Next battle: The Confederate monument bill that supposedly isn’t about Confederate monuments – The Florida Times-Union

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Next battle: The Confederate monument bill that supposedly isn't about Confederate monuments - The Florida Times-Union

‘Are they trying to push people out of here?’: Confederate flag with ‘Welcome to Harrison’ sign sparks debate – WCPO 9 Cincinnati

HARRISON, Ohio Several residents in Harrison said they are in disbelief after seeing a Confederate flag with a "Welcome to Harrison, Ohio" sign.

"I drive past here every single day and never, ever, ever seen anything like that," said Wayne Johnson, who has lived in the city his entire life.

Johnson said the display on Harrison Avenue which also features Mayor Ryan Grubbs' name on the welcome sign is racist.

"Whats going on with Harrison? Whats Harrison really thinking? Are they trying to push people out of here?" Johnson said.

Grubbs said in an email, "This was brought to my attention Saturday afternoon after the family that owns the property posted the sign and put the flag up. This is not a City property or project."

The mayor said citizens have the right to free speech and people choose to "speak" in different ways.

"While the property owner may be within his rights, I do have a team looking into the display," Grubbs said. "We are looking to see if it is in violation of any of our zoning requirements, or if it is misrepresentation. It would be very easy for individuals to think that it is a city display."

Trudy Gaba, a social justice curator at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, isnt shocked to see a Confederate flag fly in Ohio.

"Flags are representative of ideologies of belief systems," Gaba said.

Gaba said it does complicate Ohios history, considering Ohio was a free state.

"It begs one to question what are we glorifying, what are we celebrating here," Gaba said. "The Confederate flag is emblematic of the desire to own people as property. You cant separate that from todays history."

She said its important to look at history holistically, and not in isolation. Gaba said the confederate flag is nothing to celebrate and is a painful reminder of slavery for Black and Brown people.

"When they see this flag, they dont see a romanticized history. They see a very painful history and the dehumanizing one, and theres nothing to celebrate and glorify there," she said.

Flags like the one in Harrison, she said, are why places like the Freedom Center need to exist.

"The Freedom Center is committed to really unifying the plurality of our voices and perspectives, to look at history of the past, so that we can arrive at a different future one in which we celebrate solidarity and unity, and we fight for equality," said Gaba.

WCPO has attempted to track down the property owner.

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'Are they trying to push people out of here?': Confederate flag with 'Welcome to Harrison' sign sparks debate - WCPO 9 Cincinnati

What those Confederate statues really symbolize – Tampa Bay Times

Here we go again. Yet another Republican legislator has proposed stringent penalties for any local officials who would have the temerity to take down monuments celebrating the Confederate States of America.

This time around, its state Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville. It is history, and history belongs to all Floridians (presumably including African American citizens of the Sunshine State), he said. We have started taking down statues for all sorts of things, a process he derided as cancel culture. A bad practice, admittedly, cancel culture, including things like canceling school library books, Rep. Black? Or do you want to hold that discussion for another time?

Okay, well stick with Confederate statues for the moment. Just what do these public memorials celebrate?

The best place to look for answers to this question is pretty clear: the speeches of the two most prominent leaders of the Confederate States, President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Vice President Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia.

Lets start with Jefferson Davis.

On April 29, 1861, the president delivered a major address to the Confederate Congress on the causes of the war. For years, northern congressional majorities had engaged in a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves of the southern states, he insisted.

Davis described slavery itself in these terms: A superior race had transformed brutal savages into a docile, intelligent and civilized agricultural laborers, now numbering close to 4 million in the South. And Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party had taken dead aim at the Souths peculiar institution.

They were prompted by a spirit of ultra fanaticism, he went on. In addition, fanatical organizations in the North, that is, abolitionists, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt. The object of this fanaticism was crystal clear, he posited: the destruction of the Souths slave system.

With interests of such magnitude imperiled, he concluded, disunion was the only course of action white Southerners could take to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced. Secession, in short, was white self-preservation, and the war came.

Vice President Stephens made the secessionist case in even starker terms in a speech delivered in Atlanta on March 13, 1861. The framers of the Confederate Constitution had solemnly discarded the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians, that all men, of all races, were equal, he openly acknowledged, and we had made African inequality and subordination, and the equality of white men, the chief cornerstone of the Southern Republic.

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Not much prevarication here, Rep. Black.

