In Memoriam: The Dakota 38

ST. PAUL, Minn (Reuters) - The day after Christmas will be somber for Dakota Indians marking what they consider a travesty of justice 150 years ago, when 38 of their ancestors were executed in the biggest mass hanging in U.S. history.

Overshadowed by the Civil War raging in the East, the hangings in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862, followed the often overlooked six-week U.S.-Dakota war earlier that year -- a war that marked the start of three decades of fighting between Native Americans and the U.S. government across the Plains.

President Abraham Lincoln intervened in the case, demanding a review that reduced the number of death sentences. But he allowed 38 to be executed, including two men historians believe were hanged in error, even as he was preparing the Emancipation Proclamation to free black slaves in the South.

This month, in an annual event that started in 2005, some Dakota are making a 300-mile trek on horseback in frigid winter temperatures to revive the memory of this footnote in U.S. history.

"It was just a terrible trauma that they had to endure, and we continue to have to endure this generational trauma to this very day," said Sheldon Wolfchild, former chairman of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in southwestern Minnesota.

This year's ride began on December 10 in Crow Creek, South Dakota, the reservation the Dakota were exiled to from Minnesota after the executions. It ends on December 26 in Mankato, where riders will attend a ceremony to remember the hangings.

Riders travel east across South Dakota, crossing the border into Minnesota and heading southeast to Mankato. Some ride the entire route, others join as their schedules permit. Support vehicles follow them.

The ride was captured in the documentary film "Dakota 38," which won a special jury award this year at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Film Festival.

"During the ride ... it feels as close to how we might have been in a camp," said Gaby Strong, who has participated in the ride or support for it each year. "That is really what we are doing over the course of the 10 or 15 days that we are all together."

Strong, 49, who lives in Morton, Minnesota, near the site of a key 1862 battle in the U.S.-Dakota war, said the ride has helped form bonds among the Dakota Sioux, especially the young.

"It's about healing, not only just for me, but for my community," said Vanessa Goodthunder, a rider and participant each year. "We are just bringing home our ancestors. You meet a lot of new people, and I get a lot of different perspectives."

Goodthunder, 18, who is majoring in American Indian studies and history at the University of Minnesota, said the rides have helped young Dakota connect with each other and their history.

"It's your identity. It is who you are," she said.

FORGOTTEN WAR

Over the next three years, Americans will commemorate the 150th anniversary of a host of Civil War battles. Almost forgotten are the conflicts with Native Americans that occurred in the second half of the 19th century as the United States rapidly expanded west.

Few of those conflicts are well known, with the exception of "Custer's Last Stand" -- when flamboyant officer George Armstrong Custer and his men were killed by Sioux leader Crazy Horse and his warriors in 1876 -- and the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890, which many historians consider a massacre and the end of the Indian wars.

Thousands of Native Americans, white settlers and U.S. soldiers were killed in the Indian wars. Native Americans were coerced to cede their lands and then forced onto reservations.

In the Upper Plains, that included members of the Great Sioux Nation, which comprises Lakota to the west, Nakota in the middle and Dakota to the east around Minnesota.

The seeds of the Dakota war were planted years earlier, in the 1830s, according to historians, when the fur trade that had been the basis of the region's economy since the late 17th century began to fade and land became valuable for settlement.

Under treaties in 1851, the four main Dakota bands ceded about 35 million acres of what is now southern Minnesota, parts of Iowa and South Dakota. In exchange, the U.S. pledged payments and allowed the Dakota a narrow tract of land about 10 miles wide on either side of the Minnesota River. Settlers swarmed onto the newly opened lands.

In 1858, just after Minnesota became a state, Dakota chiefs were summoned to Washington, D.C., and told they would have to give up the northern half of that narrow reserve, said St. Cloud State University historian Mary Wingerd.

By summer 1862, the Dakota, now largely dependent on government treaty payments that were long delayed, were starving. On August 17, young Dakota men out hunting killed five white settlers.

The hunters pressed Chief Taoyateduta, known as Little Crow, to back a war. Some Dakota, but not all, fought soldiers and settlers in the short, bloody war in August and September 1862.

Hundreds of settlers were killed and hundreds more taken hostage in the war during attacks on forts, federal Indian agencies, cities and farms around southwestern Minnesota. Thousands of settlers fled east, fueling a statewide panic, and federal troops marched in to quell the Dakota fighters.

The U.S. was victorious on September 23, 1862, and Little Crow left Minnesota.

Afterward, more than 2,000 Dakota were rounded up, whether they fought or not. Almost 400 men faced military trials, which often lasted just a few minutes, and 303 were sentenced to die.

LINCOLN'S REVIEW

Lincoln demanded a review limiting the death sentences to those Dakota who raped or killed settlers. The number sentenced to hang was reduced to 38, but even in these cases the evidence was scanty, said Dan Stock, history center director at the Minnesota Historical Society.

The 38 condemned men stood on a large square gallows surrounded by soldiers. Thousands watched as a single blow with an ax cut a rope and dropped the scaffolding.

Wingerd said she could understand why the Dakota fought, but the brutal killings of settlers could not be condoned and she could not agree with people who believed that no one should have been hanged.

