The South, Race, and Rock 'n' Roll

I have been listening to my iPod a lot lately. For some strange reason music helps me write and since I am in the midst of writing my graduate thesis my iPod has not left my side. Recently I have realized something that I haven't noticed in the past. During the late 1960s and early 1970s there were numerous songs recorded that dealt with the South and issues of race.

First, there is "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band. This song is about a white soldier, Virgil Caine, who served in the Confederate Army. In the song Caine claimed "Like my father before me, I will work the land, Like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand. He was just eighteen, proud and brave, But a Yankee laid him in his grave..." This song embraces the myth of the Lost Cause and makes no mention of slavery or slaves.

Then there is The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," which is about interracial sexual relations in the Slave South. Here is the song's opening verse: "Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields / Sold in a market down in new Orleans / Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright/ Hear him whip the women, just around midnight / Brown sugar how come you taste so good?/ Ah, brown sugar just like a young girl should." I don't know why, but this song makes me think of Thomas Jefferson.

There is also the well known feud between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Young's "Southern Man" was a scathing attack on the South's treatment of African Americans. This attack angered the members of Skynyrd, who responded with "Sweet Home Alabama."

Dispelling the Dispellers of Lincoln Myths

Since historians, as well as other writers, started writing about Abraham Lincoln, there have been those who have worked hard to give us a well-rounded image of the 16th president. Lincoln is the most written about figure in American history and hundreds of books about him are published each year. Our historical knowledge of Lincoln is pretty great and there are numerous scholarly and popular works examining various aspects of his life, political career, presidency, and political and racial views.

Over the past few years various writers, most of them hold no professional historical credentials, have set out to take on the Lincoln myths, which they believe are being passed off as historical fact. These 'myths' have already been researched and written about in great detail by real historians and these writers are giving the American reading public pseudohistorical trash. The historical equivalent of a John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Tom Clancy or any other modern day dime novelists who are trying to pass as serious writers.

These dispellers of Lincoln myths seem to focus on a few key aspects of Lincoln's life or political career. And they get everything horribly wrong.

Here are some of the key issues:

1. Lincoln was a racist. The most famous, or infamous, writer to argue this is Lerone Bennett. In 1968, Bennett published an article in Jet that argued that Lincoln was a white supremacist. A few years ago he published a 600 plus page screed, entitled Forced into Glory, detailing Lincoln's racism. This point about Lincoln being a racist is partially true. Let me emphasize the word partially. Did Lincoln hold some believes that were racist? Of course he did! After all, he was the product of 19th Century America, which was a fairly racist society. The 'dispellers' usually point to a few phrases from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 or certain lines from letters to prove their point. However, focusing on a few phrases in the millions of words that Lincoln uttered or wrote throughout his political career proves nothing beyond the fact that 'dispellers' have way too much time on their hands. Lincoln did hold some racist views, but overall Lincoln was more progressive in his racial views than most of his contemporaries. He was fervently anti-slavery, which is evidenced in the fact that he joined the an anti-slavery party, the Republican Party, and then became their presidential candidate running on an antislavery platform.

2. Lincoln did not want to end slavery, but wanted only to preserve the Union. This is also partially true. In the first year or so of the Civil War, Lincoln's paramount goal was to preserve the Union. Yes he was anti-slavery, but how could he have abolished slavery without restoring the Union first? To prove that he was solely concerned with preserving the Union, 'dispellers' usually point to the famous letter Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley in response to Greeley's call for immediate emancipation. The August 1862 letter stated: "I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views." What these people fail to realize, or just plain ignore, is that this letter was written after Lincoln decided to follow a course of emancipation. Lincoln made this decision in mid-summer 1862, at least a month before the letter to Greeley was written, but was persuaded to wait until after a smashing Union victory on the field of battle to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

3. Lincoln's proclamation did not free any slaves. Technically, this is true. The Emancipation Proclamation only pertained to the areas of the Confederacy that were not under union control and still in a state of rebellion. Lincoln did not have the power to free the slaves, but he had the authority to do so. He used his authority to make Emancipation a war goal and a tool to wage his war. The Emancipation Proclamation essentially made the Union Army a tool of emancipation. Where ever the army went, that area's slaves would be freed. 'Dispellers' also make the point that Lincoln's proclamation did not touch slavery in the slave states, or border states, that remained in the Union. In regards to the border states, Lincoln had to constantly walk a tight rope. In order to win the war Lincoln had to keep these states in the Union and interfering with slavery within these states may have pushed them to join the Confederacy. Well, this is what Lincoln feared. This is not to say that Lincoln did not try to abolish slavery within the border states. He came up with a plan of gradual emancipation that he wanted to implement in those states, which he tested in Delaware, but the plan was not well received.