So here is my question. Are you sure you want those Confederate monuments to stand? Do you want stiff fines or restoration costs (whichever is larger) levied against those public officials who think we can do better by all of our citizens if we remove the statues celebrating these words, these views, this cause? Should the governor be authorized to remove these public servants from office for their actions? Should such a law be made retroactive and all those monuments taken down since Jan. 1, 2017, restored? If your HB 395 passes both houses of our Legislature and is signed by our governor, all this becomes law.

Maybe you do want all this to come to pass, but I think you owe it to all Floridians to explain exactly where you stand on the values and issues these monuments represent: racism, bigotry, the legitimacy of human bondage and the glorification of the men who launched what turned out to be the bloodiest war in American history. A war to defend slavery and the warped racial order white Southerners had erected on this benighted institution.

Maybe you want to stand with these men, Rep. Black. But you should know with whom and for what you are standing. We certainly will.

Charles B. Dew is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History, emeritus, at Williams College. He is the author of Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (University of Virginia Press, 2016).

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What those Confederate statues really symbolize - Tampa Bay Times

Gastonia’s Confederate Monument: A Symbol of Division Amid Legal and Political Strife – BNN Breaking

Gastonias Confederate Monument: A Symbol of Division Amid Legal and Political Strife

In the heart of Gastonia, North Carolina, a Confederate monument has stood tall since 1912. Its towering figure looks out at a street renamed for Martin Luther King Jr., a symbol of the racial tension that continues to grip the United States. The monument has been the center of a heated legal and political battle since 2020, driven by local activists led by Scotty Reid. Their mission: to remove the troubling symbol of the Confederacy, a movement that gained momentum in the wake of George Floyds killing.

Despite peaceful marches, petitions, and engagement with the county commission, the activists efforts have encountered significant resistance. The Gaston County Commission initially voted to remove the monument and transfer it to a Confederate group. However, the group backed out due to concerns about state law, leaving the monuments fate hanging in the balance.

The courts, too, have proven to be an obstacle. Superior Court Judge Robert Ervin ruled that the courts did not have the authority to decide on the monuments removal, stating that this decision rested solely with county leaders. County Commissioner Chad Brown voiced his support for the judgment, emphasizing the monuments role in commemorating Gaston County soldiers who perished in the Civil War.

Opponents of the monument argue that the North Carolina Statute 100-2.1, which protects objects of remembrance, does not apply in this case. Their argument hinges on the fact that the monument is not state-owned, thereby exempting it from the statutes protection. This interpretation, however, has yet to gain legal traction.

Frustrated by the reversal of the countys decision to remove the statue, the activists remain undeterred. Reid, alongside Democratic candidate for N.C. House 109 Pam Morganstern, Sierra Hall, and others, has pledged to continue the fight. Their 2024 campaign mirrors the activism of 2020, signifying an unwavering commitment to change and a refusal to let the monuments shadow loom over Gastonia unchallenged.

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Gastonia's Confederate Monument: A Symbol of Division Amid Legal and Political Strife - BNN Breaking

WATCH LIVE: General counsel to meet with Jacksonville City Council over Confederate Monuments – Yahoo News

Jacksonville City Council members will have some tough questions for the citys General Counsel regarding last weeks removal of the Confederate monument in Springfield Park.

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WATCH LIVE: General counsel to meet with Jacksonville City Council over Confederate Monuments - Yahoo News

Council to consider limiting powers of the mayor after removal of Confederate statue | Jax Daily Record – Jacksonville Daily Record

A discussion began Jan. 2 at the City Council Rules Committee about the extent and limits of the power of Jacksonvilles mayor that could ultimately require proposed changes being put on a ballot for the public to decide.

Council President Ron Salem, responding to Mayor Donna Deegans action to remove the Women of the Southland Confederate monument from Springfield Park on Dec. 27, called city General Counsel Michael Fackler to appear before the committee to answer questions about his offices advice to Deegan that led to the removal without consulting the Council or seeking its approval of the action.

Several times during the discussion, Salem said his concern is about Councils authority, not about the statue or whether it was appropriate for it to be displayed on city property.

I feel our powers were infringed upon, Salem said.

Salem said he plans to file legislation Jan. 3 to clarify the mayors power to authorize such an action in the future.

Many of his questions to Fackler were related to Deegan basing her decision to have the statue removed on a draft opinion from the Office of General Counsel that was neither dated nor signed, rather than a formal, final document.