"We have to understand it as a huge tragedy with victims on both sides," Wingerd said of the deaths of settlers and the forced marches and scattering of most Dakota from Minnesota.

"In fact, the Dakota nation did not go to war and most of the people who were expelled from Minnesota were guilty of nothing," Wingerd said.

About 1,700 Dakota women, children and older men who did not fight were marched to a prison camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, where up to 300 died that winter. They were exiled to Crow Creek, South Dakota, in 1863, but some began to return to Minnesota almost immediately.

"They continue to come home and this ride represents that," Strong said of Minnesota. "We continue to come home. This is our homeland."

Wolfchild said he wants authorities to recognize sacred Dakota sites in the area that is now the Twin Cities and its suburbs to help heal the lingering wounds from the broken treaties, Mankato hangings and exile.

"I would like to be buried where our people originated from," he said.

(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Greg McCune and Douglas Royalty)

http://news.yahoo.com/dakota-indians-mark-hangings-1862-trek-horseback-145213610.html


Memorial to 38 hanged Dakota men unveiled in Minn.

MANKATO, Minn. (AP) — Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday for the unveiling of a memorial to 38 Dakota men who were hanged 150 years ago to the day in what is the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

About 60 horse riders, including some tribe members who rode for 16 days from South Dakota, were among the roughly 500 people on hand for the dedication of the "Dakota 38" memorial, which marks a dark chapter in the history of the region and country. Dakota runners who departed from Fort Snelling also made it to the ceremony, which took place in Reconciliation Park in downtown Mankato, which is about 65 miles southwest of Minneapolis.

"Today, being here to witness a great gathering, we have peace in our hearts — a new beginning of healing," said Arvol Looking Horse, the leader of the Dakota/Lakota tribe, according to The Free Press of Mankato (http://bit.ly/WHdMop ).

The Dec. 26, 1862, mass hanging marked the end of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, which took place along the Minnesota River valley that fall. Following the war, 1,600 Dakota were held at a camp at Fort Snelling until being sent out of state, and virtually all other Dakota fled Minnesota.

Originally, 303 men were sentenced to be hanged. President Abraham Lincoln was aware of injustices in the men's trials, and also was urged to show compassion by Episcopal Bishop Henry Whipple. Lincoln reviewed all the cases and wrote a letter to Minnesota Gov. Alexander Ramsey, listing 39 men who should be hanged, including one who was later given a reprieve. Some Native Americans today feel Lincoln was wrong to order any of the hangings and that several of the men were innocent of any wrongdoing.

In August, Gov. Mark Dayton marked the 150th anniversary of the start of the war by asking Minnesotans to "remember the dark past" and by repudiating the actions of Ramsey, Minnesota's second governor, who said after the war that the Dakota should be exterminated or driven from the state.

A traditional drum and song group on Wednesday sang a song composed for the 38 Dakota, to the pounding of a large drum. Mankato Mayor Eric Anderson read a proclamation declaring this the year of "forgiveness and understanding."

Sidney Byrd, a Dakota/Lakota elder from Flandreau, S.D., read out in the Dakota language the names of the 38 men who were hanged. The names are inscribed on the monument, along with a poem and a prayer.

"I'm proud to be with you today. My great-grandfather was one of those who paid the supreme price for our freedom," he said. Byrd's great-grandfather was among the Dakota originally sentenced to death who were given reprieves by Lincoln. The men were sent from a prison in Mankato to one in Davenport, Iowa, where many died from squalid conditions.

The Dakota behind the new memorial and the ride and run have used the mantra "forgive everyone everything" to mark the 150th anniversary. Those words will be engraved in stone benches to be placed around the new memorial next summer.

"This is a great day, not only for the Dakota but for the city of Mankato," said Bud Lawrence of Mankato, who helped start a reconciliation effort in the 1970s.

State Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, who co-chairs a state task force commemorating the Civil War and U.S.-Dakota War, said that while progress has been made through reconciliation and education, there remains a lack of understanding about what led up to the war and the problems that the Dakota suffered long afterward.

"Through understanding comes a healing that is still continuing today," Urdahl said.

Richard Milda, of the Crow Agency in Montana, was among a small group of riders who made the entire trip from Lower Brule, S.D., to Mankato. It's the third year he's taken part in the ride.

"I heard about the ride and was attracted to its message of forgiveness and remembrance," Milda said.

