Battle of Athens, TN 1946. GI's take up arms against corruption/shock the nation!

American Heritage ^ | 4/23/09 | FreeMike

[freemike]

The GIs came home to find that a political machine had taken over their Tennessee county. What they did about it astounded the nation.AmericanHeritage

If you're in a hurry, here's the shorter version

The American Heritage version is long but worth the read!Libertas

[freemike]

In McMinn County, Tennessee, in the early 1940s, the question was not if you farmed, but where you farmed. Athens, the county seat, lay between Knoxville and Chattanooga along U.S. Highway 11, which wound its way through eastern Tennessee. This was the meeting place for farmers from all the surrounding communities. Traveling along narrow roads planted with signs urging them to “See Rock City” and “Get Right with God,” they would gather on Saturdays beneath the courthouse elms to discuss politics and crops.

Other excerpts:

“There were several beer joints and honky-tonks around Athens; we were pretty wild; we started having trouble with the law enforcement at that time because they started making a habit of picking up GIs and fining them heavily for most anything—they were kind of making a racket out of it.

“After long hard years of service—most of us were hard-core veterans of World War II—we were used to drinking our liquor and our beer without being molested. When these things happened, the GIs got madder—the more GIs they arrested, the more they beat up, the madder we got …”

The veterans fielded candidates for five offices, but interest centered on the race for sheriff between Knox Henry, who had served in the North African campaign, and Paul Cantrell. Since the 1936 election Cantrell had gone on to the legislature as state senator and installed Pat Mansfield as sheriff of McMinn County. A big, jovial sometime engineer for the Louisville & Nashville, Mansfield had done very nicely for himself during his term of office: his four years as sheriff had netted him an estimated $104,000. But now, in 1946, Cantrell was running for sheriff and Mansfield for state senator.

Otto Kennedy, not an ex-GI himself but a political adviser to the veterans, entered the office and announced that Cantrell had posted armed guards at each precinct. They all knew that this move was in preparation for the 4:00 P.M. poll closings when the ballot boxes would be moved to the jail for counting. A small group of the veterans demanded an armed mobilization and called for a leader. Buttram declined. So did Kennedy, but he offered the rear of his Essankay Garage and Tire Shop across the street as a meeting hall.

The group crossed the street, held a meeting, and agreed that those who did not have weapons should get them and return as quickly as possible."

Read the whole story here!

[fso301]

interesting

[katiekins1]

Thank you. Book marked for tomorrow.

[Dems_R_Losers]

My mother is from Athens, though she had married and moved away by 1946. We are very familiar with this story.

[mia]

Good story. Gives one hope.

[freemike]

I think I should have posted excerpts from the shorter Guns and Ammo version. It gets to the point quicker.

Here are some:

"As Recently As 1946, American Citizens Were Forced To Take Up Arms As A Last Resort Against Corrupt Government Officials.

On August 1-2, 1946, some Americans, brutalized by their county government, used armed force as a last resort to overturn it. These Americans wanted honest open elections. For years they had asked for state or federal election monitors to prevent vote fraud (forged ballots, secret ballot counts, and intimidation by armed sheriff's deputies) by the local political boss. They got no help.

These Americans' absolute refusal to knuckle under had been hardened by service in World War II. Having fought to free other countries from murderous regimes, they rejected vicious abuse by their county government.

These Americans had a choice. Their state's Constitution—Article 1, §26 —recorded their right to keep and bear arms for the common defense. Few "gun control" laws had been enacted.

These Americans were residents of McMinn County, which is located between Chattanooga and Knoxville in Eastern Tennessee. The two main towns were Athens and Etowah. McMinn County residents had long been independent political thinkers. For a long time, they also had accepted bribe-taking by politicians and/or the sheriff to overlook illicit whiskey-making and had financed the sheriff's department from fines—usually for speeding or for public drunkenness, which promoted false arrests, and they had put up with voting fraud by both Democrats and Republicans."

Check the shorter version link up above for the rest of the story

[skinkinthegrass]

thanks, for the post.

[knarf]

"Bill White, who had fought in the Pacific while still in his teens and come home an ex-sergeant, had gotten angrier as the day wore on. At two in the afternoon he had harangued the group of veterans in the Essankay, saying: “You call yourselves GIs—you go over there and fight for three and four years—you come back and you let a bunch of draft dodgers who stayed here where it was safe, and you were making it safe for them, push you around. … If you people don’t stop this, and now is the time and place, you people wouldn’t make a pimple on a fighting GI’s ass. Get guns…”

This is exactly what zero and his minions are afraid of ... and rightly so.

The ineffectual boy king sent a dyke out to be his jitterbug.

[NellieMae]

Tennessee ping

[OneWingedShark]

I like the quote.
PS - I’m also thinking of getting several long-guns of the same caliber (3x to be exact).

[knarf]

Yeah ... y’can’t be any more pointed than that.

[VR-21]

I hope there’s still some of that DNA around.

[TXnMA]

Now that is what the Zerobama/Napolitano/DemocRAT Marxist regime that has usurped our central government are scared s%$#less of!

They know that the same thing is likely to happen to them !

[Dr. Thorne]

BUMP

[Boiling point]

Here is a very good audio account of what happened. I tried to post it last week and gave a text summery of the audio, but I guess that didn’t fly for the mods, but I’m glad someone got it posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZHwRFga0rQ

[RedMonqey]

A perfect example of what the Second Amendment was meant for...

[ASOC]

Shades of Starship Troopers...

[A. Patriot]

I met Bill White around 1979 at his store up in the mountains out from Telico Plains, TN. He was an incredible man. His WWII experiences are also incredible.

Here is an oral history in his own words done in 2000:

AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL WHITE

Here is an excerpt:

WILSON: So you didn’t take any prisoners?

WHITE: No prisoners. Some of these Marines over there took prisoners on Guadalcanal, but that wasn’t us. The Special Forces didn’t take no prisoners. Yeah, we killed them all, and killed all we could, and wanted to kill more. We couldn’t kill enough of them because they badly mistreated us. So we’re going to badly mistreat them. You don’t win wars by being good people. You have to be as cruel and as vicious as that enemy or you don’t win. It’s just that simple, no in-betweens. You just fight to the death and let it go at that. That’s hard for people to understand, but that’s the way I liked it. Do you think for a minute that I’d give up to them people, let them abuse me, and torture me, and then kill me? No! That’s silly. You kill all of them you could kill. And then let them kill you if they can. That’s the way it is. And most Marines thought that way. That’s just the way American boys think. At least those American boys thought that way.--end of excerpt.

Later in life, he also hunted wild boar with a spear. He had the scars on his legs to prove it too.

[Kartographer]

Choose this day how you will serve; Will you serve unwillingly and at the biding of others wearing the yoke of socialism or will hold true to the course of our forefathers’ standing tall and serving freely? As for me I choose to SERVE THE REPUBLIC!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24180181@N04/3460595404/in/photostream/

[wafflehouse]

great post! i had never heard of this before