Fackler said the draft was an internal document prepared by his office that was used to advise the mayor.

It was a way to get our thoughts on paper and make sure we were comfortable giving the advice, Fackler said.

The draft, a public document, was provided to the media Dec. 26, Fackler said.

Salem said he learned about the advice given to Deegan from news reports.

The media showed me a draft document I didnt know anything about, he said.

I never want to see a draft document used as long as I am on City Council.

The advice given to Deegan was based on the fact that the reported $187,000 used to pay for the statues removal came from private donations, not revenue accounted for in the city budget or the Capital Improvement Plan approved by Council.

Fackler said the advice to Deegan was based on the fact that the donations did not flow into the city budget, so the money was not in Councils jurisdiction.

The mayor was advised that we didnt see anything that would prevent her from accepting gifts to use for removal of the statue, Fackler said.

Salem asked whether Deegan or a future mayor could use private donations to remove other statues from city property, such as the statue of the late U.S. Rep. Charles Bennett in James Weldon Johnson Park.

There is a possibility it could occur again, Fackler said.

Council member Kevin Carrico asked why Council was not advised before Dec. 27 that the statue was going to be removed.

My impression is that if the removal was announced it could have created a furor and a security concern, said Bill Delaney, Council liaison for Deegan.

Council member Jimmy Peluso

Council member Jimmy Peluso said he agrees with the decision to not announce the removal before it began.

The last thing we want is for Jacksonville to be on CNN for political violence, Peluso said.

Council member Matt Carlucci said the draft opinion merely repeated what is in the city charter and the ordinance code and he supports Deegans decision to have the monument removed.

This has been a thorn in the side of Council and somebody had to take leadership, Carlucci said.

I support the strong mayor form of government. We need a strong mayor in emergencies, like a hurricane. In my opinion, the mayor overstepped herself in this case, Salem said.

Fackler advised that if any changes to the mayors power sought by Council require amending the city charter, the changes must be approved by a majority vote in a referendum. He said he will work with Salem to craft the proposed legislation.

Deegan is the second Jacksonville mayor to act to remove Confederate statues.

In June 2020, former Republican Mayor Lenny Curry committed to remove all the citys Confederate monuments and city crews worked overnight to remove a statue of a Confederate infantryman in Hemming Park south of City Hall.

In August 2020, the Council voted to change the name of the park in honor of writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson.

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Council to consider limiting powers of the mayor after removal of Confederate statue | Jax Daily Record - Jacksonville Daily Record

Wisconsin was Home to a Confederate Spy, Thomas Jefferson’s Illegitimate Son and a Failed Hollywood Producer – Shepherd Express

What do a female Confederate spy, the illegitimate son of Thomas Jefferson, and a failed Hollywood tycoon have in common?

These disparate, fascinating personalities rest for all eternity in peaceful Wisconsin graveyards. Belle Boyd, the seductive Mata Hari of the Civil War, died in the Dells. Eston Hemings Jefferson, illegitimate child of President Thomas Jefferson, passed away in Madison. And Harry Aitken, the driving force behind D.W. GriffithsBirth of a Nation, eventually came home to Waukesha.

Maria Belle Boyd, born in 1844, was 16 years old when she began managing her fathers Virginia hotel. Her curvy, buxom figure enchanted Union soldiers when they arrived for lodging, or a meal and she overheard bits and pieces of private conversations as she waited on them. Belle gave General Stonewall Jackson this information on a regular basis with the help of a slave, Eliza Hopewell. The two used a hollowed-out pocket watch so Eliza could pass the messages safely across enemy lines.

When several intoxicated soldiers assaulted her mother in one of the hotels parlors, Belle pulled a pistol and killed one of the men. While awaiting trial for murder, Belle initiated a clandestine affair with Captain Daniel Kelly, and he helped her escape in the middle of the night. She was recaptured and sentenced to be hanged. Using another man, Belle escaped again, and with a set of forged documents, she arrived at the Generals camp. For her bravery, Jackson awarded her the Southern Cross of Honor. He also made her his personal aide-de-camp, which no doubt raised more than a few eyebrows.

