But why would someone want to honor Confederate soldiers and especially black Confederate soldiers?! Hummm..
Quote:
Two South Carolina lawmakers want to build a monument at the Statehouse to honor black Confederate veterans, but pension records show the state never recognized armed African-American soldiers during the Civil Wa
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That didn’t surprise historian Walter Edgar at all.
“In all my years of research, I can say I have seen no documentation of black South Carolina soldiers fighting for the Confederacy. In fact, when secession came, the state turned down free (blacks) who wanted to volunteer because they didn’t want armed persons of color,” said Edgar, who spent 32 years as director of the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies and is author of “South Carolina: A History.”
Any African-American who served in a Confederate unit in South Carolina was either a slave or an unpaid laborer working against his will, Edgar said.
Time to reup the old favorite, we almost had a black mammie statue on the mall
Quote:
What you probably won't picture is a massive slave woman, hewn from stone, cradling a white child atop a plinth in the nation's capital. Yet in 1923, the U.S. Senate authorized such a statue, "in memory of the faithful slave mammies of the South."
As a Southern Congressman stated in support of the monument: "The traveler, as he passes by, will recall that epoch of southern civilization" when "fidelity and loyalty" prevailed. "No class of any race of people held in bondage could be found anywhere who lived more free from care or distress."