Free Republic

Bobby Jindal won tonight. I may live in Georgia now, but I'm Louisianian through and through. This is historic. No one has ever won a gubernatorial primary outright in Louisiana until tonight. I cannot really express what this means to me. It's like how the exiled English felt when Mary I died and Elizabeth was crowned. It was safe to go home again. If you don't live in Louisiana, you have no clue what it is like. You may think you do, but you don't. You make think your state sucks, but it doesn't really compared to Louisiana. Louisiana sucks...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday the Senate should apologize for slavery and segregation, calling them “dark chapters in our history.” McCain said he would support a planned resolution by fellow Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who is also seeking the presidency, to apologize for racist laws, some of which ended more than a century ago. “They were federal policies,” Brownback told the Boston Globe on Monday. “They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward . . . is at the end of the day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness.” McCain agreed...

Anybody remember “That’s What I Like about the South”? How about Phil Harris, who had a hit with that ditty in 1947? Let’s not always see the same hands. The point is I like the South. Born and raised here. Have relatives all over. But some folks actually fear the South. That got me thinking. Last week staffers from the House Homeland Security Committee came to the Bank of America NASCAR race in Concord, North Carolina. It was a fact-finding trip about “public health-preparedness at mass gatherings.” Organizers of the trip advised the staffers to get vaccinated before they went...

Few parts of the world are as loved and loathed with the intensity that is felt for the American South. Thanks to a long line of contributions to the popular culture from Gone with the Wind to Borat, via Deliverance, Dixie, the great muggy swath of the southeastern United States, from Washington DC to Texas, has a firm grip on the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike. To its detractors it is a terrifying and contemptible land full of racist rednecks, Bible-toting hypocrites and downtrodden blacks. To those of a more romantic disposition, and certainly to most of its inhabitants,...

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- TV viewers have seen a lot of Fred Thompson lately, as the star of "Law and Order" or as an undeclared presidential candidate. But the mystery of if he'll run unraveled late Thursday afternoon when his political director officially announce his campaign for president on September 6. Those who know Thompson well say he ups the ante in what is already a high stakes presidential poker match. "It would be great for Tennessee to get him in the White House," said Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-2nd District). Rep. Duncan helped push the Fred Thompson for President movement several...

L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who made history as the nation's first elected black governor, is preparing to campaign aggressively for Barack Obama, and predicted in an interview that the charismatic young candidate could shatter the Republican Party's virtual lock on the South. "He's not race-less," Wilder said of Obama, "but the skin color is of no moment. I don't think he would be an easy target for the Republicans." The unstinting embrace by Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, could be important in Virginia and other southern states, where his reputation still looms large and the African-American vote could...

IN MY OPINION One of the first lessons you learn when studying history is that history books are usually written by the side that wins the war. After the Civil War, the South's role in the American Revolution was relegated to practically a footnote. My 10th-grade U.S. history book basically had two paragraphs about the South's role -- the British took Charleston, there were lots of backwoods skirmishes in the Carolinas at places such as Kings Mountain and Cowpens, and the British surrendered at Yorktown. The implication was that the only battles of consequence took place within 200 miles of...

Please excuse the clumsiness of a 54-year-old, good ole Southern boy writer who don't know much about blogging, but I was curious to read some reactions to Is It True What They Say About Dixie by Mary Knapp. Miss Knapp did a fair job, but some quotes were a little out of context. The quote about "our ancestors are racists" really should be something like: "Outsiders to the South say our ancestors were racist slave owners so today's Southerners must be racist too." My original quote was meant to show the absurdity of the point of view that some have...

Hugh Hewitt wondered aloud on his radio show this week if Fred Thompson might not be a good GOP nominee for President because the country “might not want another slow talking Southerner after Bush.” He’s not the only GOP commentator I have heard express this sentiment. Every time I hear someone say this, I have to wonder if the person saying it is projecting their own anti-southern bigotry onto the American public or if their really is a large bloc of voters that would base their vote on where someone is from and/or how fast they talk. It was especially...

Jesse Rae Beard is one of the 'Jena Six' students on trial This World investigates the rise of discrimination in America's deep south as six black youths are charged with an alleged attack on a white student, which could see them jailed for up to 50 years. Three rope nooses hanging from a tree in the courtyard of a school in a small Southern town in Louisiana have sparked fears of a new kind of "stealth" racism spreading through America's deep south. Although this sinister episode happened last August, the repercussions have been extensive and today the town of...

