For 150 years, Black journalists have known what Confederate monuments really stood for

  In October 2023, nearly seven years after the deadly Unite the Right white supremacist rally, the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia was melted down. Since then, two more major Confederate monuments have been removed: the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and the Monument to the Women of the Confederacy in Jacksonville, Florida.

  Defenders of Confederate monuments have argued that the statues should be left standing to educate future generations. One such defender is former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee in 2024.

Communities fight back against hate groups and far-right extremism

  Over the last five decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has researched, documented, and tracked far-right extremist groups that espouse white supremacy, antisemitism, anti-LGBTQ+ hate, and other often-intersecting ideologies.

  During that time, there have been ebbs and flows in the number of groups spouting virulent philosophies and hate. Old trends repeat, new faces appear, but the underlying harm remains the same.

White nationalism is racism

  White nationalism is racism.

  Don’t take it from me. That’s the dictionary definition.

  “The belief, theory, or doctrine that white people are inherently superior to people from all other racial and ethnic groups, and that in order to preserve their white, European, and Christian cultural identities, they need or deserve a segregated geographical area, preferential treatment, and special legal protections,” says dictionary.com.

  And the definition of a white nationalist?

Georgia’s GOP overhauled the state’s election laws in 2021 – and critics argue the target was Black voter turnout, not election fraud

  In the rash of election reform laws enacted after former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, few were tougher than SB 202 – the Election Integrity Act – passed in 2021 in Georgia, a state long known for its history of suppressing the Black vote, especially in response to growth in Black political influence.

  Media attention focused on SB 202’s shortened runoff periods from nine to four weeks, limits on who can turn in absentee ballots, and a partial ban on offering food or water while waiting in line to vote.

New survey of Americans’ views on Confederate monuments shows strong link to political and religious affiliations

  When Lecia Brooks, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s chief of staff and culture, first moved from Los Angeles to Alabama in 2004 and was suddenly confronted with pervasive symbols of the Confederacy, she understood that white people were sending her a stark message.

  “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what are you trying to tell me? What is the message when I would see these images everywhere?’ And the message I received, as a Black person, was, ‘OK, we are still here, and we are watching.’ ”

Confederate Christmas ornaments are smaller than statues – but they send the same racist message

  As Christmas approaches, many families undertake a familiar ritual: an annual sojourn to the attic, basement, or closet to pull out a box of treasured ornaments bought, created, and collected over years, even generations.

  Hanging these ornaments on the tree is an opportunity to reconnect with memories of personal milestones, holiday icons and, in many cases, destinations visited.

  But, I argue, it may be time to take some of these old travel keepsakes off the tree.

Remove white supremacy from state’s Jim Crow-era constitution

  Like their counterparts in other Southern states, Alabama lawmakers adopted a new constitution during the early stages of the Jim Crow era with the explicit intent to deny Black citizens access to the ballot and to establish white supremacy and racial segregation as the law of the land.

  That 1901 constitution – which legalized discrimination against Black citizens for more than six decades – is still in effect today. And even though many of its provisions have been shredded by federal court decisions and civil rights laws, its racist language and other harmful effects remain.

Removing the propaganda

  In the 1860s, Robert Mills Lusher served as a Confederate tax collector and then as Louisiana’s superintendent of education following the Civil War. The Reconstruction-era educator wrote in his journal that the chief goal of education was to “vindicate the honor and supremacy of the Caucasian race.”

  In the last decade of his life, Lusher edited his Louisiana Journal of Education, where he called for “manual training” for Black students and the removal of rights from Black citizens. He filled the pages of his unfinished memoir by reminiscing over a lifetime of advocacy for white supremacy. 

  Simply put, Lusher did not believe in educating Black people. But today, a K-12 public school in New Orleans – one with a majority Black student population – bears his name.

New documentary tells truth about Confederacy, tracks root of ‘Lost Cause’ myth

  Living in New Orleans in 2015, CJ Hunt was frustrated that Confederate symbols still occupied the city’s common spaces – or “neutral grounds” – intended for all citizens, which he called “absurd.” At the time, the nation was reeling from the deadly attack at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine Black people were killed by a young white supremacist who had posted a picture of himself with a Confederate flag.

  But when the state of South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its capitol, Hunt could tell a powerful movement was brewing to remove Confederate symbols nationwide. In New Orleans, the organizers of Take ‘Em Down NOLA, a grassroots organization that has fought for the removal of Confederate monuments, were already marching in the streets, and the mayor took the calls to remove those statues seriously when he demanded the removal of four monuments. The backlash, Hunt said, was intense.

White supremacists who stormed US Capitol are only the most visible product of racism

  Among the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were members of right-wing groups, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters.