4. Lincoln was gay. This is a fairly new claim. It has been tossed about by that intellectual fraud Gore Vidal and most recently by the late C.A. Tripp. They call attention to the fact that Lincoln shared beds with other men. They also fail to place this fact, and others, within the context of the time period. In the west, Illinois was considered the west at the time, people did have many possessions. Not everyone owned a bed. So, it was fairly common for men to sleep in the same bed with other men. If this makes Lincoln gay than almost the entire American male population at the time was also gay. They also point to certain phrases in letters that Lincoln wrote. They also examine some of the relationships Lincoln had with other men and his supposed loveless marriage to Mary Todd. There is just no evidence to support these claims and real historians dismiss them all.

I feel this video clip is a good example of some of the arguments that 'dispellers' like to make.

Lee's Slave Hunters.

I have just come across a Ted Alexander's 2001 North and South article entitled "A Regular Slave Hunt." This article highlights a sad and little known aspect of Lee's Gettysburg campaign. Alexander wrote that in June and July 1863 Confederate forces rounded up hundreds of free blacks and escaped slaves throughout southern Pennsylvania.

Alexander has provided evidence, eyewitness testimony, to show that Confederate forces participated and what amounted to slave hunting. Some of the most disturbing evidence came from Rachel Cormany, who left a detailed account of some of the abductions. Cormany wrote: "[Confederates] were hunting up the contrabands [escaped slaves] and driving them off by droves. O! how it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly and look at such brutal deeds--I saw no men among the contrbands--all women and children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along--I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle...One woman was pleading wonderfully with her driver for her children--but all the sympathy she received from him was a rough "March along"--at which she quickened her pace again." Alexander was not precise about how many blacks were captured by Confederates; an estimate for Chambersburg places its count at 250 and an estimate for York states that a little more than 100 were abducted in this town.

Alexander went on the state that most of the Confederates who participated in these kidnappings were guerrilla forces who "operated on the fringes of Lee's army." He did provide evidence that General James Longstreet knew about these abductions and that the famed General George Pickett's division participated in the kidnappings. Alexander, however, left some rather important questions unanswered. Were the orders to abduct free blacks and escaped slaves general orders or were they issued independently of the high command? To what extent did Lee's regular forces participate in the kidnappings? We know that Pickett's division participated, but did others do the same? This is a disturbing aspect of the Gettysburg campaign that deserves to be fully examined, but, unfortunately, Alexander's article leaves us with more questions than answers.

Thomas Sowell on Obama and Race

Thomas Sowell has entered the endless stream of commentary being rendered on the Wright controversy. Sowell, who has written extensively on race relations, has offered an interesting piece entitled "Audacity Without Hope." Sowell has written:

"It is painful to watch defenders of Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious."

"Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time — and a bunch of mean-spirited people are trying to make something out of it."

"It makes a good story, but it won’t stand up under scrutiny."

"Barack Obama’s own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far-left fringe. In college, “I chose my friends carefully,” he said in his first book, Dreams From My Father."

"These friends included “Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets” — in Obama’s own words — as well as the “more politically active black students.” He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman Underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator."

"Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way-out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college — members of the anti-American, counter-cultural Left."

"In Shelby Steele’s brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama — A Bound Man — it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were — and, like many converts, he went overboard."

"The irony is that Obama’s sudden rise politically to the level of being the leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination has required him to project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together."

"One sign of Obama’s verbal virtuosity was his equating a passing comment by his grandmother — “a typical white person,” he says — with an organized campaign of public vilification of America in general and white America in particular, by Jeremiah Wright."

"Among the many desperate gambits by defenders of Senator Obama and Jeremiah Wright is to say that Wright’s words have a “resonance” in the black community."

"There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan’s words had a resonance among whites, not only in the South but in other states. Some people joined the KKK in order to advance their political careers. Did that make it OK? Is it all just a matter of whose ox is gored?"

"While many whites may be annoyed by Jeremiah Wright’s words, a year from now most of them will probably have forgotten about him. But many blacks who absorb his toxic message can still be paying for it, big-time, for decades to come."

"Why should young blacks be expected to work to meet educational standards, or even behavioral standards, if they believe the message that all their problems are caused by whites, that the deck is stacked against them? That is ultimately a message of hopelessness, however much audacity it may have. "

And more on Obama and Race

Ever since Obama delivered his speech on race I have become increasing interested in Obama and the race question. On the website The Cutting Edge, Edwin Black has recently written:

" It is pivotal to understand that Obama’s potentially insurmountable problem is not about his mere membership in Pastor Wright’s Trinity Church, an affiliate of the nationally diverse United Church of Christ. Obama’s problem is the deep-vein mentoring with Pastor Wright himself. Obama was not just sitting in the pews for twenty years. The two men were and are tight--very tight."