The 38 Names

Ti-hdo-ni-ca (One Who Jealously Guards His Home)
Ptan Du-ta (Scarlet Otter)
Oyate Ta-wa (His People)
Hin-han-sun-ko-yag-ma-ni (One Who Walks Clothed In Owl Feathers)
Ma-za Bo-mdu (Iron Blower)
Wa-hpe Duta (Scarlet Leaf)
Wa-hi-na (I Came)
Sna Ma-ni (Tinkling Walker)
Hda In-yan-ka (Rattling Runner)
Do-wan-s-a (Sings A Lot)
He-pan (Second Born Male Child)
Sun-ka ska (White Dog)
Tun-kan I-ca-hda ma-ni (One Who Walks By His Grandfather)
I-te Du-ta (Scarlet Face)
Ka-mde-ca (Broken Into Pieces)
He pi-da (Third Born Male)
Ma-kpi-ya (Cut Nose)
Henry Milord
Wa-kin-yan-na (Little Thunder)
Cas-ke-da (First Born)
Baptiste Campbell
Ta-te Ka-ga (Wind Maker)
He In-Kpa (The Tip Of The Horn)
Hypolite Ange
Na-pe-sni (Fearless)
Wa-kan Tanka (Great Spirit)
Tun-kan Ko-yag I-na-zin (One Who Stands Cloaked In Stone)
Ma-ka-ta I-na-zin (One Who Stands On The Earth)
Maza Kute-mani (One Who Shoots As He Walks)
Ta-te Hdi-da (Wind Comes Home)
Wa-si-cun (White Man)
A-i-ca-ga (To Grow Upon)
Ho-i-tan-in-ku (Returning Clear Voice)
Ce-tan Hu-nka (Elder Hawk)
Can ka-hda (Near The Woods)
Hda-hin-hde (Sudden Rattle)
Oyate A-ku (He Brings The People)
Ma-hu-we-hi (He Comes For Me)

Information from: The Free Press, http://mankatofreepress.com/local/x1303500941/-Forgive-everyone-everything

O, Tannenbaum

I love winter and the tradition of the decorated and lighted tree. When I was a little boy, it always felt so connected to the time of the year, the elements, the snow and darkness. Even then, I sensed the pagan roots of this tradition and now that I am an adult, I love it even more.

Descended from the Roman festival of Saturnalia, and from Pagans and Druids from all over Europe, the tree is an expression of the season: deciduous trees, plants, flowers and crops die off (or go dormant) while the pine remains magically alive, the only thing that stays green in the natural world (sempervirent = evergreen). It only makes sense to honor the earth, the season and the fir itself by bringing it inside to decorate and echo the look of the land.

This is the time of the Winter Solstice, short grey days and long dark nights, where twinkling stars are visible for so much longer. As an homage to the winter sky, lights are put on the tree, again echoing the natural world. It’s also reminiscent of the bonfires many different pagan cultures lit around the countryside to ward off the darkness and chill; lights on the tree bring some light and warmth to this lifeless time of year, and speak to a time when the days will eventually grow longer, the planet will again tilt, and summer will return.

Happy Holidays!

And the good news just keeps coming...

...Gay marriage wins in Washington state! R-74 prevails along with fairness and equality.

It is laughable and predictable to hear the anti-gay foes of marriage equality claim that they lost because they were simply outspent in fundraising and advertising. They apparently can't contemplate the idea that they were simply wrong. What they fail to realize is: allowing someone to have a right that you yourself enjoy does not in any way diminish or harm that right for you.

Congratulations Washington!

And even more good news!

Marriage equality WON in Maryland and Maine! It is the first time in United States history that marriage equality has been approved by popular vote on a ballot measure. I have renewed faith.

This is indeed a great moment.

Images via Joe Jervis' ever-informative and valuable site Joe.My.God.

IT'S OBAMA!

I am crying with relief and joy! We now have a chance!

This is a great day!!!

http://www.barackobama.com/

While we wait...

...and bite our nails, here is a bit of good news to keep us going until we get election results.

Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay Senator in the history of the United States, has WON!

The marvelous Elizabeth Warren has WON! HuffPo notes that "Warren was the intellectual godmother of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was its first head. She was denied a permanent appointment due to objections from congressional
Republicans and from within the Treasury Department." Go get 'em Senator Warren!

Powerful truth-teller Alan Grayson has won back his seat in the House.
Welcome back, Rep. Grayson, we missed you!

And openly gay House member Jared Polis has won his third term.

Glad to have you stay with us, Rep. Polis!

Images via Joe Jervis' ever-informative and valuable site Joe.My.God.

Still Racist After All These Years

Dear followers, I found the following article incredibly enlightening (and a bit disappointing to see exactly how history is repeating and that we are still dealing with the same issues). I always say that if I can know how a situation came to be, and if I can understand the psychology involved, then I am better equipped to face it and handle it. And in this case, to combat it. I hope it inspires you to a greater understanding of the issues we face and perhaps it will help you to make clear choices tomorrow. Again, to our friends in other countries, please understand that we are apparently still fighting a civil war: not everyone in the United States is a racist, homophobic, misogynist who thinks the world is only 4,000 years old and that climate change is happening because some imaginary God in the sky is punishing us for letting gay men and women get married in New York. It's just that those people scream loud and get all the attention.

Parallels to country's racist past haunt age of Obama

By John Blake, CNN

(CNN) - A tall, caramel-complexioned man marched across the steps of the U.S. Capitol to be sworn into office as a jubilant crowd watched history being made.

The man was an African-American of mixed-race heritage, an eloquent speaker whose election was hailed as a reminder of how far America had come.

But the man who placed his hand on the Bible that winter day in Washington wasn't Barack Obama. He was Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate.

His election and that of many other African-Americans to public office triggered a white backlash that helped destroy Reconstruction, America’s first attempt to build an interracial democracy in the wake of the Civil War.

To some historians, Revels' story offers sobering lessons for our time: that this year's presidential election is about the past as well as the future. These historians say Obama isn't a post-racial president but a "post-Reconstructionist" leader. They say his presidency has sparked a white backlash with parallels to a brutal period in U.S. history that began with dramatic racial progress.