...he was stunned to see two large Confederate flags flying from trucks...emblazoned with the words "The South Shall Rise Again." I'm stunned, too, that people still think it is cool to fly this flag. Our society should bury these flags -- not flaunt them...because the Confederate flag symbolizes racial tyranny to so many... ...This flag doesn't belong on city streets, in videos or in the middle of civil discussion. It belongs in our past -- in museums and in history books -- along with the ideas it represents.

I have lunch with a good friend of mine at Alcorn State fairly often. Not long after we met, we discovered that we had quite a bit in common. Not only were we the same age, but we had both grown up in the 1960’s in the river city of Natchez. We both have two kids, and our daughters attend the same college. Plus, we both have a passion for providing opportunities for young people to grow and excel. Having so much in common, you might have thought we probably would have crossed paths so many years ago in Natchez,...

ROCK HILL, S.C. - A research facility is planned for York County that will focus on the role of Southern states in the Revolutionary War. Historian Michael Scoggins said the Southern Revolutionary War Institute will be used to educate people about the South's contributions to the war. It's a field he says has been neglected in the past. "There's been various fields that downplay the role of the South," Scoggins said. "When you look at most history textbooks, we are generally given the short treatment." The institute will be based at the McCelvey Center in York and local officials hope...

'"No Southern man is complete without a tenure under military rule." That one sentence penned by author Pat Conroy in his best-selling novel The Lords of Discipline , is utter truth spoken to the heart of any Southern boy or man. It does not mean all Southern men serve, have served, or will serve their country. But it does mean that deep down in the well of the soul of the Southern American male there is a sense of duty and martial responsibility that cries out to be acted upon. I’ve chosen Southerners as an example, because I am Southern....

Concerned that executions were as arbitrary as lightning strikes, the U.S. Supreme Court halted capital punishment across the country in 1972. Laws were rewritten to the high court's satisfaction, and in a landmark decision 30 years ago today, states were allowed to resume executions. Since then, 1,029 killers have been shot, hanged, gassed, electrocuted or fatally injected. And since then, geography has had much to do with a murderer's fate. Though 38 states now have a death penalty, one region carries it out far more often than any other. Southern states have executed 81 percent of the national total since...

Confined to her bed in Atlanta by a broken ankle and arthritis, she was given a stack of blank paper by her husband, who said, "Write a book." Did she ever. The novel's first title became its last words, "Tomorrow is another day," and at first she named the protagonist Pansy. But Pansy became Scarlett, and the title of the book published 70 years ago this week became "Gone With the Wind." You might think that John Steinbeck, not Margaret Mitchell, was the emblematic novelist of the 1930s, and that the publishing event in American fiction in that difficult decade...

Greetings from North Carolina, where I'm spending the next few months as a visiting fellow at something called the National Humanities Center. It's located mid-way between the three cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, which together form one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States, along with the region that includes Charlotte, the largest city in the state. Here's an example of what is known as the "New" South, which is booming as never before. For some time economic power has been shifting in this country, away from the old, industrialised North East towards states that were once...

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H. W. Brands. Published by Doubleday, a division of Random House, New York. 2005, 560 pages. Part of gaining a deeper understanding of American history is reading presidential biographies. Each biography is not only a look at the person who occupied America's highest office but is a window on the events, individuals and decisions that shaped America's destiny and character. H. W. Brands is a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and is best known for his biography of Benjamin Franklin "The First American," that was a finalist for the...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - "Y'all" isn't welcome in Erica Tobolski's class in voice and diction at the University of South Carolina. And forget about "fixin'," as in getting ready to do something, or "pin" when talking about the writing instrument. Tobolski's class is all about getting rid of accents, mostly Southern ones in the heart of the former Confederacy, and replacing them with Standard American Dialect, the uninflected tone of TV news anchors that oozes authority and refinement. "We sort of avoid talking about class in this country, but clearly class is indicated by how we speak," she said. "Many come...

Attorney Bryan Stevenson poses for a portrait Thursday Nov. 17, 2005 in Montgomery, Ala. Stevenson, a Delaware native who specializes in representing death-row inmates, has lived in Alabama since 1989 handling capital cases. (AP Photo/Rob Carr) BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Blacks have a complicated love affair with the South. Their ancestors were enslaved in the region for generations, then Jim Crow laws pushed them to the back of the bus. From inner-city slums to old plantation counties, being black too often still means a second-class existence. Yet surveys show blacks who live in the South are more likely than...

