Free Republic

Black, White, Jewish, American-Indian and Hispanic Americans who served the Confederacy during the War Between the States.

Confederate History Month commemorates the men and women of the Confederate States of America.

In 2009, the Georgia General Assembly approved Senate Bill No. 27, signed by Governor Sonny Perdue, officially and permanently designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

The battle between heritage and hate is erupting again. A state appeals court now says a Confederate heritage group can sue the state over removal of controversial memorial plaques in the Texas Supreme Court. As long as the plaques that barely mention the Confederacy hang in the Texas Supreme Court, Terry Ayers says the state is slighting his and others' ancestors who fought in the Civil War. "I want to take my grandchildren down to the supreme court and show them, 'Look, your great, great grandfather, this building was dedicated to him.' Of course it's personal," Ayers said. The Texas...

As is customary across the South, Gov. Haley Barbour has declared April as "confederate Heritage Month" in Mississippi. In keeping with this important, public recognition of our valiant Confederate ancestors, the Margaret Reed Crosby Memorial Library, the Friends of the Library, and the Gainesville Volunteer (Sons of Confederate Veterans) are featuring a Confederate "Heritage of Honor" display in the library's foyer through April 12, 2004. The public is cordially invited to view the display during regular library hours. In declaring April as Confederate Heritage Month, Gov. Barbour said: "Whereas April is the month in which the Confederate States began and...

  Staff photo by Doug Koontz Civil War re-enactors from North Carolina prepare to march through the streets of Boonsboro on Thursday morning on a two-day march over South Mountain to raise money for a Civil War monument.     BOONSBORO — Roughly 30 men carrying rifles, wearing slouch hats and dressed in Confederate uniforms marched out of the American Legion parking lot Thursday, heading for Fox's Gap. The scuffed leather boots of the 13th North Carolina Civil War Re-enacting Regiment, and those of a few local recruits, were about to travel the path that Brig. Gen. Samuel Garland's...

A Brookhaven unit that distinguished itself during the War Between the States will soon have a monument dedicated to its members in Railroad Park. Roy Wooten, commander of the Brookhaven Light Artillery Sons of Confederate Veterans Chapter, said the historical marker is the result of several years of investigative and cooperative efforts.The marker is being provided by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and its text was proposed by Elbert Hilliard, director."The Brookhaven Light Artillery has her history scattered all over the five states in which she served," Wooten said. "To the best of my knowledge, no real attempt...

DEFUNIAK SPRINGS -- Commissioners in the Florida Panhandle's Walton County have refused to haul down a Confederate battle flag from a Civil War memorial on the courthouse lawn. The unanimous vote came Tuesday in response to a request by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "We say that it's a flag of hatred," said Sabu Williams, an NAACP chapter leader. "Put it in a place of historical value, not in front of a place of justice." Williams suggested putting it in a museum. He said any Confederate flag flown on public property is offensive to blacks. Nelson...

<p>HOLLYWOOD -- For decades Forrest Street cut through Hollywood seemingly unnoticed, separating the north from the south, carving an insidious path through the heart of the city’s black community.</p> <p>Only a few seemed to know about the road’s namesake, thinking it to be Confederate general and the first Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. But as more residents of the city’s mostly black Liberia neighborhood learn about him, the street name is evoking painful images of hooded men and burning crosses.</p>

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Leaders of the Sons of Confederate Veterans backed off plans for a campaign against the state's largest utility Friday, saying they are satisfied for now with the company's rebel flag policies."I am guardedly optimistic about our future relations with big business in South Carolina," said Don Gordon, a local leader of the group, said during a news conference outside the downtown headquarters of Scana Corp.A newspaper report last week said Scana, parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas, had prohibited employees from parking cars with Confederate emblems on company property. It also reportedly barred them...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A handful of Confederate flag supporters picketed outside South Carolina Electric & Gas headquarters yesterday to protest a flag-ban policy by the utility's parent company."To me, it is a symbol — an international symbol — of resistance to government tyranny," said 64-year-old Frank Abernathy, who stood on the downtown street corner with a large Confederate flag waving over his shoulder.The protest came after The State newspaper reported last week that Scana Corp., the state's largest utility and owner of SCE&G, had warned employees not to bring Confederate flag paraphernalia onto company property. Scana also said employees could...

