TX Man Behind Lee Statue Restraining Order Signed Complaint Without Reading It

[struggle4progress]

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 AT 1:27 P.M.
BY JIM SCHUTZE

Hiram Patterson, whose name is on the federal complaint that stopped the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Dallas on Wednesday, is a Confederate history buff who has very little idea what his complaint is about.

At the end of the day Wednesday, even after a federal judge had granted him a temporary restraining order stopping the removal, Patterson still hadn’t read the complaint ...

... the complaint bearing Patterson’s name ... was written by Kirk Lyons, a lawyer in North Carolina. The Southern Poverty Law Center maintains a long and lurid sheet on Lyons, whom it identifies as a white supremacist with ties to many hate groups within the white nationalist movement ...

Patterson says he knows nothing about Lyons. "Oh, I have no knowledge of this person," he said. "I have never met him. Never heard of him before today" ...

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-man-blocks-robert-e-lee-statue-removal-9853741

[ProudLib72]

1. I am not surprised by this

This behavior is typical in today's 'Murica. Sign without reading. Accept everything your "friends" tell you. All of a sudden, you find out you are affiliated with Nazis and the KKK, and your excuse is "But I had no idea because I didn't read". Patterson needs to be outed, but not as a Nazi. He needs to be outed as a moran.

[clu]

2. he's a regular guy

who filed a motion on behalf of a federal judge. i'm sure it's full of legalese. TBH - and i'm biased since i'm not black - I would rather see the statue remain at the park. To me, there is a difference between a confederate statue in the real south vs Texas. It's a part of history that can be used effectively to start a discussion about the extent that black society could really change post-civil rights bill.

edit: I am mestizo and I'm in North Texas
edit 2: post-civil rights bill not post-civil war bill

[pnwmom]

3. It's a part of history so it belongs in a History Museum, not in a public park

where it is a slap in the face to African Americans and other supporters of the United States of America -- not the white supremacist Confederacy.

[struggle4progress]

4. (1) He did not file the motion "on behalf of a federal judge" -- he was asked by a neo-confederate

to sign as plaintiff on a complaint actually written by a white supremacist

(2) Texas is certainly part of "the real South" -- slave-owners migrated there to create a new slave state by wrenching the land from the control of Mexico. Jim Crow laws, enacted by the state after the Civil War, include:

(a) a 1943 requirement for segregated seating on buses;
(b) a 1950 requirement for segregated facilities in state parks;
(c) a 1951 prohibition of interracial marriage; and
(d) a 1958 law allowing the governor to close schools integrated by federal action

Here's a flier for Ku Klux Klan Day at the 1923 Texas State Fair in Dallas:

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth31223/m1/1/med_res/

(3) Robert E Lee has only a limited connection to Texas and no connection to Dallas that I can see. The park existed from 1909 as "Oak Lawn Park", before the 1936 dedication of the Lee statue, when the park was renamed "Lee Park." Why then is "Lee Park" more historical than "Oak Lawn Park"?

[clu]

5. all fair points

my apologizes I only watched local news coverage in passing before going to sleep earlier today for my night shift.

re-christening the park in 1936 seems to precede some of these statues erected after the enactment of the civil rights act (IIRC). I still believe that such monuments can serve to promote positive discussion with the rank and file whites who are susceptible to racist fake news. it's no fault of their own - 100iq is the average and we're stuck with it. we may not convince any hardcore RW that we engage in discussion but instead we have a real shot at influencing the opinion of any bystanders to the conversation.

edit: as reprehensible as the laws cited in your reply (my parents remember a local rec center pool being designated as white only), IMO - which is subject to change - slave states with firmly established plantations had more invested in the civil war than texas did. the laws you mention were unfortunately part and parcel of the time. again - all worth discussion.

[struggle4progress]

6. Texas was full of cotton and sugarcane plantations

... Integral to cotton farming was slavery, which Austin encouraged by granting settlers 80 acres of extra land for each slave they brought with them. Texas would become one of the biggest cotton-producing regions in North America, but .. sugar .. transformed the fertile banks of the Lower Brazos. In 1838 three brothers, Matthew, Samuel, and Nathaniel Williams, started one of the first sugar plantations in Texas on property in what is now Sugar Land that had been granted to their family by Austin himself. By the 1850s, sugar was a major industry in Fort Bend, Matagorda, Wharton, and Brazoria counties ... Like cotton plantations, sugarcane plantations relied heavily on slave labor. Harvesting cane was even more arduous than picking cotton. Slaves worked around the clock during harvest season to cut the sugarcane, press out the cane juice, boil it down, and then pack the finished product onto trains to be shipped around the country ...
Blood and Sugar
by MICHAEL HARDY
JANUARY 2017
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/sugar-land-slave-convict-labor-history/

... The greatest concentration of large slave plantations was along the lower Brazos and Colorado rivers in Brazoria, Matagorda, Fort Bend, and Wharton counties. Truly giant slaveholders such as Robert and D. G. Mills, who owned more than 300 slaves in 1860 (the largest holding in Texas), had plantations in this area, and the population resembled that of the Old South's famed Black Belt ...
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/yps01

... Compared to other Deep South states, Texas has comparatively few plantations standing as historical beacons ... creditors dismantled many of the plantations of eastern Texas, and what they left was largely destroyed by a series of hurricanes and fires near the turn of the century. Today many are the sites of sprawling prisons ...
The Cotton Kings of Texas
BY RICHARD PARKER APRIL 24, 2012 12:30 PM
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/the-cotton-kings-of-texas/

MONTE VERDI .. located high on a hill in Rusk County Texas ... is an architectural showplace built in the Greek Revival style and was completed in 1856. The mansion was built by Julien Sidney Devereux and was situated on his 10,721 acre plantation ...
http://www.monteverdiplantation.com/