Some of the biggest controversies of the 2012 contest could have been ripped from the headlines of that late 19th-century era, they say: Debates erupt over voting rights restrictions and racial preferences, a new federal health care act divides the country, an economic crisis sparks a small government movement. And then there's a vocal minority accusing a national black political leader of not being a "legitimate" U.S. citizen.

All were major issues during Reconstruction, an attempt to bring the former Confederate states back into the national fold and create a new era of racial justice. And many of the same forces that destroyed Reconstruction may be converging again, some scholars and historians say.

Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate in 1870.

Ruha Benjamin points to this as proof that change is fragile - and reversible. The backlash that swept aside Revels lasted nearly a century.

"When white Americans helped put this African-American in the Senate, it seemed that they were really welcoming African-Americans and they wanted them to have full equality," said Benjamin, an African-American studies professor at Boston University. "We know in hindsight that it was about to get worse."

The notion that the country is poised to enter a new post-Reconstruction era may seem outlandish, even offensive. That period, known as the Jim Crow era, saw the establishment of American apartheid: segregated public facilities, race riots and white racists murdering blacks and their white allies with impunity.

Today, too many white Americans are "militantly anti-racist" for the country to return to the post-Reconstruction era, said Mark D. Naison, a history professor at Fordham University in New York City.

"You hold a racist demonstration in this country and the anti-racist protesters will have as many whites and blacks in their group, maybe more," Naison said. "We are definitely not post-racial, but we aren't going back to the days of legal segregation."

Yet there is another slice of white America that seems stuck in a time warp, as if it never left the post-Reconstruction era, other historians argue. While not calling for the return of Jim Crow segregation, some white Americans are recycling the same political rhetoric and legal strategies that snuffed out Reconstruction, these historians say.

They are also resurrecting some of the most racist images from the post-Reconstruction era, some black commentators say.

While it is no longer acceptable to call a black person the N-word publicly, people do it all the time in social media, video games and in the comment sections of online news stories, said Nsenga Burton, a writer for The Root, an online news site with an African-American perspective.

Much of this racism is aimed at Obama, she says. Among examples, he’s been called "tar baby" and "the ultimate Affirmative Action N******" and depicted as a chimp. People are not shocked anymore by overt displays of racism, she says.

Burton said in a Root essay entitled, "It's a Great Time to be a Racist," that Obama's presidency didn't inaugurate a post-racial era. "Try post-Reconstruction," she said, "because the harmful slurs and images being tossed around the public space hark back more to a racist past than to a racially ambiguous future."

A recent Associated Press online poll concluded that racial prejudice in America has slightly increased since Obama's election. The survey said that a majority of Americans, 51%, express explicit racial prejudice toward blacks, compared to 48% in 2008.

While the poll on its own doesn’t prove the country has become more racist in the last four years, it does offer evidence that the “post-racial” world some thought Obama’s inauguration would bring has yet to materialize.

"We're in a racist renaissance," Burton said. "It's a rebirth of the oldest forms of racism. It's not new, not different. It's like the 1800s, the most archaic abusive terms are applied to black people every single day."

Some conservatives have a different take, on history as well as current events. Everyone who criticizes the president is labeled a racist, they say. And describing Obama as a post-Reconstruction president is absurd.

"It's race-baiting of the highest order; it's bunk," said Niger Innis, a black conservative and son of civil rights activist Roy Innis who has defended the Tea Party movement against accusations of racism.

"The America of today is not the America of the 1870s," Innis said. "When the American people voted for their first black president, the Union Army didn't occupy the country."

Some conservative commentators also say Obama isn't a victim of racism, but to the contrary has inflamed racial divisions to advance his political agenda.

"Obama was falsely portrayed in his campaign as a post-racial president who would bring healing to the nation's racial divisions," said Larry Schweikart, co-author of "A Patriot's History of the United States."

"Obama has done everything he can to ensure that there were stark racial differences. … Obama has focused his entire administration around racism, a sort of reverse racism on his end," Schweikart claimed.

It is a view that has been reflected by conservative talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh’s brother David, author of "The Great Destroyer." David Limbaugh would not talk to CNN for this story.

Hope and change in another time

Reconstruction, which lasted from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 1877, was filled with dueling perceptions of race as well. The political changes unleashed by the Civil War unnerved many white Southerners: As blacks achieved positions of power that previously had been reserved for whites, historians say, many whites felt like their country didn't belong to them anymore.

After the Civil War, the U.S. Congress passed the 13th, 14th and 15th "Reconstruction Amendments" that abolished slavery, granted citizenship rights to blacks and prohibited denying the right to vote to newly freed slaves.

The term "civil rights" was coined during Reconstruction, said Eric Foner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution." A century before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a segregated bus, Congress passed the 1866 and 1875 Civil Rights Acts, which banned the discrimination of blacks in "public accommodations" such as streetcars and theaters.

The reforms provoked what some historians say was white Southerners' greatest fear: "Negro Rule."

During Reconstruction, at least 2,000 blacks were eventually elected to political offices throughout the South. They included congressmen, judges, tax collectors, sheriffs, even a governor, said Philip Dray, author of "Capitol Men," which examines Reconstruction through the lives of the first black congressmen.

