Atlanta City Council to take up renaming Confederate Avenue (Stone Mountain: schools, to live in)

[CaliDreaming01]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

To me it is not interesting. My ancestors were among those who were enslaved, followed by subjugation under Jim Crow. The Confederate flag and tributes to Confederate soldiers need to be looked at the same way as Germany has looked at the Nazis and the Holocaust. When you recognize that what they are about is wrong, you don't pay tribute to them. You remember them, but you don't honor them. You don't hold them in high esteem.

Just in case it was not clear, I was agreeing with you.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by CaliDreaming01

Just in case it was not clear, I was agreeing with you.

I think it would have been a good to clarify that.

[CaliDreaming01]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

I think it would have been a good to clarify that.

OK I just did. Also, please note that I am also African American and my parents were among the first black students to attend previously segregated high schools in two Georgia counties. You might not have intended it, but I felt that you were assuming that I could not relate to what you were saying.

[chiatldal]

Originally Posted by bu2

There are categories. Streets often change names.

If you start to change lake and city names that's a bigger step.

Some of the monuments were put in place to let Blacks know their place. But others were simply to honor lost relatives. Lee was often used as a symbol of the southern foot soldiers. The US Army adopted a policy of naming their forts after both Union and Confederate generals to bring the nation back together. There is a Ft. McPherson. And a Ft. Bragg. A Ft. Meade. And a Ft. Hood. And numerous others. With someplace like Stone Mountain, you can recognize Southerners who helped the Union, not erase the memory of the vast majority who didn't. You can recognize the 40-60% slave populations that helped build LA, MS, AL, GA and SC. I don't think its widely known just how significant those slave populations were.

Again there a difference between knowing history and celebrating and honoring. So when you say "erase the memory" it's already errous. because to know about the CSA is very different from saying it should be celebrate and honor. their "memory" should be in history books and museums not honor with places names after and statues.

Abraham Lincoln a northern progressive Republican pick nearly his polar opposite as VP Andrew Johnson was a southern conservative Democrat for political reasons. So when Ab pasted Andrew took over he was very sympathetic to Southern racist, This lead to end of the reconstruction era. And why it became a failure. If the northern Republicans prevail you wouldn't have bases and etc name after CSA general and etc.


Andrew Johnson was with stark odds with the northern Republicans

Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

After the civil war during reconstruction again a lot of southern states were about half black. This cause the first black congressmen to appear, but through immediately and violence suppressed the black vote, When that happen then shouldn't southern conservative whites dominate the political landscape more representative then their population represented. And These new conservative southern leaders started passing Jim crows laws.


Which bring the irony of " I don't think its widely known just how significant those slave populations were." of course you wouldn't know. That revision and image Southern conservatives wanted to push with CSA monuments, They wanted paint the CSA as something to honor at the same time disfranchise the black populations

So when the streets were name there were no longer black congressman in south, blacks who were half the population could not voice their rejection of these monument. So in a sense from the start the monuments were force on society and the rejection to them was disfranchise.


https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zeeoYKOZad4/maxresdefault.jpg

[brownhornet]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

To me it is not interesting. My ancestors were among those who were enslaved, followed by subjugation under Jim Crow. The Confederate flag and tributes to Confederate soldiers need to be looked at the same way as Germany has looked at the Nazis and the Holocaust. When you recognize that what they are about is wrong, you don't pay tribute to them. You remember them, but you don't honor them. You don't hold them in high esteem.

Great post. No idea how people don't comprehend how disrespectful this confederate glorification in the south is.

[arjay57]

Confederate Avenue has been there for probably 100 years, although I don't recall anybody saying anything about it until recently. However, if city residents are upset by the name, then change it.

How do y'all feel about renaming Grady High School and Grady Hospital? Sad to say, but there are a SLEW of prominent folks in the city's history who vigorously supported Jim Crow and other racist policies.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Confederate Avenue has been there for probably 100 years, although I don't recall anybody saying anything about it until recently. However, if city residents are upset by the name, then change it.

How do y'all feel about renaming Grady High School and Grady Hospital? Sad to say, but there are a SLEW of prominent folks in the city's history who vigorously supported Jim Crow and other racist policies.

Houston renamed its Grady Middle School in addition to Sidney Lanier MS and Jeff Davis HS and several others.

[Iconographer]

Originally Posted by bu2

Houston renamed its Grady Middle School in addition to Sidney Lanier MS and Jeff Davis HS and several others.

Well, bully for them. Why not rename Houston itself while they're at it?

"Despite his pro-slavery views, he believed in preserving the Union."

https://www.history.com/topics/sam-houston

Read on. He sounds like a real prick, if you ask me.

[cparker73]

Originally Posted by bu2

It needs to be put in context, but sandblasting it is just turning us into the Taliban.

But the KKK are terrorists just like the Taliban. Why should we tolerate their monument that perpetuates a lie. Think of it like all the Lenin and Stalin statues that came down at the end of the Soviet Union. Jim Crow and segregation are over, so all the symbols supporting them must come down.

[AnsleyPark]

Originally Posted by bu2

Horrible post.

One example of this thinking is Sidney Lanier, the poet. His name got removed from a school in Texas because he spent a couple years as a private in the Confederate Navy, most of which was in a Northern prison camp, from which he got the TB which eventually killed him.

The school being named after him had nothing to do with his insignificant career as a soldier.

This thinking would mean nothing could be named after almost anyone from the South who lived from 1861-1865. In other words, wiping out just about anyone born from 1800 on.

No human being is a saint or always makes the best decisions. MLK cheated on his wife and was a communist during the cold war. The other things he did outweighed the negative.

Streets, so what? If the residents want a new name, fine. But wholesale removing and changing of everything is just mindless. Those who advocate that should think about how this generation will be viewed in the future, and, how some of our behavior would have been viewed in the past. Our vulgarity, pornography, out of wedlock births with kids abandoned by the fathers and lack of civility would have been astounding to people in the past.

I must disagree with you. This has nothing to do with someone known primarily as a poet. I imagine the vast majority of all Georgians know Mr. Lanier only by "The Song of the Chattahoochee." But, when someone or some thing is known primarily for enslavement, treason, etc., that's a different calculus.