  The increasing violence and visibility of these groups have turned them into symbols of white supremacy and racism. They were involved in the deadly Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 and street clashes with racial justice protesters in Portland, Oregon last year. At a Trump rally in Washington, D.C., in December, Black Lives Matter banners were torn from two historically Black churches and destroyed. The Proud Boys’ leader has been criminally charged in those acts.

New FBI report shows increase in violent hate crime

  Although the FBI report released last week shows a minuscule decline in all hate crimes in 2018, it also shows a 12 percent rise in hate crimes involving violence.

  The overall decline was due to a decrease in hate crimes involving property, such as bias-related vandalism.

  This uptick in violent hate crimes comes on the heels of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, when he said the majority of domestic terrorism investigations are connected to white supremacy.

Hank Sanders: Sketches #1687 - Forgiveness is powerful, but there is a strange sense of forgiveness in these United States of America

  Forgive. Forgiving. Forgiveness. Sometimes forgiveness is strange. In whatever form, forgiveness is powerful. I believe strongly in forgiveness. I have spoken about forgiveness on many occasions. I have written about forgiveness on various occasions. I have shared my thoughts on forgiveness right here in Sketches. But there is a strange form of forgiveness in these United States of America.

  First, allow me to say several things about forgiveness. Forgiveness is really about the person doing the forgiving. It is not about the person who did wrong. The old African proverb frames the issue superbly: Not forgiving is like drinking poison and waiting on the person we refuse to forgive to die. Yes, yes, yes!

A Confederate statue graveyard could help bury the Old South

  An estimated 114 Confederate symbols have been removed from public view since 2015. In many cases, these cast-iron Robert E. Lees and Jefferson Davises were sent to storage.

  If the aim of statue removal is to build a more racially just South, then, as many analysts have pointed out, putting these monuments in storage is a lost opportunity. Simply unseating Confederate statues from highly visible public spaces is just the first step in a much longer process of understanding, grieving, and mending the wounds of America’s violent past. Merely hiding away the monuments does not necessarily change the structural racism that birthed them.

Executed for committing war crimes — then honored with a Confederate monument

  We’ve seen the monuments to Jefferson Davis. We’ve seen the ones to Robert E. Lee. But why is there a monument to a Confederate captain executed for war crimes?

  Captain Henry Wirz took command of a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Georgia, in 1864. The camp was originally intended to be a temporary holding pen for prisoners who would be exchanged with the Union. It was nothing more than an open-air stockade.

  But within six months of its establishment, Camp Sumter was holding 32,000 Union soldiers. Technically, it was the fifth largest city in the Confederacy.

"The Civil War is over, the Confederacy lost and we are better for it."

  In five Southern states, we’re in the middle of Confederate History Month, a dubious designation that’s at odds with the reckoning the region has engaged in since the Charleston church massacre by white supremacist Dylann Roof in 2015.

  Roof’s act of terror began to shake the South out of its 150-year reverence for the Confederacy, a glorification cemented, in part, by the widespread installation of monuments that peaked during the period after Jim Crow was established, and again during the civil rights movement. As the nation mourned the victims in Charleston, grassroots organizers like Take ‘Em Down NOLA modeled the kind of work necessary to persuade local governments to remove these monuments to slavery, white supremacy, and oppression from public places.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1576: What President Trump did is so dangerous

  What President Trump did is so dangerous. It’s dangerous for me. It’s dangerous for you. More importantly, it’s dangerous for this country. Let me tell you why. But first let me remind you of what President Trump did.

  On August 11, hundreds of Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalist, etc., marched near the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. They held high flaming torches as they chanted Nazi slogans used by German Nazis during the 1930s and 40s. “Blood and Soil!” they yelled. “Jews will not replace us!” they yelled. They also shouted slogans such as “Heil Trump!” and “Make America Great Again.”

Confederate monuments expert explains how we memorialized white supremacy

  In the wake of the neo-Nazi attacks in Charlottesville, officials in several Southern states have renewed calls to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces.

  This week, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) called for the removal of all Confederate monuments in North Carolina. Mayor Jim Gray (D) of Lexington, Kentucky, announced the removal of two Confederate statues from a historic courthouse in the city. And officials in Florida and Maryland made similar announcements.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1496: Black history is critical for white Americans

  Black history is critical for White Americans. Wait! Wait! Wait! Don’t dismiss this idea out of hand. I know Black history is supposed to be for African Americans. Black history, however, is critical for White Americans because it is the flip side of White history (American history).

  We recognize that Black history started way before Columbus stumbled upon this place now called the Americas. Black history was in Egypt, Timbuktu, etc. But I want to start with slavery. I know that we don’t talk about slavery, but we must understand it. Black history is critical for White Americans because it’s the flip side of White history.