Baltimore: ALL Confederate Statues Have Now Been Removed

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What if removing statues is just the start?

I never said that I wanted the statue the be taken down. I just pointed out that removing the statue would not be "erasing history". This isn't really that big a deal.

Slipper slope is a logical fallacy anyway.

PASADENA, Md. —

A pickup truck flying a Confederate flag, along with a noose and Confederate flag dice inside the truck, prompted disciplinary action for one student Wednesday at Chesapeake High School.

A letter sent to parents by the school's principal, Stephen Gorski, said a staff member saw the pickup truck driving through the parking lot with the flag flying from the back. An administrator and the school's resource officer found the truck parked in the parking lot with the flag in the bed of the truck, along with a noose and Confederate flag dice hanging from the rearview mirror, the letter said.

"The noose is a clear bias-motivated behavior, a clear symbol of hate, not something we accept or tolerate in any of our schools," said Bob Mosier, spokesman for Anne Arundel County Public Schools. "The fact that it comes on the day we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, one of the most iconic civil rights leaders, it's just sickening."

Gorski said the student was identified by the parking permit number and disciplinary action was taken, in accordance with the school's Code of Student Conduct.

Gorski stated, in part, "Especially given the number of incidents at our school recently, as well as those around the nation, it should go without saying that we do not treat these incidents lightly. Actions that portray bias, discrimination or hate have absolutely no place in our community and certainly have no place in our school, or any school."

The incident is the latest in a string of racially motivated incidents.

...

The plethora of things that have been coined a logical fallacy makes that system essentially worthless. I'm sure there's one for what I just said as well.

Wait ... so logic is wrong now?

The noose is a symbol of lynching. That's the only way I would interpret it.

If there's another way to interpret it, I'd be proud to "hear" it.

It's a no-brainer

... much like the neo-Confederates.

Officials in Boston voted on Thursday to rename Yawkey Way, a road adjacent to Fenway Park that was named for a former Red Sox team owner who resisted efforts to integrate baseball in the 1950s.

The street will revert to being called Jersey Street, its original name before it was changed in 1977 to honor the owner, Tom Yawkey, who had died the year before.

The Red Sox, under Yawkey, were the last team in baseball to sign a black player, finally calling him up in 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The street name came under renewed scrutiny in August, as dozens of Confederate monuments were being removed across the United States. The current team owner, John Henry, led the push to rename the street, telling The Boston Herald he was “haunted” by the team’s racist history.

The Red Sox formally asked the city to rename the street in February, saying that “restoring the Jersey Street name is intended to reinforce that Fenway Park is inclusive and welcoming to all.”

The narrow, two-block street lined with gift shops and eateries pulsates on game days, and is the meeting point for ballpark tours on days off.

The decision promises to inflame debates about the legacy of Yawkey, who is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Yawkey Foundations, a major charity in Boston, said on Thursday that the campaign to remove the name “has been based on a false narrative about his life and his historic 43-year ownership of the Red Sox.”

In a statement, the Red Sox said the vote was “an important step in our ongoing effort to make Fenway Park a place where everyone feels welcome.”

“We recognize we have a long way to go, but remain committed to building a spirit of diversity, inclusivity, and openness within our front office and our ballpark,” the team said.

No matter what people thought about the name change, virtually no one on Yawkey Way on Thursday seemed to like the name Jersey Street or understand what it represented.

Boston’s Faneuil Hall has served as a home for civic rhetoric from the time colonists congregated to talk about freedom from the British. But the site known as the Cradle of Liberty is named after wealthy 18th-century slaveowner Peter Faneuil, much to the chagrin of activists who are planning a boycott.

Kevin Peterson is leading the boycott of the city-owned building this week, saying the hall was constructed from money derived from the sale of slaves, and that the city’s African Americans don’t feel a connection to the site.

Peterson said letters to Democratic Mayor Martin Walsh’s office and the Boston city council calling for a public hearing have gone unanswered.

As an alternative, Peterson and other members of the New Democracy Coalition are calling for the name to be changed to commemorate Crispus Attucks, a black man who was killed during the 1770 Boston Massacre, generally considered the first casualty of the American Revolution.

The mayor’s office declined to comment and instead referred The Associated Press to a previous statement saying, “We can’t erase history, but we can learn from it.”

Merchant Peter Faneuil offered to build a public market house in 1740 as a gift to the city on the site where slaves had previously been auctioned. Completed two years later, the hall served as a meeting spot for colonists planning to overthrow King George III’s rule over the 13 colonies.

Abolitionists gave speeches opposing slavery from its pulpit. Women hosted a conference in 1915 to amend the US constitution in favor of universal suffrage. More recently, Barack Obama gave a speech in defense of the Affordable Care Act there. These days, the hall also welcomes immigrants to its space for naturalization ceremonies.

Peterson said the building issue was first brought to the city’s attention in early 2017. He alleges that tour guides barely mention the history of African Americans and slaves at the site.


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In an open letter to Walsh, sent last week, Peterson said protesters “feel compelled to engage in non-violent civil disobedience for the cause of the right to be heard, the right to be respected as black citizens”.

He calls Walsh’s support for a memorial for victims of the slave trade at the site “a distraction”. The city is currently looking at a proposal for a memorial designed by MassArt professor Steven Locke.

Peterson said the boycott would happen within the week and would be “four-pronged.” He says a business boycott in Quincy Market Place and the hall would be first, along with a picket, sit-in with “potential civil disobedience” at the hall, and a sit-in that would call attention to the private businesses with business ties to the city of Boston that have voiced opinion on the name change.

Across the US, parks, buildings and even a residential college at Yale University have been renamed to erase ties to slavery. Harvard Law School abandoned its shield in 2016 because it was based on the 18th century family crest of a benefactor who owned slaves.