"Expectations were high," said Dray, who has also written books about the rise of labor unions and lynchings in America. "People felt like there was change, and they were going to be part of it."

Revels rode that wave of optimism into high office. In 1870, he became the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate when the Mississippi legislature appointed him to fill a vacancy left when the state seceded from the Union.

Opponents initially insisted he wasn't a legitimate U.S. citizen because the Constitution required a senator be a citizen for at least nine years. He also had an unusual background, having been born to a free black family in North Carolina when slavery was legal.

"He wasn't radical or over the top," Dray said of Revels. "He was a minister, a conciliatory figure. The idea was that it would be easier for him to weather the scrutiny."

Revels himself would anticipate the white backlash that would follow when he told the Senate early in 1871: “I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase.”

Obamacare, 19th century style

Beyond Revels, there are other parallels between today and the post-Reconstruction era, according to some historians.

The most commonly cited link revolves around the debate over voter ID laws. Since Obama's election, 34 states have considered adopting legislation requiring photo ID for voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Seven have passed such laws, which typically require voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls.

During the post-Reconstruction era, many white Southerners viewed the onset of black voting power in apocalyptic terms. They created a thicket of voting barriers - "poll taxes," "literacy tests" and "understanding clauses" - to prevent blacks from voting, said Dray.

"The idea was to invalidate the black vote without directly challenging the 15th Amendment," Dray said.

This political cartoon highlighting voter intimidation appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1876.

Many contemporary voter ID laws are following the same script, he said.

"It just goes on and on. They've never completely gone away. And now they're back with a vengeance."

Some opponents of the voter ID laws note that these measures disproportionately affect the elderly and the poor, regardless of race.

Supporters of voter ID laws say they're not about race at all, but about common sense and preventing voter fraud.

"That is not a racial issue and it certainly isn't a hardship issue," said Deneen Borelli, author of "Blacklash," which argues Obama is turning America into a welfare nation.

"When you try to purchase over-the-counter medication or buy liquor or travel, you present photo ID. This is a basic part of everyday transactions."

Historians say there are other ways the post-Reconstruction script is being dusted off and that some of them appear to have nothing to do with race on the surface.

Consider the debate over "Obamacare," the nation's new health care law. The controversy would be familiar to many 19th-century Americans, said Jim Downs, author of "Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction."

The notion that the federal government should help those who cannot help themselves wasn't widely accepted before the Civil War. There were a few charities and municipal hospitals that took care of the sick, but most institutions ignored ordinary people who needed health care, said Downs, a Connecticut College history professor who studies the history of race and medicine in 19th-century America.

Reconstruction changed that. Post-Civil War America was marked by epidemics: yellow fever, smallpox and typhus. Freed slaves, who were often malnourished and had few clothes and little shelter, died by the "tens of thousands," he said.

The federal government responded by creating the nation's first-ever national health care system, directed at newly freed slaves. It was called the Medical Division of the Freedmen's Bureau. The division built 40 hospitals and hired hundreds of doctors to treat more than a million former slaves from 1865 until it was shut down in 1870 after losing congressional funding, Downs said.

"It absolutely radicalized health care," he said. "You can't argue that government intervention in health is something new or a recent innovation. It originated in the mid-19th century in response to the suffering of freed slaves."

Critics at the time said the new health care system was too radical. They said it would make blacks too reliant on government. The system was expanded to include other vulnerable Americans, such as the elderly, children and the disabled. Yet some still saw it as a black handout, Downs said.

"The whole notion of the modern day "welfare queen" can be traced to the post-Civil War period when people became very suspicious of the federal government providing relief to ex-slaves," Downs said. "They feared this would create a dependent class of people."

A campaign to 'save' America

Economic fears in the post-Reconstruction era also fueled the white backlash, a pattern that some historians say is repeating itself today.

A national economic collapse took place just as freed slaves were gaining political influence. The Panic of 1873 started with a banking collapse and a stock market dive. The result: Tens of thousands of workers, many Civil War veterans, became homeless. People lined up for food and shelter in cities across America.

"It made it more economically competitive for everybody," Dray said. "You saw whites become even less generous to African-Americans [than] they might have been."

Some white Southerners channeled their economic anxiety into a systemic attack on the federal government, historians said.

Before the collapse, Southern states controlled by Northern politicians and their allies had built hospitals and public schools and created social services to help freed slaves as well as poor whites, said Jerald Podair, a historian at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

But the notion of an activist federal government helping blacks amid tough times created an opening for Reconstruction opponents. One group that took advantage of that opening was the Redeemers, a popular movement led by conservative, pro-business politicians who vowed to "save" the South, said Podair, who is writing a book on Bayard Rustin, a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Redeemers gained control of most Southern statehouses and pledged to reduce the size of government. They defunded public schools, closed public hospitals and halted road construction, Podair said, all while cutting taxes for the wealthy plantation owners, the 1 percenters of their day.

The Redeemers cloaked their rhetoric in the need for more government efficiency, but their goals were also racial, Podair said.