For the next year, Belle avoided arrest by Union troops but was eventually apprehended and taken to Washington D.C.While in Old Capitol Prison, she seduced an officer named Samuel Harding and became pregnant. The couple fled to England where she supported Harding and their daughter as a music hall entertainer. Harding died unexpectedly just as Belle was finding success as an actress on Londons stages. At the end of the Civil War, she returned to the United States and earned a fortune in theaters and opera houses performing a racy melodrama of her life as a spy. She also married and divorced two ardent lovers and gave birth to four more children. Belle also published a highly fictionalized autobiography that became a bestseller. In 1900, she suffered a fatal heart attack while promoting her book in Wisconsin Dells. Only 56 years old, Belle Boyd was buried in the Dells Spring Grove Cemetery. Her autobiography and a few non-fiction books are still in print and range from $5 to $60 on eBay.

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In 1827, Thomas Jeffersons will stated that five of his slaves be freed. Among them were his mistress, Sally Hemings, and two of the children he fathered with her. Jeffersons 400 other slaves were sold to pay off the considerable debts against his estate. Sally was only one-quarter black, and occasionally her sons could pass for white. Jeffersons illegitimate son Eston, already a skilled carpenter and proficient violin player, was 19 years old upon his release from Monticello. He found lucrative employment in a Charlottesville, Virginia woodworking shop and built a house for his mother and older brother, Madison. Both brothers married, started families and lived with Sally until her death in 1835.

A few years later, Madison and Eston moved their families to Ohio, a free state and an important part of the Underground Railroad network. When the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted in 1850, Eston moved hiswife and three childrenfurther north to avoid capture by the bounty hunters.Settling in Madison, Wisconsin, Eston changed his surname to Hemings Jefferson, and the family lived comfortably in the white community.

When he passed away in 1856 at age 48, America was preparing for a war. In the waning years of the 19th century, Estons children and grandchildren faced public scorn from a handful of influential voices who challenged the family legend that connected Eston with his famous father, Finally, in 1998, a series on DNA tests proved once and for all that Eston Hemings was indeed the son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

Born in 1877 on a farm near Goerkes Corners in Waukesha, Harry Aitken became fascinated by the shabby, turn-of-the-century storefronts that were outfitted to show the first silent movies produced by inventor Thomas Edison. Aitken studied the business model of a nickel theater and partnered with John Freuler, a wealthy Milwaukee investor. Violating the Edison companys patents, they made their own movies and delivered them weekly to hundreds of theaters in 45 cities.

In 1908 Aitken and Freuler went to Los Angeles and built a large movie studio of their own. They offered British vaudevillian Charlie Chaplin $10,000 a week to make 20-minute comedies for their rapidly growing theater chain. When Chaplin discovered his films were grossing more than $5 million annually, the popular comedian demanded a percentage of the profit. Instead, Freuler and Aitken sold the motion picture studio, divided the considerable assets and dissolved their partnership.

Aitken used his assets to finance a groundbreaking two-hour movie proposed by a talented filmmaker, D.W. Griffith. Based on a popular racist novel,The Clansman, Griffiths epic film was titledThe Birth of a Nation, and it sold out wherever it was shown.

Without informing Aitken, Griffith made a back-door deal with Louis B. Mayer, a shrewd Boston businessman who operated a large scrap metal yard. Mayer had seen the film and immediately sensed its potential. After lining up engagements at hundreds of theaters inConnecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, Mayer gave$25,000 in cash to Griffith. The investment returned nearly $250,000, money that legally as well as ethically should have been used to retire Aitkens outstanding loans.

Mayer became the CEO of a tiny California movie studio that he transformed into the world-famous MGM. Unable to pay of his debts, Aitken declared bankruptcy and returned to Waukesha a defeated man. His attempts to start businesses in Wisconsin were only marginally successful. The one-time movie mogul died in 1956 and was buried in Prairie Home Cemetery near the farm where he was born.

Is Harry wandering along the freeways that devoured the streets of his childhood? Is Belle still using her charms on behalf of the Confederacy? Does a man once owned by a United States president roam the town where he became truly free? Its possible

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Wisconsin was Home to a Confederate Spy, Thomas Jefferson's Illegitimate Son and a Failed Hollywood Producer - Shepherd Express

US Army division to keep patch referencing the Confederate Army – Fox News

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The U.S. Army National Guard's 29th Infantry Division is keeping its patch that honors service in the Confederate Army.

