Confederacy all about preserving slavery

[struggle4progress]

Rachel James-Terry
4:12 p.m. CST February 28, 2016

I had never felt angrier or blatantly disrespected in the state of Mississippi than I did Friday night. My hands were shaking and tears were running down my face. I woke my husband and told him we had to leave here, and I love Mississippi ... I had just learned that April was declared Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi ...

Why does Confederate history need a month of commemorating? What are we commemorating? How this state wanted to continue the rape, abuse, kidnapping, murder and torture of black people in Mississippi and surrounding areas? Who wants to commemorate that? ...

We are viciously trying to hold on to a sad, violent and losing past ...

... Go ahead and celebrate the Confederate heritage, and when you're done, you'll still be in a world that is moving forward without you.

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/02/28/james-terry-confederacy-all-preserving-slavery/81075064/

[raging moderate]

1. Let us commemorate instead the brave Black Union soldiers.

Maybe some people could hold alternate celebrations on this nasty day. The Black Union soldiers deserve eternal glory for turning back from their own personal hard-won freedom to undergo hardship, humiliation, and danger to win the freedom of others. In so doing, they opened the eyes of many Northern whites who hadn't had the opportunity to meet Black people, in an illuminating realization that what they had been told about Black people were filthy lies, that Black people were indeed fully human beings who deserved freedom, and that it was a moral obligation to help them win it. The keenness and courage of Black Union soldiers are a triumph of the human spirit that should never be forgotten.