yes, the prisons are the new “Jim Crow” huh? And all the black men there are put there on trumped up drug misdemeanor charges? I guess that black men committing crimes like murder, rape and robbery are figments of my white imagination, huh? I guess Ott, Randolph and company have never read the FBI statistics which show that 52% of the murders in this country are committed by criminals of their own race, a race which numbers a mere 14% of the population? Yet another “painful reminder.”

And perhaps Derrick Johnson of the Mississippi NAACP couldn’t be reached because he fears being asked about the Mississippi flag referendum of 10 years ago, in which the current state flag with the Confederate emblem in it soundly trounced its proposed replacement by a 2-1 margin? This, you see, occurred in a state whose black population numbers over 40% and in a state in which the NAACP invested a lot of time, money and effort in trying to get out the vote against the old flag! Maybe Mr. Johnson, if he can be located, can give me the answer of exactly how “many” is “to many,” because at least in Mississippi 10 years ago, “to many” wasn’t very “many” at all!

And it’s sad, very sad, because it doesn’t have to be this way. I can name at least one small Southern town where blacks and whites not only get along but help each other celebrate their respective histories. That town shall remain nameless for its own protection, lest it cease to be a flyover zone for those self-absorbed, talent-challenged individuals who make their living trying to stir up discontent among their fellow men. I like that town, and I like the people who live there, black as well as white. It’s peaceful there, and I’d like to keep it that way.

And what exactly is the definition of a “hate group” anyway? Could it simply be a group that does not share the Southern Poverty Law Circus’ view of the world? How do we know how many individuals are in each supposed “hate group?” The SPLC gives numbers of “hate groups” but does not tell us how many people are in each group. Is it possible that a “hate group” might consist of, say, 3 individuals? Because 1000 groups times 3 people per group = 3000 people out of a population of over 300 million and that doesn’t sound like a whole lot to worry about. How many people have to be in a group in order to classify it as a “group” anyway? And how much money does the SPLC make doing this? What kind of investment portfolio does it have? What was Mo’ Dees’ original occupation? How about digging up transcripts from his last divorce trial, if for nothing else than to see what kind of character he really is? And for an organization which trumpets the cause of minorities as much as it does, one might think that the racial and ethnic makeup of its workforce would be a model of “diversity.” Is it such a model? And if there are or have been minority employees, what do they think of their work experience at the SPLC? Are there any mainstream journalists out there with the balls to ask these questions? Didn’t think so. [ With apologies to Watching-The-Watchdogs who observed that "The last Whites Only sign in Montgomery is in the executive suites of the Southern Poverty Law Center" ] -- SPLC Whites Only

Editors Note: SPLC does have an honorary (unpaid) board member named Bond, Julian Bond.

And as far as that oft-used word “terrorism” goes, it seems that these days a terrorist can simply be anyone that you don’t like. All you have to do is to point your finger at someone and scream the word, much the same way colonists in Salem pointed their fingers at their enemies and yelled “witch” some 300+ years ago. I also observe that these days “terrorists” all seem to be white people, especially those who sport Ron Paul bumper stickers or fly Confederate flags or who speak openly about closing the borders or about the importance of the Constitution. These days when I hear “terrorism” I seldom hear names like Mohammed, Ziad, Ahmed, Saeed, Mohand, Hamza,, Fayez, Marwan, Abdulaziz, Wail, Waleed, Satam, Salem, Hani, Nawaf, Majed, or Khalid. Those by the way were the actual first names of the September 11th hijackers. These guys didn’t fly Confederate flags, they didn’t sport Ron Paul bumper stickers and they didn’t give a rat’s patoot about the Constitution. It seems that despite 3000 of us being killed that day that we seem to have forgotten who exactly the terrorists were. But instead of pointing the finger where it belongs, we point it at each other. I submit that there is no need to track down Osama Bin Laden because he’s already dead. He most likely died laughing a long time ago.