Liendo Plantation, a beautiful Greek Revival style plantation home, was built in 1853 as the centerpiece to one of Texas’ earliest cotton plantations ...
http://liendoplantation.com/liendo/

Founded in 1842, the Jackson Plantation was actually the second of three plantations developed by Major Abner Jackson. Originally known as "Lake Place," it was a bustling sugar plantation that stretched over 6400 acres and was worked by over 80 slaves ...
http://www.lakejacksonmuseum.org/index.php?page=plantation-site

Our rich history began in Southeast Texas in 1843 as the Oakland Plantation. The plantation's sugar crop had grown large enough to justify the installation of a commercial raw sugar grinding mill, establishing the site of the future Imperial Sugar Company in Sugar Land, Texas ...
Imperial Sugar Legacy
http://www.imperialsugar.com/sugar-101/imperial-sugar-legacy

[clu]

8. nice post

Last edited Fri Sep 8, 2017, 03:51 AM - Edit history (1)

as a native dallasite who's been to the park in the past (~1990?), I don't want to see the statue torn down but I learned a lot from your post and won't dispute any of it. sigh museum I would likely never go but I guess I hope they build it near dallas.

now who would be a good alternative to replace the statue? so far I've heard outkast and missy Elliott i think we're being trolled. i would suggest a black statesman, activist, or scientist but I have not had time to re-read my US history book.

edit: leaving the name as Lee Park - along with a revised statue - might be some option.

edit #2: leaving the park as-is would allow an opportunity to engage with whites that felt disenfranchised by Obama. after reading commentary from some atlantic article posted here recently about the first white president which outlines the percentage of white trump voters earning less than $70k/yr, I don't believe all of these people are racist. some of them are just misinformed and can't be trusted to read honest news sources critically. what's worse is that some may be reacting out in general to the perception of the C 16 bill in Canada regarding alternative pronoun use (some student groups pushed to use zhe/zir in college schoolwork), which they perceive as govt legislation of social behavior, and not simply based on black vs white.

furthermore if you move all of these items to a museum, only one group of people would go to see it - racists who would turn it into a theme park. that's insignificant wrt your post above but I don't see moving the statues to a museum as helping. even though they are clearly offensive statues, what purpose would removing the statues serve? to prevent people from being offended?

speaking as a Mexican i'm sure that blacks don't need a statue to be reminded of racist behavior. what happened to them is cruel but a similar injustice happened to the native americans so (please forgive me) it's nothing personal. if we want an honest effort at defeating racism and prejudice, we will need a dialogue of some type, in some situation, with some observers, having an honest talk about why blacks have higher incarceration rates or lower standardized test scores.

please don't alert or hide this post from the outset - I am on the side of justice but I see the perspective of the other side (despite disagreement) and this is my honest opinion.

[clu]

9. one minor clarification

your third cite states that TX had relatively few plantations standing as historical beacons (just that they're now prisons). there was a reason I considered Texas to be a little different from the other slave states. i think it was a little more institutionalized in the deep south. I did a history book report back in the day about the cause of the civil war with a focus on john Calhoun, and while I haven't re-read it recently I remember seeing texas as being divested from slavery compared to the deep south. it's a minor nitpick but I just thought I would mention it.

I would also like to pledge support for removing confederate statues from government buildings, but honestly as a lifelong dallasite I've only been to lee park once. it's not like i'm a fan. I would like to see the statue remain simply because it looks impressive what can I say.

edit- not to be disrespectful but any blacks that live in that area (it's kind of a nice neighborhood) who might see the park frequently are likely well off enough that they've been educated to a point that institutionalized racism really doesn't affect them that much. not to start a flame war but IMO prejudice in the US has the potential to target social class just as effectively as race.

[struggle4progress]

10. The February 1861 Texas "Declaration of Causes" indicates slavery was a powerful institution there

A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union

... Texas abandoned her separate national existence ... She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery -- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits -- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States ... But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them? ...

In all the non-slave-holding States .. the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party .. based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color -- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery .. , the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States ...

And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president .. two men whose chief claims to such high positions are .. their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States ...

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable ...

... seeing that the federal government is now .. under the control of our enemies .. and realizing that our .. State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons -- We the delegates of .. Texas .. assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all .. connection with the government of the United States of America ...

https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html

[clu]

11. surgical strike

Last edited Sat Sep 9, 2017, 05:30 PM - Edit history (1)

again nice reply. I can't argue against it but i suppose i only hope that texas was a little bit different and for that reason, the connotation of the statue doesn't carry as much weigh as a statue at a Mississippi courthouse. since i'm hopeful, i will only refer to the statement's author as a member of the elite at that time - yet unnamed but i could probably find later. i also hope my own memory is accurate with respect to the extent of slavery in texas seeming to be less than other states. i may have been wearing rose-colored glasses as a texas i may be wrong.

in the meantime there is another thread on the first page where someone mentions censorship as being ineffective, and the best solution being to lift the rock to expose the worms. i suppose that's how i feel about the dallas statue as a non-black POC.

thanks again for all the details replies.

edit: i'm going to check out the book that i used for my "causes of the civil war" report - it was by clement eaton and he seemed like a pretty cool guy. you have provided so much information that i will take a lead to see that my memory is incorrect and i will stand corrected. it is a sad state of affairs.

[blogslut]

7. Not the "real" south?

Texas seceded just like all the other traitor states. What's more one of the main reasons Texas waged war against Mexico was because Mexico had abolished slavery.

Texas erected statues to the traitors of the confederacy in order to further Jim Crow-era apartheid and to protest post civil rights legislation. Those statues aren't a part of history they are beacons of racism.