"The Redeemers were interested first and foremost in power," Podair said. "If freed slaves received education and medical care, they were that much closer to economic and, eventually, political power. And if the federal government had a major role in the South, that also meant less economic and political power for the Redeemer class."

Some historians say the backlash against Obama mimics late 19th-century resistance to black political progress.

Podair said some contemporary governors are recycling the same talking points used by the Redeemers. They are invoking the need for austerity while cutting government jobs that employ a high number of blacks and reducing public services that help the poor, a disproportionate number of whom are black.

"There may well be a new post-Reconstruction era of slashed federal budgets and policies that transfer power and resources to state and local governments," Podair said. "Once again, initiatives that sound race-neutral on their face will have a devastating racial impact."

Innis has a different take.

He said state and local governments can't afford to keep the same number of jobs because of generous benefits negotiated by unions. Race has nothing to do with it.

"If you have a government job and the pay and benefits is more than a private sector job, something is wrong," he said.

Government cutbacks are designed to help the economy, not inflict pain on any particular group.

"Until we get our economy on track, black and brown people are going to suffer," he said.

'White Girl Bleed a Lot'

The primary weapon white Southerners used to halt Reconstruction was violence. Mobs attacked and killed blacks gathering to vote. They assassinated black officeholders and their white allies. Newspapers sparked race riots and warned of race wars by printing false accounts of black-on-white attacks.

We are not seeing anywhere near the level of violence toward black people that followed Reconstruction. But some people fear that the inflammatory rhetoric that helped trigger racial violence in that era is returning.

A Google search of the phrase "black mobs attack white people" yields tens of thousands of hits. Conservative bloggers and columnists say a "wave" of black mobs attacking whites at random has spread across the nation in places such as shopping malls, downtown tourist spots and even "Beat Whitey Nights" at Midwestern fairs.

Syndicated conservative columnist Thomas Sowell - himself African-American - wrote in a May 15 column for National Review Online that "race war" has returned to America because black gangs are "launching coordinated attacks on whites in public" across America. A Republican state legislator in Maryland, Patrick L. McDonough, warned earlier this year in a letter to the governor that "roving mobs of black youths" had been attacking white tourists in Baltimore.

One author, Colin Flaherty, wrote a book about this alleged wave of racial violence called, "White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America." The various accounts follow the same pattern: Black "flash mobs" suddenly attack whites in public, followed by a media cover-up.

Flaherty, also a talk radio show host, said he first noticed the attacks in 2010. Since then, he claims he has seen "thousands" of videos of black mobs attacking whites.

People have called him racist, but Flaherty said he's just a "guy standing on a corner" reporting what he sees.

"White liberals go nuts on this," he said of his book. "When people use names like 'racist,' they're using it to shut down conversation, not engage in it."

The return of race war rhetoric has disturbing historical echoes, said David Godshalk, author of "Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations."

Godshalk said neither Sowell nor Flaherty have offered any statistical evidence that reports about "black mobs" are anything more than isolated cases. Sowell did not respond to interview requests.

Scores of blacks died during the post-Reconstruction era because newspapers spread false or grossly exaggerated reports of blacks as predators, particularly accounts of black men raping white women, Godshalk said.

Some whites used those reports to justify violence and political oppression against blacks, he said.

"Longstanding notions that African-Americans were criminals were used to argue that they shouldn't be leaders in society because they didn't have the same capabilities as whites, and they weren't trustworthy enough to hold positions of authority," said Godshalk, a history professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania who has also written about Reconstruction and lynchings.

Those notions of black inferiority eventually infected the legal system during the post-Reconstruction era, historians say.

The post-Reconstruction Supreme Court played a major role in destroying what Congress had created through its racial reforms. The court delivered a series of decisions that nullified the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 as well as additional laws designed to protect blacks from mob violence at the voting booth, said Peter Irons, a civil rights attorney and author of "A People's History of the Supreme Court."

In 1883, the court imposed a judicial death sentence on Reconstruction in the "Civil Rights Cases" decision, which allowed private individuals and businesses to discriminate against blacks. Associate Justice Joseph Bradley wrote in the decision that freed slaves should stop being "a special favorite of the laws."

The most notorious post-Reconstruction decision involving race took place in 1895 when the Supreme Court legally sanctioned Jim Crow laws by enshrining the "separate-but-equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson. The court upheld a Louisiana law requiring that federal rail cars provide different facilities for white and black passengers.

By the late 19th century, the Supreme Court had "turned its back on the claims of blacks and opened its arms to those of corporations," Irons said. It was the onset of the Gilded Age, an era of widening income inequality that saw the court first introduce "corporate personhood," the concept that a corporation has the legal rights of a person.

"People were getting tired of concerns about racial minorities," said Irons, an activist whose book on the Supreme Court was partly inspired by the late liberal historian Howard Zinn and his book, “A People’s History of the United States.”

"The court is generally a mirror of the broader society, and that was the way most people felt at the time."

Irons and other liberal observers fear the current Supreme Court is drifting in a similar direction and anticipate that it will overturn or weaken a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as well as affirmative action in college admissions.

The court is expected to hear a challenge from Shelby County, Alabama, to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires nine Southern states and parts of others to "pre-clear" with federal officials any voting measures that could potentially restrict black voters.