Like Diogenes, who wandered the streets of ancient Athens with a lantern looking for an honest man, I wander modern day America, looking for an NAACP spokesman who can calmly and rationally explain to me where it is written that we all must bow to whatever his organization happens to decree? I look for such a man who can explain to me who it was that died and made him and others like him the kings of us all? I’m not likely to find that man though. Those in the NAACP and similar organizations long ago came to believe that such explanations are beneath them. They have grown accustomed to simply uttering the holy words, “civil rights” and watching people fall down on their knees gushing with reverence. Sadly, “many” stupid white people have grown comfortable with living their lives on their knees. I would settle for finding a white man in some public position who had the “cajones” to stand up and ask that question of the Lords of Civil Rights, but I fear that these days I’m less likely to find such a man than I am to find an NAACP official who thinks that his sh** does not stink. I guess I’ll keep carrying my lantern.

And let’s talk about “theft of services,” shall we? Actually, no one stole anything. White men did not go running into the jungles to hunt down black men and make them slaves. They went to African chiefs and African slave traders and they bought them, as Africans were and still are the most prodigious practitioners of slavery on the planet. And no matter how bad it was for those who endured a trans Atlantic voyage and then had to adapt to new living and labor conditions in an unfamiliar land, it still beats the hell out of what their fate would have been had they remained in Africa - they would have ended up in someone’s cooking pot or become a human sacrifice.

Africans have never been known for exhibiting very much in the way of either compassionate or civilized behavior, you see. Read the diaries and journals of the numerous white explorers like Braun, Stanley and Livingston if you don’t believe me. It’s all there in black and white. About 600000 of the many millions taken out of Africa were taken to North America. Their descendents today number almost 40 million. Many of them, like Ott and Randolph, make their living throwing stones at people like me. I’d say that in the end, things worked out pretty well for them.

Sidebar: Slavery In Perspective by Joseph Sobran

Memo to the NAACP and other race card players – it pains me to have to say this - I am not one to rub someone’s face in it, but without slavery you would today, not exist or, you would exist in Africa, if you could call such a thing existence. You would be today, squatting in a mud hut as your distant ancestors did and as Africans still do today, trying to figure out how to avoid being mutilated, dismembered or slaughtered by your fellow Africans. Two millennia ago your distant ancestors were unable to dream of a wheel while mine were out building roads. Whatever you learned of civilization you learned from people who looked like me. And it was also people that looked like me who spent billions over the last 150 years trying to help people of your race. (See “The Great Society Programs” as just one example). So please stop saying that we never gave you anything or that we owe you something. No, we’re not perfect, but neither are you. The difference is, we realize our imperfections and try to work on making ourselves better. You don’t. You either deny your imperfections or try to blame them on someone else. I’m not going to itemize the bill for the billions we’ve spent on you otherwise this article would turn into a book. But when we add up the monies spent over the last 150 years as well as the damage caused by what have euphemistically been called “race riots” and then total up the bill, it’ll be you who owes me something, not the reverse.

If the NAACP was really interested in the “advancement of colored people,” it would issue a recall to all of those black ministers who have turned their backs on their God and on their congregations and instead have gone off to ply the very lucrative race baiting trade. It would tell such ministers to get back in front of their congregations and to start reminding those congregations of what is right and what is wrong. Fathering 70% of your babies out of wedlock is wrong! Not providing a stable family unit for your children is wrong! Not raising your children to understand that education is important and that it is the way to success in this world is wrong! These things are not only morally wrong, they are practically wrong, because in case you haven’t figured it out, most of the people in prison, regardless of their race, have the same things in common, no families (to speak of), little or no education, and no hope. And these things all start in the home. Creating that home is your responsibility, not mine and it has absolutely nothing to do with any historical celebrations of my history that I may choose to conduct!

But the NAACP isn’t going to issue any such recall of any ministers. If they did, there’d be no one left to run their organization. These people are friends to no one and the only “advancement” they seek is their own. And it isn’t peace they want, and it isn’t justice they want. What they want is control.