The elite doesn't understand the South Matt Towery September 1, 2005 I'm known to write occasionally that the rest of America doesn't understand the South. Now comes some clear and convincing evidence. As fate would have it, InsiderAdvantage, the company that I lead, just this week purchased the long-established Washington, D.C.-based Southern Political Report. Hastings Wyman, a widely respected political reporter in Washington, will continue to edit the publication. But as Hurricane Katrina approached, we were in the last stages of creating a daily web-based version of the report. Immediately, we called on all the resources of the Southern Political...

Americans cheered the latest release of the test called "the nation's report card," which showed marked long-term gains in math and reading for elementary and junior high students. But the loudest applause is due for the South, as it turns out. Largely missed in the initial hoopla was a startling fact: Much of the national progress reported for 9- and 13-year-olds was driven by gains in the South. For example, while 9-year-olds in the Northeast gained 10 points in reading achievement (the equivalent of a grade level) over the past 30 years, the South gained 24, according to the National...

Anyone who wants to know where American politics is headed should look at the U.S. Census Bureau's eye-popping population shift projections for the next three decades. In a nutshell, it forecasts that Americans will continue moving out of the liberal bastions of the Northeast and Midwest and into the Sun Belt states in the South and West. That, in turn, will boost Republican congressional and electoral clout and further erode the Democrats' strength in its political base. Republicans have refastened their electoral lock on the South and the Western plains and mountain states, while Democrats have lost electoral strength in...

Bias against Southerners misses the mark By RICHARD COX Published July 11, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Does prejudice exist in Pasco County, an area with a very diverse population and seemingly very progressive? I am certain that African-Americans, Hispanics and people from other countries, the poor and homeless, as well as members of certain religious faiths, experience treatment different from the mainstream populace. However, I am a member of a minority who has experienced attitudes and reactions from many individuals who assume that I am intellectually and socially challenged. A very large percentage of the population of New Port Richey in particular...

On this day of July the 3rd in 1863 the Army of Northern Virginia left the field at Gettysburg PA , broken . On this same day CSA forces at Vicksburg in Mississippi surrendered after a long and difficult siege . To all the brave men that died on this day in 1863 , on both sides of North and South , I offer a toast ,and a heartfelt thanks for their sacrifice . You are not forgotten.

The Black Confederate By: Tom Darby · Section: Diaries Contrary to popular historical education and Southern revisionists, there is much evidence that African-American's served their country not only in the Union army but also in the Confederate army and navy. This evidence is found in the diaries, journals, newspaper articles and documents written by soldiers, officers and politicians. Many institutions have set about to dismantle these findings by declaring them as `revisionist,' however the proof that these written accounts exist at all shows that slaves were present in the service of their state and country. It was the commanders in...

In today's installation of the Redneck Scrapbook we bring you a family portrait... Previous scrapbooks can be found here

When Sarah Perry looks out her window in Gretna, Va., she sees her childhood. Across the street is the rambling white farmhouse where she grew up. It's part of the reason she returned to the South. Nostalgia called. In 1957, Perry left Virginia for Bridgeport to attend business school. The North offered blacks opportunity, she had heard. In Greenwich, she landed a job in the accounting department of a magazine publisher and later for a major international mining company. She married and raised four children in the area. But after four decades, the North began to lose its luster. Her...

The Liberals howled at “Justice Sunday.” Way too ‘uppity’ of Senator Frist to speak about a political issue, a majority rules vote on judges, from a Baptist church in Kentucky and simulcast to over 1,000 other churches – when the church isn’t predominately Black! Conservatives condemned Democrat hostility to ‘people of faith’ and not one of their church leaders was a practicing homosexual. That Religious Right is not supposed to speak out in public. Or serve as judges. Or get elected. Or even vote. But millions did in ‘04. Liberals hate that and covet the votes. Liberals just don’t understand...

RALEIGH -- Companies seeking state contracts would have to examine their pasts under a bill approved by a House committee Wednesday. The measure would require companies to determine whether they profited from the 19th-century slave trade in the United States. Democratic Reps. Earl Jones of Greensboro and Larry Womble of Winston-Salem championed the bill. If it became law, companies would have to submit an affidavit stating their research findings but would not have to take specific steps if they should find they profited from slavery.