"It was Wright’s charismatic "in your face" African-American activism that first brought unaffiliated, young twenty-something Chicago neighborhood organizer Obama into the Trinity Church as a practicing Christian in the eighties. Obama became a regular attendee and took Wright’s inspiration with him when away. While at Harvard studying law, Obama morally tutored himself with tapes of Wright’s fiery lectures."

"Wright was a moving force in Obama’s family as well. Pastor Wright married Obama to his wife, Michelle, and baptized their two children. The Pastor’s provocative sermon, "The Audacity of Hope," gave Obama the title for his bestselling book of the same name. Obama even huddled with his Pastor for spiritual guidance just before announcing his presidential bid. Wright was given a prominent advisory role in the campaign. Wright is more than an arms-length acquaintance. The Pastor is precisely the mentor and close personal advisor Obama has long declared him to be."

" Exactly what is the objectionable conduct of Wright? To begin, Wright is a close confidant and supporter of Minister Louis Farrakhan. The leader of the Nation of Islam has called Jews "bloodsuckers" who practice a "gutter religion," and has ascended to the apex of virulent anti-Semitism in the Black community and indeed worldwide. Wright was among those deeply affected in the early eighties by Farrakhan’s Southside Chicago activism. In 1984, Wright was one of the inner circle that traveled with Farrakhan to visit Libyan strongman Col. Muammar Khadafy. The ostentatious Farrakhan junket came at a time when Khadafy had been identified as the world’s chief financier of international terrorism, including the Black September group behind the Munich Olympics massacre. By the time Wright and Farrakhan visited, Libyan oil imports had been banned, and America was trying to topple what it called a "rogue regime." In the several years after that, Farrakhan was pro-active for Khadafy even as Libya was internationally isolated for suspected involvement in numerous terror plots including the explosion of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland."

"The Farrakhan-Wright connection is no distant matter of the turbulent eighties. Farrakhan, Wright and Wright’s Church have remained in close esteem until this very day. As recently as December 2007, the Church’s publication, Trumpet Newsmagazine, bestowed upon Farrakhan its highest honor, the "Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter" Award for Lifetime Achievement. An interview with Farrakhan in the magazine concludes with the words, "he truly epitomizes greatness." Wright himself described Farrakhan in that article as "a 20th and 21st Century giant." Pastor Wright is the CEO of the church publication, which is said to reach 200,000 readers across the nation. Members of Wright’s family act as publisher and editor. As recently as this Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008, the church listed Farrakhan on its Prayer list in the weekend hand-out at church services."

"In the Farrakhan mold, Wright is a firebrand anti-American, anti-White, anti-Zionist preacher. His pulpit statements, by now widely broadcast on cable TV and across the Internet, have histrionically asked followers to chant not "God Bless America" but "God Damn America," to denounce Israel and Zionism for "state terrorism," to hold Washington responsible for creating the HIV AIDS virus as a weapon against Blacks, and to recognize that America is controlled by "rich white people." Immediately after the 9-11 attacks against the World Trade Center, Wright waved his arms and almost danced, bellowing that America had brought the crime upon itself. Nor is he shy about publicly using the words "nigger" and "shit" even from the pulpit."

"Despite his extremism, Wright is no fringe member of the African-American mainstream. He is a giant in the Black community. Wright built the Trinity Church from an 87-member congregation in 1972 with a $30,000 annual budget to a Black megachurch said to boast as many as 10,000 members--the largest in the United Church of Christ--operating on a more than $9 million annual budget with its own $2 million credit union, donating its own $100,000 check to Hurricane Katrina relief, and selling advertising in its house organ for $5,000 per page. In 1993, Ebony Magazine listed Wright among its top 15 pastors. In March 2007, Wright was honored by a resolution of the Illinois House of Representatives."

And according to Black, how did Obama defend himself and Wright?:

"In a political defense that now ranks with Bill Clinton’s assertion that he "never inhaled" and "never had sex with that woman," Barack claims he was never in the pews when Wright expressed his hateful sermons. Not a few in the media are now scouring Pastor’s Wright’s video tapes to spot Obama’s face in the rollicking crowds, or those much-loved audio tapes Obama so passionately studied to detect bigoted language."

"Obama’s defense that he did not know of Pastor’s Wright bigotry is opposed by the record itself. More than a year ago, Obama suddenly uninvited Pastor Wright to offer the invocation at a major campaign event. Wright told The New York Times in March 2007, "Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack... One of his members had talked him into uninviting me." Wright pointedly chose the Yiddish term Shabbos to refer to the Friday night time of the call."