Several months ago, Al Sharpton went on a cable television network to blast the Secession Ball. Sons of Confederate Veterans Commander Michael Givens responded with a message addressed to Sharpton and his National Action Network explaining that the ball was not a celebration of slavery, but of the bravery of Southerners of all races who stood up for what they believed was right, and who did so in the face of overwhelming odds.

Commander Givens closed his message with these words:

“Instead of casting aspersions and slandering folks, let's come together as Americans and prove to the world that our country is truly great. Why don't we start this, you and I. Let's sit together, discuss our differences and discover our commonalities while doing some good for our country. Contact me anytime.”

To date, Sharpton and his boys at NAN have contacted no one... Gee! What a surprise!?

Bill Vallante, wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com, is an associate member of the Jeb Stuart Camp 1506, a reenactor in the 9th Va. Inf., Co. C, and is living "behind enemy lines" in N.Y.

Black History Month & 'Civil War Memory' - The 40 Part Series

Taking on Confederacy-era values

NAACP takes stand against southern celebrations
Published Thursday, April 14, 2011 7:19 am
by Dwight Ott, Philadelphia Tribune

The reverberations from down South over the Confederate flag and the 150th anniversary of the kickoff of the Civil War can be felt as far way as a Voorhees, N.J. gym.

That’s where the laughter of Sollie Walker, 64, a South Carolina native, can usually be heard above the clank of the weights and boom of voices at the gym just outside Philadelphia.

But, Sollie Walker wasn’t laughing last week as he was asked about the Confederate flag that hangs over his former state capitol building. Nor was he smiling when he talked about the upcoming Fort Sumter anniversary in South Carolina.

“Blacks, in my family as well as others, are really upset,” he said, especially over the cavalier preparations of some whites for the celebration.

To many, the event commemorates the bombing of and invasion of the U.S. government by insurgents to preserve a way of life involving the buying and selling of human beings — black human beings.

Last December the celebrations included a gala “Secession Ball” complete with period costumes.

NAACP president, the Rev. Lonnie Randolph said another celebration is coming up with the commemoration of the firing on Fort Sumter, the start of Civil War hostilities.

“The big event is on April 12 — that is the day Fort Sumter was fired on by the Confederacy. There will be another re-enactment of a firing on a military installation,” he said, adding the Fort Sumter installation is now under the management of the National Park Service.

“The National Park service has been very quiet about all of this,” he said.

Mississippi and South Carolina are the only two states that fly Confederate flags on state house property. Derrick Johnson, head of the Mississippi state NAACP could not be reached for comment.

In South Carolina, Randolph said the local NAACP was not yet prepared to announce its plans for the commemorations. In the past, the NAACP has shown its displeasure with the Confederate flag as well as Confederate galas forcefully.

The organization registered its disgust with the location of Confederate flag with the launching of a nationwide tourist boycott against South Carolina to end the practice of flying the Confederate flag over the statehouse. NAACP officials like Randolph, say the boycott has been successful, even though the flag was not moved all the way off the state house grounds.

“The monument on the statehouse ground is a shrine to white supremacy, yet they would not allow a monument to [slave revolt conspirator] Denmark Vesey in Charleston,” Randolph observed.

Vesey, himself a free man of color at the time, was captured and hanged but remains a hero to blacks in that area. Meanwhile, according to Randolph, monuments to white supremacists like John C. Calhoun and Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the KKK, dot the urban landscape and the countryside.

Though the flag was not moved all the way off the statehouse grounds, the impact of the NAACP nationwide boycott has been felt in other ways.

The boycott has been particularly successful in dissuading sports events from coming to South Carolina. Myrtle Beach decided not to apply to host the 2012 Olympic trials for beach volleyball for fear an NAACP boycott on South Carolina will hurt its chances at attracting the event, a decision that has left future sports tourism in question.

The state was previously embarrassed when the ACC baseball tournament was awarded to, and then withdrawn from, Myrtle Beach for 2011 to 2013; it was withdrawn after the NAACP raised concerns.

