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Ms. Toad

(33,915 posts)
Fri Jun 26, 2020, 11:23 PM Jun 2020

You want a confederate monument? My body is a confederate monument.

Opinion, but worth sharing more widely than the editorial forum.

NASHVILLE — I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

. . .

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html?fbclid=IwAR1VA0YUxfbE7XHrPRGKm_hobDU0EQjIqCHpVONi6UwkTQ66P5531z7tkWk

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You want a confederate monument? My body is a confederate monument. (Original Post) Ms. Toad Jun 2020 OP
Powerful, Ma'am The Magistrate Jun 2020 #1
K & R nt Progressive Jones Jun 2020 #2
5th Rec & off to the Greatest page Hekate Jun 2020 #3
Wow. Very powerful. n/t. NNadir Jun 2020 #4
This is superb writing. It shows the truth behind all the cover-up and charming stories. CaliforniaPeggy Jun 2020 #5
Wow. rusty quoin Jun 2020 #6
Morning kick for visibility. N/t Ms. Toad Jun 2020 #7
Heavy. Powerful. Thank you, Ms. Caroline Randall Williams aikoaiko Jun 2020 #8
Very powerful!, yes. Ms. Caroline Randall Williams, kudos to you! raging moderate Jun 2020 #9
Kick gollygee Jun 2020 #10

CaliforniaPeggy

(149,296 posts)
5. This is superb writing. It shows the truth behind all the cover-up and charming stories.
Fri Jun 26, 2020, 11:43 PM
Jun 2020

Brava, Ms. Williams!

raging moderate

(4,280 posts)
9. Very powerful!, yes. Ms. Caroline Randall Williams, kudos to you!
Sat Jun 27, 2020, 07:39 PM
Jun 2020

And how DARE anybody suggest that your ancestors, trapped at the very HEART of the Confederacy, should not be respected? They should be honored for their lengthy, courageous, ingenious, and compassionate struggle in the grip of the giant fiendish conspiracy that was the slave system in this country! And not only in the south, either; let us not forget that slavery was eradicated very gradually in the north, and it was pretty horrible there, too.

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