This week we are discussing the conscious fabrication of history in the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Heritage Defense manual. The manual was designed to equip members of the “Confederate heritage” group with arguments and strategies to counter efforts to remove Confederate statues or flags. It is eighteen pages long and provides insights into the SCV’s distortion of history. Today we look at the SCV’s description of how the modern controversy over Confederate symbols in public places developed. You can read the first article, with a link to the SCV manual, here.
There are several things to notice while reading this unedited section from the manual. First is the decision by the SCV to refer to the modern descendants of enslaved Black people as “black Americans, most of whom descend from indentured blacks of the 19th century.” Slaves were distinctly not indentured. A slave did not enter into a contract with a “master.” The slave was enslaved for life and typically passed the enslaved status on to any children. A slave was property. An indentured servant or worker was not. The choice of terminology is indicative of the general deception of the manual.
From the manual:
In the last three decades, a considerable controversy has developed concerning the history, memory and symbols of the Southern nation of the nineteenth century. It is causing hatred and violence throughout America, however, few are aware of the origin of this strife.
The popular media has portrayed the controversy over Southern symbolism as a disagreement between descendants of those who established the Southern nation in the 19th century and black Americans, most of whom descend from indentured blacks of the 19th century. The media persistently associates the entire Southern independence movement of the 1860s as one to perpetuate slavery because most Southern states allowed slavery and most Northern states did not. While there were, in fact, more slaves in the Southern states at the independence declaration, those in the media and some in academia greatly oversimplify a complex situation and stridently try to make it a contest to preserve slavery against those trying to eradicate the practice. In fact, all northeastern states except one originally had slavery, then one by one outlawed the practice; however, these Northern slaves were not emancipated but rather sold to Southerners in order for the recovery of their great value.
The fact is the controversy over Southern symbolism began in the late 1980s, not the late 1880s, for until the late 1980s there simply was no controversy. During the entirety of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, led by the southern organization Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its President Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., not a single complaint was made concerning Southern symbols. On the contrary, King himself said many times he prayed that one day the descendants of slaves and the descendants of slave owners would accept one another and live in mutual respect. It would have been completely contrary to his beliefs to attack and offend descendants of slave owners. His chief lieutenant, former Atlanta Mayor and Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young said then and now that people should not attack those of Confederate heritage because it only causes more division and strife. On July 10, 2015, Young was quoted on Atlanta’s WAGA TV as saying, “The problems we have, don’t have anything to do with a flag. I wouldn’t trade a single job for the flag. The challenge for us is not to wipe out our past but learn to live together in the future.” This sentiment is in harmony with the philosophy of Dr. King during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. So, if there was not a controversy between the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and those who, coincidentally, were celebrating the centennial of the War for Southern Independence at the same time, just how and when did the controversy begin? After all, until the mid 1980s, a local group of the Sons of Confederate Veterans marched in the Veterans Day parade through the middle of Atlanta with reenactors in Confederate uniforms, singing Dixie, all to the thunderous cheering of the largely Black parade viewers. What could have turned that around?
Though the “why” is debatable, what happened next is clear. A northern organization, founded, according to their own web site, by “several white liberals,” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), launched a campaign to energize their membership by campaigning for the eradication of all vestiges of the old South. This national organization, well funded by donations, sent word to all of its local chapters to commence action. Thus began a national effort to divide the populations of the South and cause strife. There is debate concerning just why such a divisive action would be taken. It had long been an effort of the SCLC for people to accept one another. Now, after the passage of numerous civil rights laws, the NAACP was stepping forth to commence actions to cause dissension and hatred. Some speculated it was because of recent financial scandals at the time within the NAACP leadership leading to a considerable drop in enrollment, and this was an effort to energize their membership. Others felt it was an attempt by Marxists to sow dissension amongst Southerners who were beginning to accept one another. It cannot be determined for sure. More research is needed….
The manual goes on to describe the NAACP:
Today we have much strife and controversy, created at a point in time by an organization seeking to oppress and censor another constituency. Periodically, we have politicians selling out the history of their state, county or city to curry support from the attackers of Southern heritage.
The manual falsely describes the history of the controversy over Confederate symbols as a modern development. In fact there were calls dating back to Frederick Douglass for Confederate statues to be barred from parks and courthouses. The claim in the manual that the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 1960s saw “not a single complaint” about Confederate flags and statues will only ring true to the ignorant.
As early as 1870 Frederick Douglass warned that “monuments to the Lost Cause will prove monuments of folly.” He worried that Confederate statues would reawaken the spirit of secession. When the second wave of Confederate monumentation began in the early 1900s, Black newspapers attacked the trend. During the Civil Rights Era the violent attacks on African Americans working for their rights were met with calls for the removal of the statues. One example was the protest following the killing of Sammy Younge, a student member of SNCC who was shot to death when he tried to use the “white” toilet at an Alabama gas station. His classmates from the Tuskegee Institute rallied at the local Confederate monument and called for its removal in December 1966.
The manual also distorts the history of NAACP to depict it as an “outside” organization attacking “Southern Heritage.” The description of the NAACP as a “Northern organization” founded by “white liberals” ignores the representation of the African American community at the group’s founding convention. Seven Black delegates participated in the multiracial gathering, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, whom no one would dare to call pawns of white elites. Over the following decades the NAACP continued its multiracial membership.
I will leave it to you to consider whether African American opposition to Confederate symbols is the work of “Marxists,” as the SCV implies.
I have no doubt that some of the older member of the SCV genuinely recall a time when Blacks in their communities “knew their place” and kept their silence. Considering that twenty-one year old Tuskegee student Sammy Younge was murdered for trying to use a bathroom, imagine the penalty in some towns if a Black person demanded the local Confederate statue be taken down.
Feature photo: Robert E. Lee Statue Richmond, Va. (1900-1915)
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