The boycott has also influenced the NCAA, which will not award predetermined championships to South Carolina. But, John Rhodes has said the boycott has had limited impact on Myrtle Beach because African-American tourists, unaware of the boycott, are still coming.

“People think this is some happy-go-lucky event,” said Randolph about the celebrations. “The Confederacy was a terrorist organization. We don’t re-enact things like Timothy McVeigh [the bomber of Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla.]. We don’t re-enact the people who bombed the World Trade Center and killed all those people on 9/11,” said Randolph.

In neighboring North Carolina, NAACP executive director, Amina Josey Turner, [whose husband is a relative of Nat Turner] said she agreed with Randolph’s characterization of Confederates who deliberately bombed and attacked the U.S. government as terrorists.

“We’re decades away from Civil War time,” she said. “But we’re still reliving the wounds from that period, generations of racism and classicism. Yes, we do have an African-American president, but there is also a resurgence of racism and its attendant problems. They’re celebrating what was painful in black history.”

Sollie Walker and experts agree the Civil War did throw a wrench into the South’s “economic system” that had been based on “theft of services” and the buying and selling of human beings.

After the war, control of the South temporarily passed to federal troops, who occupied the South from the 1860s to the late 1870s. But, after the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as president, federal troops were withdrawn. The old white ruling class and the poor whites they controlled returned to power.

Utilizing a campaign of terror via groups like the KKK and the Red Shirts as well a system of Black Codes designed to keep blacks down, they established a new kind of slavery that some say was worst than the first — sharecropping, which reduced former slaves to the level of serfdom. Blacks, though “free,” returned to their “place” on the plantation tilling the land and “sharing” it with the plantation owner.

Though whites no longer engaged in the legal ownership of blacks, people of color remained dependent on whites, since they had to “buy” their tools and equipment from planters who controlled them through such indebtedness.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that many of the most overt shackles of Jim Crow segregation were broken. Mechanization put an end to sharecropping, though in many cases blacks culturally and economically still remain dependent on whites even to this day – even in the North.

In fact, some have described modern day prisons as the “New Jim Crow,” since so many young black males are scooped up from the streets on minor drug violations or manufactured cases and thrown into modern prisons.

The prisoners are not educated or taught useful skills and in some cases their voting rights are taken away. Some refer to this system as the “Prison/Industrial Complex” — a new method of controlling blacks that has been privatized to make money for eager companies, usually headed by whites.

And, there is evidence that for many the Civil War is not over.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, despite Obama’s election, the number of hate groups for the first time has topped 1,000.

Meanwhile, “an anti-government ‘Patriot’ movement expanded dramatically for the second straight year as the radical right showed continued explosive growth in 2010,” the center stated.

A graph on the front page of the report indicated that South Carolina alone may have as many as 170 neo-Nazi groups, as well as a substantial number of White supremacist groups.

“In South Carolina, we have the second highest number of hate groups in the country, more than the entire state of California,” said Randolph. “It’s not state’s rights these people want; it’s White supremacy,” said Randolph. The memories of South Carolina disturb Sollie.

“When my grandmother would see that flag she would always say ‘there go my reparations.’ She said, ‘That flag means you got to pay me for all that free labor you got out of my mother and other slaves.”

The Rev. William J. Barber II, North Carolina’s NAACP president, commented about the resurgence of white supremacy in the report on the tea party released months ago.

“We have to have particular concern about supremacy attitudes, violence, hate language, particularly when it’s rooted in notions of restoring or taking back or redeeming the country,” Barber stated. “Because, in the American social-historical-political psyche, we have historical markers that tell us how dangerous this is to be given legitimacy.”

“We know in 1867 when the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, laid out its political purposes, it was about restoring and re-enfranchising, if you will,” stated Barber. “And, then when you go to the Reconstruction Era, you find this same attempt to spew this division, this hate language out … ‘we need to restore America. We need to take it back.’”