SPRINGFIELD - It is said that Cairo, Ill., is closer to Memphis than Chicago - literally, and perhaps figuratively, too. Now, Gov. Rod Blagojevich may be taking that sentiment to heart. Blagojevich, who chairs the Midwestern Governors Association, said in February that he is considering also joining the Southern Governors' Association "because southern Illinois is in many ways a southern state." More than a month later, however, the proposal is news to everyone Blagojevich would have to contact to join the club, including the SGA's executive director and chair. Blagojevich already serves as chairman for the Midwestern Governors Association. "And...

As a Louisiana native who is now living north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I am well aware of the concerted effort to erase Southern culture from the nation's collective consciousness. I have written numerous articles addressing this social cancer, and every time I do I inevitably hear from people who have the audacity to call me an extremist. "The Civil War is over," they say. "The South lost. Get over it!" Sure. Never mind that those of us who defend the South do so in response to the increasingly virulent attacks on our heritage. Forget that political correctness has...

New Orleans – "What’s the South like?" said the man in the white suit at the next table, mulling over the question. "That’s what they all ask. Well, that depends on which South you mean — the antebellum mansion, the fly-specked roadhouse, or the latest of the New Souths, the Sunbelt. Or northern Mexico, aka Texas. Or one of the uncountable other Souths. Which image is the facade for which?" The man in the white suit soon warmed to his inexhaustible subject: "One South fits into the next like one of those Russian dolls. Do not be quick to decide...

Sorry Link only Gannett

2 county officials make shift to GOP By Kurt Allen/Assistant Managing Editor When Robyn Flowers and Barbara Hale were trying to find their place in the world of politics, it was almost a given it would be the Democratic Party. Growing up in the South, Democrats ruled the region, and there was little thought given to being Republican. "I think probably, like most people my age, if you were born and raised in Texas, you've been a Democrat because that's what your family did," said Hale, Walker County's court-at-law judge. How the times do change. Now the South, and Texas...

They ran the Daytona 500 last Sunday afternoon and the New York Times even covered it. It was not so long ago that the Times would have considered stock-car racing unworthy of its attention; but there is no denying NASCAR these days. The Daytona race — broadcast on Fox — pulled higher ratings than the NBA all-star game. What was once the pastime of moonshine-running rednecks has gone mainstream. NASCAR is even listed on the New York Stock exchange. As they say in the south, "Son, we ain't trash no more." NASCAR has every other sport beat cold when it...

Howard Dean and Yankee Democrats don't have a clue what it means to be a Southerner. It's not about Confederate flags. It's about honor, family, self reliance and American patriotism. Who are these Confederate voters that Vermonter Howard Dean wants to represent? Is Jefferson Davis on the ballot again? I thought he was dead, along with the Confederate States of America. Hey, I’m a Southerner, why didn’t I get the memo? Duh, Dean was just being "hisself", a Yankee liberal, describing voters as he sees people – divided by race, class and gender. What a hoot. Liberals imagine identity politics...

DECATUR, Ga. (AP) -- When Becky Cleaveland is out with her girlfriends, they all pick at salads except for the petite Atlanta woman. She tackles "The Hamdog." The dish, a specialty of Mulligan's, a suburban bar, is a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that's deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh yeah, it's also topped with a fried egg and two fistfuls of fries. "The owner says I'm the only girl who can eat a whole one without flinching," Cleaveland said proudly. Amid a national obesity epidemic and the South's...

Eight years ago, a handful of Roman Catholic families in Huntersville, a suburb of Charlotte, N.C., started a new parish. The home of their church, St. Mark, was a bowling alley. Our Lady of the Lanes, as they jokingly called it, was an apt symbol of the scarcity--and supple ingenuity--of Catholics in a region known as the buckle of the Protestant Bible Belt. Soon St. Mark was gaining a family a day. Now its almost 2,800 families hear Mass in a cavernous gymnasium as they await completion of a new church. Among the newcomers is Ben Liuzzo, 54, a financial-services...

Migration to the South Brings U.S. Blacks Full Circle by William H. Frey For More Information (Population Today, May/June 2001) Blacks ended the 20th century by returning to the region that they spent most of the century leaving. Their return reinforces the South's distinct racial profile as a mostly white-black region. Census 2000 numbers show that the non-Hispanic black population of the South surged in the 1990s by 3,575,211 people — more than in the other three regions of the United States combined. This number represents 58 percent of the total increase in the country's black population. It is roughly...