"Many critics have long self-censored on Obama’s hate links, even among the Jewish community where sensitivity to any connection Farrakhan runs high. For example, the Anti-Defamation League recently issued a press release that it was satisfied that Obama had disavowed Wright’s race hatred and anti-Zionist fervor. But now, in a weekend interview, ADL national director Abraham Foxman says his view is different. "More is now known," says Foxman. "It is not a casual, one-way way relationship with Pastor Wright." Foxman has joined the growing chorus of disbelief about Obama’s ignorance. "It is very difficult to believe that throughout these years, Obama has been unaware of the conspiracy, bigotry, and anti-Zionist views.""

"While most in America are worried about playing a race card, Barack Obama has shown he is still carrying around a full deck."

More fom Hanson on the Obama Speech.

Victor Hanson's commentary on Obama's speech on race in America was continued today with the latest installment of his analysis. Hanson wrote:

"The latest polls reflecting Obama’s near-collapse should serve as a morality tale of John Edwards’s two Americas — the political obtuseness of the intellectual elite juxtaposed to the common sense of the working classes."

"For some bizarre reason, Obama aimed his speech at winning praise from National Public Radio, the New York Times, and Harvard, and solidifying an already 90-percent solid African-American base — while apparently insulting the intelligence of everyone else."

"Indeed, the more op-eds and pundits praised the courage of Barack Obama, the more the polls showed that there was a growing distrust that the eloquent and inspirational candidate has used his great gifts, in the end, to excuse the inexcusable."

"The speech and Obama’s subsequent interviews neither explained his disastrous association with Wright, nor dared open up a true discussion of race — which by needs would have to include, in addition to white racism, taboo subjects ranging from disproportionate illegitimacy and drug usage to higher-than-average criminality to disturbing values espoused in rap music and unaddressed anti-Semitism. We learn now that Obama is the last person who wants to end the establishment notion that a few elite African Americans negotiate with liberal white America over the terms of grievance and entitlement — without which all of us really would be transracial persons, in which happiness and gloom hinge, and are seen to do so, on one’s own individual success or failure."

"Instead there were the tired platitudes, evasions, and politicking. The intelligentsia is well aware of how postmodern cultural equivalence, black liberation theory, and moral relativism seeped into Obama’s speech, and thus was not offended by an “everybody does it” and “who’s to judge?/eye of the beholder” defense."

"What is happening, ever so slowly, is that the public is beginning to realize that it knows even less after the speech than it did before about what exactly Obama knew (and when) about Wright’s racism and hatred."

Hanson wrote that Obama must now deal with certain facts:

"(1) Obama is crashing in all the polls, especially against McCain, against whom he doesn’t stack up well, given McCain’s heroic narrative, the upswing in Iraq, and the past distance between McCain and the Bush administration;"

"(2) Hillary may not just win, but win big in Pennsylvania (and maybe the other states as well), buttressing her suddenly not-so-tired argument about her success in the mega-, in-play purple states. Michigan and Florida that once would have been lost by Hillary in a fair election, now would be fairly won — and Clinton is as willing to replay both as Obama suddenly is not; and"

"(3) The sure thing of Democrats winning big in the House and Senate is now in danger of a scenario in which a would-be Senator or Representative explains all autumn long that the party masthead really does not like Rev. Wright, whose massive corpus of buffoonery no doubt is still to be mined. (The problem was never “snippets,” but entire speeches devoted to hatred and anger, often carefully outlined in a point-by-point format)."

So, according to Hanson, how can Obama fix his current problem:

"I would go buy about 10,000 American flags to blanket every Obama appearance, have a 4x4 lapel-button flag custom-made for the senator, have Michelle finish every appearance by leading a chorus of “God Bless America,” draft every middle-of-the-road crusty drawling Democratic veteran (the knightly Harris Wofford doesn’t cut it) to criss-cross the country — and try to Trotskyize Rev. Wright from the campaign."

"Oh, and no need for any more Obama half-conversations about race and “typical white person” clarifications. All that does far more damage to the country than even to Obama himself."

Victor Davis Hanson on "The Tragedy of Obama's Speech"

More from VDH on Obama's speech on race in America:

"The tragedy of Obama's speech and the mindless endorsement of it was the rejection of any constant moral standard — an absolute sense of wrong and right that transcends situational ethics, context, and individual particulars. And once one jettisons such absolutes, they won't be there when one wishes to seek refuge in them in a future hour of need."