A Texas school district has removed a quote that was painted above lockers at a middle and elementary school after the quote sparked criticism online this week.

"The more you act like a lady, the more he'll act like a gentleman," the quote read, according to a tweet posted by Lisa Beckman on Friday.

Beckman said the quote was found at Gregory-Lincoln Middle School in Houston Independent School District. Students in kindergarten through 8th grade attend the school, according to its website.

The quote is commonly attributed to Sydney Biddle Barrows, a controversial businesswoman known as the “Mayflower Madam." Barrows was convicted of promoting prostitution in 1985 after being accused of running an escort service, according to University of Virginia archives.

Hours after Beckman's tweet began gaining attention, the school removed the quote, according to a statement obtained by KHOU News.

Please be advised that the quote on the wall of Gregory Lincoln PK-5 Education Center has been removed. Overnight, the wall decal letters were taken down, the wall was floated out, and new slab of drywall was installed and painted.

Beckman told the station that she received the photo from a friend. Her tweet criticizes the quote, accusing it of "perpetuating horrible gender stereotypes, shaming women, and relinquishing boys of all responsibility. It's sexist, mysogonistic (sic), and discriminatory!"

Beckman's tweet was retweeted and liked thousands of times. She tweeted her thanks to the school district Saturday morning: "I see this as proof that our elected officials listen when we speak up."

A plaque at the Texas State Capitol in Austin that has stirred ire for more than half a century will finally be removed. Texas lawmakers, fresh in their newest legislative session this week, agreed Friday the Confederacy plaque that claims the U.S. Civil War wasn’t about slavery will be removed.

The plaque removal was a bipartisan committee decision in Texas, which is considered to be one of the more conservative state governments in the country. Not only did new state Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick back the removal, Gov. Greg Abbott called for it in a letter to Rod Welsh, executive director of the State Preservation.

The plaque in question contains the phrase that the Civil War was “not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.”

The plaque was initially erected in 1959, and state rep. Eric Johnson has led a cause to eradicate the “Children of the Confederacy Creed” that’s been there now for more than six decades.

Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, has said the plaque “is not historically accurate in the slightest, to which any legitimate, peer-reviewed Civil War historian will attest.”

Bonnen, who’s the newly-appointed Texas Speaker of the House, also said the plaque was historically inaccurate.

George P. Bush, the Texas Land Commissioner and son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — and grandson of the late President George H.W. Bush — said the plaque and other such displays “belong in museums, not our state capitol."

State rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from Plano who sits on the State Preservation Board, fervently agreed with the plaque removal.

“If I had a sledgehammer in my office, I’d go up there right now and remove it," Leach said. "But I’m told that’s not necessary as it will be removed very soon.”

The location to where it will be moved hasn’t been indicated, but the motion started by Leach says it will simply be moved to a location away from the capitol grounds.

This weekend, two groups are expected to express their opinions on the removal of a Confederate monument in downtown Winston-Salem. The gathering comes more than a week after the city ordered the United Daughters of the Confederacy to remove the statue.

Weather pending, the Winston-Salem Police Department expects a large crowd this weekend, both for and against the removal of the Confederate monument, but the Police Department said it is ready for all possibilities.

“Whether it’s rioting, looting or basic criminal activity, that’s what will be enforced,” Capt. Mike Weaver said.

Two groups, “Heirs to the Confederacy monument” and “Get Hate Out of Winston-Salem,” plan to rally at the statue Sunday afternoon.

After a Confederate monument in downtown Durham was pulled down by protesters in the summer of 2017, a committee of Durham residents has produced a report with recommendations about the future of the crumpled statue and its remaining base.

The recommendations include moving the "irreparably damaged" statue's body inside the nearest building and adding additional arts elements to the remaining base to commemorate Union soldiers and enslaved African Americans.

The statue, originally constructed in 1924 and located about a mile from East Campus, was toppled in August 2017. It was a statue of a Confederate soldier on top of a base, which was engraved with the phrase "In memory of 'The boys who wore the gray.'" The toppling came in the wake of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., that summer.

The group consisted of 12 total members, including Kirk and co-chair Charmaine McKissick-Melton, associate professor in the department of mass communication at North Carolina Central University. Deondra Rose, assistant professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, was also on the committee from Duke.

Kirk said the group was created in early 2018 and conducted a series of community meetings over the course of several months. Some of the meetings brought in speakers, some were specifically for public discussion.

“Sometimes people had very different views, but it was remarkable that, for the most part, the discussions were extremely civil and forward-looking," Kirk said. "All of that was compiled for this report and informed the recommendations."

The report, which the committee agreed to by consensus, explains the reasoning behind the committee's recommendations. By moving the statue into a nearby building and placing it out of the way, the committee aimed to reduce the security issues the report posited would be likely to come with the statue being displayed publicly.

The committee noted the statue should be placed somewhere that did not require for employees in the building to pass by it everyday if they did not want to, but would allow for it to be seen by those who wanted access to it.

For the base, the committee recommended adding two other pillars to it. And if the 2015 state law restricting the movement of memorials located on government property is ever lifted, the committee suggested moving the installation to a city-owned cemetery—specifically Maplewood or Beechwood.

The latter suggestion drew the ire of a county commissioner.

James Hill, vice-chairman of the the Durham County Board of Commissioners, compared placing the base of the Confederate statue in the predominately black cemetery of Beechwood to placing a monument for Nazi soldiers in a Jewish cemetery when the report was presented Tuesday morning, according to the News and Observer. Kirk criticized the use of that reference, she told The Chronicle Thursday afternoon, saying that it was a distraction from the rest of the report.