GULFPORT (AP) -- The Gulfport Business Club has adopted a resolution asking Harrison County supervisors to remove the Rebel flag from a public beach display.Only a few of the about 100 members present Tuesday voted against the resolution.The club's vote came one day after the Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III, the chief operating officer of the NAACP, vowed that the national civil rights organization will not back down until the Rebel flag comes down from the Eight Flags Display.Harrison County supervisors have said they have no intentions of changing their decision to fly the flag.The Gulfport Business Club's resolution asks...

<p>BILOXI — A majority of elected officials representing Harrison County won't take a stand on whether the Confederate battle flag should keep flying at the Eight Flags display.</p> <p>Instead, most defer to the county Board of Supervisors.</p> <p>The display sits on the beach at the border of Biloxi and Gulfport and has been the source of debate for years.</p>

GULFPORT, Miss. - (KRT) - A decision by Harrison County supervisors to fly the Rebel flag at the Eight Flags display has forced the lid off simmering unrest that could boil over this weekend and draw national attention to Mississippi. On Friday, protesters both for and against the Rebel flag staged peaceful demonstrations at the Gulfport-Biloxi city lines. Saturday, a group led by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have scheduled press conferences.Supervisors took the controversial flag down two years ago amid protests and flag thefts, but officials agreed...

<p>BILOXI — A group of about 20 people gathered Thursday at the Eight Flags on the beach on the Gulfport-Biloxi line to protest the return of the Confederate flag to the display.</p> <p>Alcorn State University student Jason Whitfield, 21, of Biloxi, has been perched at the Eight Flags display since Wednesday and was joined by others Thursday.</p>

From afar, or more precisely through a pair of Union Army field glasses, it could be a Rodman naval gun or Columbiad, the kind of iron firepower that could jolt the ground and make a Civil War soldier consider other lines of work. Up close, it looks like what it is: a crudely shaped log with some black paint slapped on. And that's exactly what Dave Purschwitz was pushing into place yesterday at Mayfield Fort in Manassas.Called "Quaker guns" because they couldn't hurt a fly, the camouflaged logs were used by wily Confederate commanders to exaggerate their strength or mask...

Confederate descendants plan ceremonies In old cemeteries across the South this month descendants of Confederate soldiers, sailors and statesmen are gathering to remember their ancestors and pay tribute to their struggles during the War Between the States. Even Florida — the third state to secede — was touched by the fire, sending some 15,000 men to the front lines from Virginia to Tennessee and all points in between. Some of them are buried here in Lake and Sumter counties. The Marion Dragoons Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and two local Sons of Confederate Veterans groups are hosting...

April, since the middle 1990s, has grown to be a month-long celebration and remembrance to those brave men and women of Dixie who took a stand for Southern Independence.These people of the South were the sons and daughters of those, who, almost a century before had stood up to King George and told him the colonies of England were going to secede from the mother country. Many governors, including Georgia's Roy Barnes, have issued proclamations to recognize the men and women who put everything on the line for their convictions and their freedom. Many mayors and counties throughout our...

nbsp; Secrets of the sea03/10/02By ROY HOFFMAN Writer in Residence CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Shea McLean was born down in Alabama, in Mobile, on Feb. 17, 1964 -- one century to the day after eight Confederate sailors disappeared in Charleston Harbor on the submarine H.L. Hunley. McLean, a marine archaeologist, finds that coincidence slightly eerie. quot;Some re-enactors pointed out the dates to me,quot; says McLean, 38, a tall, dark-haired man who looks, ironically, a little like Armande Assante, who played Mobile riverboat engineer George E. Dixon, the Hunley captain, in a television movie about the submarine. quot;They say I was...