"When he failed to 'disown' Rev. Wright, and then brought in parallels of things purportedly as bad, or offered excuses that Wright had done good things to balance the bad, or that there were certain mitigating circumstances that explain his hatred, then the universal wrong of Wright's racism and lying disappears and with it any ethical standard by which we have moral authority to condemn such vitriol."

"That this self-serving relativism was used to address a self-induced political disaster is especially unfortunate for a self-appointed moralist. I think the liberal blanket endorsement of the Obama speech will later come back to haunt its enthusiasts, once they see the creepy freak show that emerges from the woodwork, immune in public discourse now from absolute standards of rebuke."

"In that regard, the grandmother metaphor, the radio talk show simile, the evocation of Ferraro, the context of the black church, etc. were meaningless without any unequivocal rejection of Rev. Wright and what he stands for."

"This was a transformational speech — but in ways its endorsers can hardly believe but will surely regret. The voters of Pennsylvania will be the first indication of Obama's folly, followed by the moral paralysis that meets the next outbreak of racism and hatred in the public forum."

Obama and the Race Question.

On Tuesday morning Barack Obama delievered a speech with the intent to defuse some of the anger swirling around the incendiary remarks made by his paster, Jeremiah Wright. The speech was a very good speech, but he dodged the many concerns held by a significant portion of the electorate. Historian Victor Davis Hanson has pointed, in his article "An Elegant Farce," that "Obama’s Tuesday sermon was a well-crafted, well-delivered, postmodern review of race that had little to do with the poor judgment revealed in Obama’s relationship with the hateful Rev. Wright, much less the damage that he does both to African Americans and to the country in general." "The Obama apologia," argued Hanson, "was a 'conversation' about moral equivalence. So the Wright hatred must be contextualized and understood in several ways that only the unusually gifted Obama can instruct us about:"

"1) The good that Rev. Wright and Trinity Church did far outweighs his controversial comments, which were taken out of context as 'snippets' and aired in the 'endless loop' on conservative outlets."

"2) We are all at times racists and the uniquely qualified Obama is our valuable mirror of that ugliness: Wright may say things like 'God damn America' or 'Dirty Word' Israel or 'Clarence Colon,' but then it must be balanced by other truths like Obama’s own grandmother who also expresses fear of black males (his grandmother’s private angst is thus of the same magnitude as Wright’s outbursts broadcast to tens of thousands)."

"3) We don’t understand Wright’s history and personal narrative. But as someone who grew up in the hate-filled and racist 1960s, it was understandable that he was bound to mature into his present angry anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-white mentality. (As if all blacks did?)"

"4) Indeed, Wright does nothing that much different from radio-talk show hosts and those of the Reagan Coalition who thrive on racial resentments. But whereas Wright has cause as a victim, his counterparts are opportunists who play on white fears."

"5) And if we wish to continue to express worries about Obama’s past relationships with Wright — never delineated, never explained in detail — in trite and mean-spirited ways such as replaying the Wright tapes, then we have lost a rare opportunity to follow Obama into a post-racial America."

"6) We, both black and white alike, are victims, victims of an insensitive system, a shapeless, anonymous 'it' that brings out the worst in all of us — but it will at last end with an Obama candidacy."

Hanson concluded: "Obama is right about one thing: We are losing yet another opportunity to talk honestly about race, to hold all Americans to the same standards of public ethics and morality, and to emphasize that no one gets a pass peddling vulgar racism, or enabling it by failing to disassociate himself from its source — not Rev. Wright, not even the eloquent, but now vapid, Barack Obama."

The president that slavery elected...maybe...maybe not.

Why was Thomas Jeffereson elected president in 1800? A better question is; who elected Jefferson president? I'm conflicted over the answer to this seemingly simple question. The argument can be and has been made, most notably by Garry Wills, that slavery was the reason Jefferson was able to capture the presidency over John Adams. In his book, Nergro President, Wills argued that Jefferson and the South were able to come to power due to the 3/5 clause (article 1, section 2, paragraph 3) of the Constitution. (a short review of Wills's book can be found here.) The "slave power," as Wills labels it, handed Jefferson a majority of votes in the Electoral College. This is true, but, as much as I don't like Jefferson, I must admit slavery was not solely responsible for his election to the presidency. Jefferson, according to John H. Aldrich, was also the choice of the people (or the choice of the white males population who were the only people that could vote). Aldrich, using voting records, was able to show that Jefferson also captured the popular vote; Jefferson had 150,778 votes to Adams's 138,685. A map of the election results can be seen here. It seems as if the will of the people and the "slave power" combined to make Jefferson president over Adams....Though one could also argue that Congress elected Jefferson, but I won't delve into that.