The court is also due to rule on a case on affirmative action in college admission policies in Fisher v. University of Texas.

Irons said the conservative majority on the contemporary court would be doing what their counterparts did during Reconstruction, avoiding a frontal assault on civil rights laws and other measures that protect women and workers, while eviscerating the laws.

"It's unlikely that the court would render any decisions that would be totally reactionary on issues of race," said Irons, "but what they're doing in the current court is whittling away and cutting back very gradually on things like racial, gender and wage discrimination."

From post-racial to most racial

Some conservatives, though, have a different perspective on Reconstruction and any modern parallels.

Most historians say Reconstruction ended with the disputed presidential contest of 1876. An election too close to call was resolved when candidate Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to pull Northern troops out of the South in exchange for the presidency.

Schweikart, co-author of "A Patriot's History of the United States," said the United States abandoned Reconstruction because the nation could not call itself a democracy while keeping half its population under military occupation.

"Reconstruction ended, pure and simple, because the North could not afford economically, politically or socially to maintain a standing army in a part of the U.S. for an indefinite time and still call America a democratic republic," said Schweikart, a history professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Borelli, author of "Blacklash," does see one contemporary link with 19th-century America. She argues that Obama is actually encouraging a new form of servitude to what she calls the "Big Government Plantation."

Since Obama became president, a record number of Americans, at least 46 million, now receive food stamps. And one in six Americans receives some form of government aid as the nation struggles to recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"There are a lot of people who are relying on government for their basic everyday needs: food, clothing and shelter," said Borelli, who is outreach director for FreedomWorks, a Washington-based group that advocates for smaller government and lower taxes. "When you rely on government, your liberties are reduced."

Another conservative said Obama has tacitly endorsed reverse racism.

"You can't have a legitimate disagreement with the president if you're white without being called a racist," said Stephen Marks, creator of FightBigotry.com, a Super PAC that produced a television ad accusing Obama of not standing up to racism.

Marks said Obama said nothing when Vice President Joe Biden recently told an audience of black and white voters that Republicans were "going to put y'all back in chains."

"They're the ones who play the race card, 100% of the time," Marks said of Obama and Democrats. "The Republicans don't have the gonads to respond because they're so afraid of being called a racist."

What happened to Revels?

There's little disagreement among contemporary historians about what happened to the South when the nation abandoned Reconstruction. The region became a divided society where race filtered into everything, said Dray, author of "Capitol Men."

"It had a paralyzing effect. Business interests didn't want to invest there. Immigrants didn't want to go there," Dray said. "The South became this tainted place. Instead of moving into the 20th century, it stayed put in the 19th century."

The Jim Crow laws that marked the end of Reconstruction stayed put for at least 60 years. It would take a century before the contemporary civil rights movement restored the political and civil rights of blacks. Some historians argue that the United States did not actually become a democracy until 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Black pioneers like Revels disappeared from the history books. After serving his Senate term, he didn't seek reappointment and returned to Mississippi, where he eventually became president of Alcorn State College and pastor of a church.

He lost much of his black support for not speaking out against the abuses that ended Reconstruction, said Benjamin, the Boston University professor.

"He was an accommodationist," Benjamin said. "He was in the Senate standing up for white folks and telling people not to be so hard on Southern plantation owners. He didn't use his platform to represent African-Americans."

In 1901, Revels collapsed and died during a church meeting in Mississippi. That same year, the last black member of the House of Representatives finished his final term. Congress resumed being an all-white institution. Blacks had been driven out of office by beatings and assassinations.

Revels' death barely got a mention in the Southern press. His fellow black congressmen received the same treatment. Revisionist historians were already depicting Reconstruction as a fatal example of government overreach and Northern "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" coming South to profit off of the regions' misery, said Dray, author of "Capitol Men."

"When some of them passed away years later, the Southern press barely mentioned it," Dray said. "It was a part of American history that people did not want to remember. No one wanted to talk about it or think about it."

One group of Americans, however, never forgot what Revels represented.

During the Great Depression, Dray said, the federal government dispatched interviewers from the Works Progress Administration to the South to collect oral histories from former slaves.

The interviewers noticed a curious sight as they walked into the shacks of the former slaves. They saw faded copies of an 1872 lithograph depicting the first seven black members of Congress, including Revels.

The image is still haunting.

Revels and his fellow racial pioneers are posed together, dressed in vested suits and bow ties. They exude pride and determination, even though only several years earlier they weren't even considered fully human by many Americans.

Revels sits in the front row of the group portrait. He stares forward in the picture, a man who seems confident in what the future would bring.

What would he think of Obama if he could somehow see him today? Would he be delighted at what America has become in 2012?

Or would he think the future he embodied still seems far away?


Original article can be found here.
http://www.cnn.com/

Just watched...

..."Pollock," a biographic film of modern artist Jackson Pollock starring Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden.

Ed Harris had been wanting to make a bio-pic of the life of Jackson Pollock for nearly ten years when all the moving parts of the pre-production phase of a motion picture came together to allow him to star in and direct "Pollock." The film opens in 1941, when Pollock was just another unknown artist in Manhattan, drunk, living with his brother and sister-in-law. Enter Lee Krasner (played by Marcia Gay Harden, a role which earned her a Best Suppoprting Actress Oscar!), the future Mrs. Jackson Pollock. We see their marriage, his rise in the art world, and his eventual artistic breakthrough of "drip paintings," all the while drinking, grumbling, smoking, and suffering what might now be diagnosed as manic depressive or bi-polar episodes.

