Civil War Rages On for Black America

[niyad]

Civil War Rages On for Black America

By righting a 150-year-old wrong, re-enactors aim to help remedy long untreated ills at the root of today’s #BlackLivesMatter movement.

?itok=m5etIljD
Soldiers with the 25th regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops(USCT) Company during the Civil War.

Hundreds of African-American men marched to the White House this past Sunday. They were not wearing hoodies in honor of Trayvon Martin. They were not making the “hands up don’t shoot” gesture in honor of Michael Brown. They were wearing blue wool trousers and greatcoats, forage caps and cavalry boots—in honor of African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Their aim: to correct a wrong made in 1865, when black soldiers were left out of the Grand Review, the Union Army’s victory parade.

1865? Seriously? With all the critically important racial justice causes of 2015? “Everything about the Civil War is present tense,” author C.R. Gibbs told me. “This is not settled. Ferguson and Baltimore are just match flares on a long historical fuse.”

One need look no further than the U.S. Supreme Court docket for evidence of the Civil War in our contemporary lives. In March, the court heard a case regarding a request by the Sons of Confederate Veterans for a special Texas license plate featuring a Confederate battle flag.
In 2010, the Virginia public school system introduced a 4th grade textbook with bogus claims about thousands of loyal slaves fighting on the side of the Confederacy. The source? The Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Such disinformation is part of a broader neo-Confederate movement to deny that slavery was a major factor in the conflict—and to bury the history of African-Americans’ active role in their own emancipation.

. . . .

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/18/civil-war-rages-black-america

[randys1]

1. For Black America because confederate sympathizers are still at war with them!

And not just in the South, either.

It is everywhere.

Jim Crow is alive and well...

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/16/145175694/legal-scholar-jim-crow-still-exists-in-america

She says that although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.

"Today there are more African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

[KamaAina]

2. A Communist group, the Spartacist League, had the slogan 'Finish the Civil War!"

That was enough to get me to subscribe to their newsletter back in college. FSM knows how many watch lists that got me on!

[niyad]

3. oh, surely not more than one or two!!

[Journeyman]

4. We all continue to fight it, in many different ways, for it was but a continuation . . .

of arguments we've engaged in from the earliest days of the Republic: States rights, the relationship of the individual to the State, questions of property and taxation, the primacy of the Declaration over the flawed Constitution and what it means to be equal -- these and so many more are issues we all continue to grapple with, on a daily basis, in so many myriad facets of our lives.

As to the issues raised in this article, it is long past due that the full story of the Insurrection be popularly told and every participating group be given their fair share of recognition. Those who fought beside the USCT came to recognize both their professionalism and bravery. It is time for the nation to come to terms with this as well.


(By the way, there were slaves who fought on the side of the Confederacy. For most of the war, those so utilized performed ancillary tasks: cooking, cleaning, digging and hauling. It was only near the end of the war that the subject of using slaves as soldiers came up, and it was roundly decried by both military and civilian alike. I suspect many felt they just couldn't trust that the slave fighting beside them wouldn't go over to the other side, or worse.)

[niyad]

5. very well stated.

I can see the reluctance to make the former slaves actual soldiers, with real weapons and everything. hmmm. . .