Feingold's ignorant original article http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/jan05/291010.asp Reply Senator, don’t judge us so quickly! By MORGAN MANN Posted: Jan. 8, 2005 Recently Sen. Russ Feingold visited my place of residence, Greenville, Ala., and in a shameless example of political opportunism, penned an article the likes of which would have made our former Gov. George Wallace proud. Related Coverage Russ Feingold: Goin’ South and learning a lesson about the two Americas Feingold labeled Greenville “the reddest spot on the entire map,” a place of economic decay demonstrated by check-cashing stores on every corner, run-down used car lots peddling rusted-out hulks, a citizenry with...

Without the South and the Sun Belt, we’re dead meat. My successor should remember: When the South was a reeking hospital corner of brutal racism and cretinous, Bible-thumping prejudice, it was overwhelmingly Democratic. Now it’s overwhelmingly Republican. What’s wrong with this picture? Has the South changed? Not really. The South stuck to its guns and now it’s running the show. We changed and we’re not. We need to take a long, hard look at our former glory in the 13 states of the old Confederacy, reopen the files on great Democrats like Bull O’Connor and Sheriff Haney, revisit that simpler,...

Bob Beckel says on Fox News that now with the South in solid Republican hands, it should be it's own nation. A confederacy if they want it. I guess the Dems don't think they've got a chance of getting that part of the country back.

Kerry has chosen to reject Southern values, and the South has rejected his campaign. Over the years, the new South has chosen a new Party; Republicans have converted the Democratic Dixie into “God’s country.” Those donkeys that remain behind the Mason-Dixon Line are forced to change sides (i.e. U.S. Senator Zell Miller of Georgia) or play conservatives on television (i.e. Governor Mike Easley of North Carolina). More and more governor’s mansions and senatorial seats are falling to the GOP. President George W. Bush is set to sweep the South. Not even young, ambitious trial lawyers can stop us. To play...

When asked by a caller how we could get Southern voters to vote for a democrat again, "Comic" Bill Maher just went on the following tirade against the South, Christians and Second Amendment patriots: You know, that's a sore point with me in the South, the way they have a stranglehold on the electorate because... excuse me... and I love playing the red states, because when I play the red states in my stand-up act, you know, I get all the people who don't usually have someone like me come to their state, so there's a great bonding. And I...

Despite outward appearances, the religion of the South is not football. It is religion itself. Naturally we try to keep that awkward fact under wraps in order to pass ourselves off as a New South - modern, progressive, secular, sanitized and Americanized at last. But it's just a show. It's impossible to hide our religiosity, what with churches of every size and description outnumbering even fast-food restaurants in any small Southern town. (And the fare the churches serve is a lot more variegated.) Then there are the scriptural phrases that pepper our language, sometimes in the form of shorthand biblical...

The South......Like it or we will kick your ass! Don't order filet mignon or pasta primavera at Waffle House. It's just a diner. They serve breakfast 24 hours a day. Let them cook something they know. If you confuse them, they'll kick your ass. Don't laugh at our Southern names. (Merleen, Bodie, Ovine, Luther, Ray, Tammy Lynn, Darla Beth, Inez, Billy Joe, Sissy, etc.) These people have all been known to kick ass. Don't order a bottle of pop of a can of soda down here. Down here it's called Coke. Nobody gives a flying damn whether it's Pepsi, RC, ...

Here's a Twist on Faith Based InitiativesHere's a twist. The conservative Republican Governor of Alabama, Bob Riley has moved the discussion of faith based initiatives to a whole new level with his bold proposal to INCREASE state taxes by a whopping total of $1.2 billion, the largest in history. Please continue reading below... For a Republican Governor this is surprising enough, but there's more. Riley is using the Bible as a source book for his decision. In a press release announcing his decision, Riley explained: "Alabamians are a faithful people who believe that creating a better world for our children...

<p>POSTED: Jan. 8, 2003 9:15 a.m.</p> <p>WHITESBURG, Ky. (AP) - An Appalachian advocacy group placed ads in some of the nation's largest newspapers Tuesday, criticizing a proposed CBS reality TV series that it says is demeaning to rural people.</p> <p>The show, which is being called "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," places a poor Appalachian family in a Beverly Hills mansion. Casting for the show is being conducted in the Appalachian states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.</p>

For those of you who would like more info on CBS proposed Real Beverly Hillbillies click on the link to Rural Strategies. I've already been in contact with these folks and they are really up against it. However, they are doing a pretty good job of gettin the word out and fighting back. Please take a look at the site and help out the folks who live in Bush country.