The film looks great. It works as a period piece and of course Harris looks like Pollock... take a look below at the real Pollock dripping paint and Harris dripping paint (Harris actually did all of the art work seen in the film).

Harris and Harden are splendid as Jackson and Lee. And the film works quite well as an art history lesson. Pollock's contribution to the direction and evolution of modern art cannot be exaggerated--Amy Madigan plays Peggy Guggenheim, art collector extraordinaire, who commissioned Pollock to create a massive mural for her home in New York. However, I am puzzled by one thing: from the film, I do not know why Lee Krasner loved Pollock so and stood by him through binge drinking, affairs, and abusive behavior. Krasner was a very strong woman and seemed to be able to live a self-determined life. The film showed us nothing of what might make Pollock a lovable--or even sympathetic--character. Could she have been passionate about him simply for the art itself? It is possible that Krasner saw the revolutionary style Pollock was creating. Perhaps she believed in the art and not the man, although it is true that she promoted him fiercely. From what we are given in the film, it is hard to say. In fact, the whole film, while interesting and well done, is told with a curious sort of detachment. And I think it was a deliberate choice on the part of Harris to direct the film with a little bit of distance and a chill... perhaps to recreate Pollock's personality for us, the viewers.

Recommend? Yes, I think so. But see if you can find any redeemable quality in Pollock besides his art...

"Americans Who Tell The Truth"

Robert Shetterly is an amazingly inspiring man. He is a political activist and a self-taught artist who has created a series of portraits of people in the United States who believe in true democracy and work for the betterment of the world. The portraits are gathered on the "Americans Who Tell The Truth" website which displays the following mission statement:

"Americans Who Tell the Truth is dedicated to the belief that a profound sense of citizenship is the only safeguard of democracy and the best defense of our social, economic, and environmental rights. Through portraits and stories of exemplary American citizens, both historical and contemporary, AWTT teaches the courage to act for the common good. Its powerful educational programs promote our country’s ideals, illuminate the necessary work of the present, and inspire hope in the future."

Here is a small sampling of the portraits of amazingly inspiring Americans who dare to speak the truth.

Bill Ayers
Educational Theorist, Professor, Writer, Anti-War and Civil Rights Activist: b. 1944
"There is, after all, no basis for education in a democracy outside of a faith in the enduring capacity for growth in ordinary people and a faith that ordinary people … can, if they choose, change the world."

Ella Baker
Civil Rights Organizer : 1903 – 1986
"In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you can change that system. That is easier said than done."

Frances Moore Lappé
Writer, Activist : b. 1944
"What an extraordinary time to be alive. We’re the first people on our planet to have real choice: we can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. So we do have a choice. We can choose death; or we can choose life."

Paul K. Chappell
Army Captain, Peace Activist, Writer: b. 1980
"When people in a democracy are not educated in the art of living --- to strengthen their conscience, compassion, and ability to question and think critically --- they can be easily manipulated by fear and propaganda. A democracy is only as wise as its citizens, and a democracy of ignorant citizens can be as dangerous as a dictatorship."

Sue Coe
Artist : b. 1951
"We despair for the fate of animals, the senseless cruelties inflicted upon them by our species, their and our own helplessness in the face of mass slaughter--all this is true. And if we could really see what we have done to the earth, we would go mad. Alongside that is yet another truth: there is a palpable goodness all around us, even in the most terrible times, that all things point to, like the north star. "

Wendell Berry
Farmer, Essayist, Conservationist, Novelist, Teacher, Poet : b. 1934
"The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful."

http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/

BEAUTY: Photography--Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse

Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse, an historical consultant in Amsterdam, was at a flea market in 2007 when she came across a box of old negatives of scenes from World War II. She recognized some of the locales and set out to photograph the exact same spots to compare. Much like what San Francisco-based photographer Shawn Clover is doing with shots of the 1906 earthquake (previously here), Teeuwisse digitally melds the two time streams to create a startling--and in this case heart-wrenching--unique perspective.

This negative...

...plus this current photo in Cherbourg...

...creates this.

Here are more from her chilling "Ghosts of War" series.

See more at her Flickr stream:
http://www.flickr.com/people/hab3045/
Visit her historical consulting site:
http://www.hab3045.nl/

GLBT History Month

October is GLBT History Month. The website http://www.lgbthistorymonth.com/ is observing the month by featuring the contributions and achievements of thirty one important gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered figures. Each day in October, a new GLBT figure is featured with a video, bio, bibliography.

Below is a wonderful and very partial list of GLBT figures throughout history. To the people who say "Well, I don't care if (insert famous GLBT person's name here) is/was gay. It's none of my business who (famous GLBT person) sleeps/slept with," I say that it is important to know in order to combat the still-persistent belief present in many quarters of the country that gay men or lesbians or bisexual or transgendered individuals are sick, useless, incapable of success, and have nothing to do with society or culture at large.