Free Republic

Jefferson Morley, a staff writer for Salon, recently declared that the National Anthem, war memorials, and holidays that honor veterans are in fact “Neo-Confederate symbols” in disguise. In a Sunday article, Morley slammed America’s beloved "The Star Spangled Banner" as emblematic of America’s sins, juxtaposing it with America’s history of “legalized slavery," “Jim Crow laws and legalized lynchings,” and derided the “militaristic and racist overtones” in the song’s lyrics:

Malcolm X, as a member of the Nation of Islam, preached anti-Semitism and called the white man "devil." After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X dismissed the murder as a case of "the chickens coming home to roost." In Spike Lee's biographical drama, "Malcolm X," a white teenage girl approaches the angry activist and says, "Excuse me, Mr. X. Hi. I've read some of your speeches, and I honestly believe that a lot of what you have to say is true. And I'm a good person, in spite of what my ancestors did, and I just -- I...

The monument with a confederate soldier looking out over the town has stood for 100 years in front of the Bryan County Courthouse. As monuments like it are coming under fire around the country, it is finding help from an unlikely ally. “I’m trying to at least hold on and to claim the history and the heritage that is mine, not just white folk. But, that heritage belongs to me, too,” said Arlene Barnum. If you see Barnum, you might do a double take. She’s a black woman wearing a confederate flag on a necklace. “I’ve been run off the...

Asked how she could debase herself to the level of playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel replied, “I’d rather play the maid and make $700 a week than be a maid and make $7.” Now McDaniel’s iconic performance, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first and only black winner in that category until 1990, stands under threat of being erased from the cultural memory. A Memphis theater that screens Gone with the Wind annually announced that it is withdrawing it from future showings. At this moment that decision may look like...

Should Confederate statues be removed? Yes. They are symbols of racism No. They are symbols of history It depends on the statue I'm not sure

Hollywood movie star Ben Affleck has two additional slaveholding ancestors. S.L. Speisseger, who owned 3 slaves in Chatham County Georgia in 1840, according to 1840 U.S. Census, and Georgia A. Speissegger Cole, who owned 1 slave in 1863 and 1864, according to Savannah and Chatham County, Georgia tax digests found by the Daily Beast. This brings the total number of Affleck’s known slaveholding ancestors to 14, and the number of slaves either owned or “held” as a trustee or on behalf of an estate by these ancestors to 242.

PBS says an episode of "Finding Your Roots" that omitted references to Ben Affleck's ancestor as a slave owner violated public TV standards. In a statement Wednesday, PBS said it's postponing the show's third season and delaying a commitment to a fourth year until it's satisfied with improvement in the show's editorial standards. The public TV service launched an investigation after it was reported that Affleck requested the 2014 episode not reveal his ancestor was a slaveholder. The review found that co-producers violated PBS standards by allowing improper influence on the show's editorial process and failed to inform PBS or...

Freedom of speech in America is on the line, as Judge James A. Hinkle had to resign due to his criticism of protesters concerned about Confederate monuments in Charlottesville. He made a simple post on Facebook, and he did not threaten anyone, as we are seeing so many from the Left doing. In my opinion, this proves our free speech is endangered. Judge James A. Hinkle offered his immediate resignation from his position as a part-time magistrate with the Gwinnett County Magistrate Court. Hinkle’s Facebook post Saturday called protesters of Confederate monuments “snowflakes who have no concept of history.” He...

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam's call to remove a bust of a Confederate cavalry general and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state Capitol building is getting its first hearing this week.

The University of Maryland’s marching band will no longer play “Maryland, My Maryland,” the official state song of Maryland, at school sporting events because of its ties to the Confederacy.

I recently wrote about the controversy over removing Confederate era statues from public places, and in my column I acknowledged the concerns of those who don't want to honor or celebrate men who fought, at least in part, to preserve slavery. But then I asked a question: Where does it end? "Is taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis enough?" I wondered. Or after we scrub them from history do we have to move on to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two presidents who owned slaves? I failed to mention Christopher Columbus in...

It’s not just about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The national soul-searching over whether to take down monuments to the Confederacy’s demigods has extended to other historical figures accused of wrongdoing, including Christopher Columbus (brutality toward Native Americans), the man for whom Boston’s Faneuil Hall is named (slave trader) and former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo (bigotry). Historians interviewed by The Associated Press offered varying thoughts about where exactly the line should be drawn in judging someone’s statue-worthiness, but they agreed on one thing: Scrapping a monument is not a decision that should be made in haste during political fervor....

The Rev. Robert Wright Lee IV, a descendant of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, is scheduled to appear at Sunday night’s VMAs after publicly supporting the removal of the statue of his ancestor in Charlottesville, Va., and similar monuments. An MTV spokesperson confirmed to Page Six on Sunday that Rev. Lee will make an appearance during the show, but declined to elaborate on his role in the ceremony. A source tells us Rev. Lee feels “obligated” to speak out against racism following the white supremacist rally and tragic violence that surrounded the planned removal of the Gen. Lee statue in...

Meet Logan Anderson, a former staffer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. She’s been triggered by this boat with a Confederate flag on it rescuing people in Houston: She then tweeted she’d let the hero rescue her, but then take his flag: I would absolutely get on that boat, by the way. And then, when they dropped me off, I'd tear off the flag and drop it into the flood.

There’s been a lot of talk about the Civil War lately, given the left’s furor over Confederate statues and whatnot. These statues and monuments have long existed without any such uproar, so we can assume it’s the leftist cause du jour only because there’s little meat left on the “Russia collusion” bone, so the media is sticking to its go-to strategy of fomenting racial division. But what’s most interesting about all of this is that the people offering the most historically ignorant comments about the Civil War generally preface their statements with “people should learn their history,” or something to...

The mayor of Richmond, Virginia on Wednesday said he wants to see the removal of Confederate statues on the city’s famous avenue of monuments. He added, “These monuments should be part of our dark past and not of our bright future. I personally believe they are offensive and need to be removed.”

Yet as one of the videos shows, the news van's headlights were pointed at the memorial before, during, and after the incident, illuminating it as the suspect spray-painted the monument. Channel 12's team arrived in the parking lot of Wesley Bolin Plaza just after 4:40 a.m., the video shows, seconds after the vandalism suspect rode up on a bicycle. The suspect appears to have ridden or walked near the van before and after the incident, which is still being investigated by the Arizona Department of Public Safety. In contrast, West reported on the morning news, and also in a live video on...

Once more unto the breach, once more, to seek political sanity concerning statuary and other symbols that some find offensive, to prevent the facsimile of another Civil War, and to stop erasing the nation’s history. If it is time to heal the wounds between different sections of the nation, it is also, perhaps, time to wound the heals engaged in violence or improperly labelling those from they differ as “racists.” The question should be raised as in legal and police investigations, cui bono, who benefits? Strong differences accompanied by some violence continue over the removal of monuments linked to leaders...

George Orwell’s dictum, "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," is often quoted, and for good reason. But it is usually quoted out of context. The passage begins: "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -- if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. " Then comes the aphorism, and Orwell continues: "And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. All that was needed was...

The state flag of Arkansas sports 25 white stars and four blue ones. And in 1987, while serving as governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton signed a bill affirming that one of those blue stars is there in honor of the Confederate States of America. The state’s General Assembly reaffirmed the parameters of the flag in a 1987 act that Clinton signed. Among other provisions detailing the flag’s features, such as its colors and shapes, there was a line that read, “The blue star above the word ‘ARKANSAS’ is to commemorate the Confederate States of America.”