Sunday, April 25, 2004

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 24

Edward Sebesta's April 24 entry for Confederate Heritage Month is from the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine over three months in 1958.  It's yet another illustration of how much the celebration of Confederate "heritage" was about celebrating the present reality of segregation during those decades.

The article declares:

The effort to confer immediate and full citizenship upon one million men just out of slavery was a political and social blunder, working grievous wrongs to whites and blacks alike, and the more so that the federal government had no plan or power at the time to provide for the education of the freed men in the meaning and responsibilities of that citizenship. ...

The validity of the Fourteenth Amendment upon which the Supreme Court based its decision has been questioned time and time again. Before concluding whether or not the amendment in question is valid, it is necessary to go into the history of its dubious ratification.

Questioning whether the 14th Amendment, which clearly extended the protection of the Bill of Rights to states, was properly ratified was one of many spurious historical arguments favored by the segregationists.  It's such a frivolous argument that it's doubtful even so thoroughly political a jurist as Dick Cheney's huntin' buddy Antonin Scalia could take it seriously.

What follows is a rant against the Supreme Court and its authority and a defense of the phony "free choice" option on school desegregation, in which parallel school systems for blacks and whites would be maintain, but anyone who chose to go to the other race's schools could do so.

Such is the way Confederate "heritage" was celebrated in 1958 during the long resistance of the South to the Supreme Court's school desegregation order.

Heritage not hate?

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