"We applaud the decision of the Naming Commission to recommend the 29th Infantry Division patch symbol remain unchanged, and the Virginia National Guard will work with the U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry on any appropriate modifications to the descriptive language," Maj. Gen. Timothy P. Williams, the adjutant general of Virginia, said in a press release Monday.

The decision comes as a congressional commission established to remove references to the Confederacy from the military put the 29th Infantry Division up for review and potential retirement in December, according to Military.com. But the unit's leaders strongly opposed the retirement of the patch. Williams argued that the patch represented the division's rich history.

"We are currently preparing historical documentation and letters of support to educate the Commission about the importance of 29th ID patch," Williams said in a statement at the time. "We want them to understand what it means to the thousands of veterans who have worn the patch in service to our country, as well as how it serves as a symbol of liberation to our Allies in France."

PENTAGON MOVES FORWARD WITH RENAMING OF BASES HONORING CONFEDERATE LEADERS

Members of the 29th Infantry Division stand in formation holding a guidon with the division patch. (29th Infantry Division)

The patch, introduced during World War I, is a blue and gray yin and yang that references the merger of the Union and Confederate units after the Civil War. The division is headquartered in Virginia, but has formations in the Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina and Florida National Guards.

The 29th Infantry Division wore that patch when its soldiers stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied Normandy, France, in 1944, becoming one of the military's most legendary units for its actions on D-Day.

But that symbol was put at risk by the commission, whose focus has mostly been on renaming military posts named after Confederate leaders such as Fort Lee, Virginia.

"Heraldry is indeed part of the Naming Commission's review, which includes patches such as the 29th Infantry Division patch. This is part of the commission's duty," a spokesperson for the commission told Military.com in December.

Members of the U.S. Army National Guard's 29th Infantry Division take part in ceremonies on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. (29th Infantry Division)

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Instead of doing away with the patch altogether, the commission recommended removing the references to service in the Confederate Army from the description of the patch.

"The Commission believes that identifying the symbol of the 29th Infantry Division patch as a Confederate symbol is a subjective determination," a spokesperson for the commission said Monday.

Williams welcomed that decision, saying that the division would take the opportunity to honor its history of service since WWI.

Maj. Gen. Timothy P. Williams of the Army National Guard (Army National Guard)

"This is an opportunity for us to update the heraldry description to reflect not just the 29th's remarkable service in World War I and World War II, but also through the Cold War and over the last 20 plus years in the Global War on Terror," Williams said.

Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee

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US Army division to keep patch referencing the Confederate Army - Fox News

Oklahoma history: Why the Tribes sided with the Confederacy – Norman Transcript

When it was all over, about one-third of the women of the territory were widows, and 14% of children were orphans.

Why did the Native American tribes even care about the great conflict, which took hundreds of thousands of lives in the North and South? It had little to do with the issues like the tariff and slavery that led to the secession of 11 southern states and then to the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln moved to bring the seceding states back into the Union by military force.

There were few slaveowners in Indian Territory probably 1% and while they no doubt held much greater influence over tribal government than the average member of their tribes, it is doubtful that they viewed the conflict as having anything to do with the institution of slavery within their borders.

Actually, there were multiple reasons tribal governments cast their lot with the Confederate States of America.

First of all, most Indian agents were southerners, and they no doubt influenced tribal leaders to side with the South. Albert Pike was commissioned by the Confederate government to make treaties, and he was very successful.

After the mostly southern agents resigned, the newly-appointed agents remained in Kansas, wary of going south into Indian Territory. They would have no protection, as federal troops had pulled out of the seven federal forts that had been established to keep the peace between the Five Civilized Tribes to the east and the Plains Indian tribes to the west.

Other than Kansas, Indian Territory was bordered by southern states Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. Although Missouri was officially still in the Union, southwestern Missouri was very sympathetic to the Confederate cause.

The Five Tribes Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole had come from the southeast, and the cultural ties were still quite strong.

While the Five Tribes had been removed from the southeast a generation earlier, at the behest of the white population of that region, it had been the federal government that actually carried out the removals.

And then there was William Seward, the campaign manager and eventually the secretary of state for the new president, Abraham Lincoln. When Seward was making his own bid for president in 1860, he had vowed to open Indian Territory to white settlement and the tribes, who followed national politics, knew it.

Finally, the Confederates promised to honor Union treaties.

For the Confederacy, the advantage of an alliance was clear: the territory was a source of grain, meat and lead and salt mines. It would also provide a buffer between Union Kansas and Confederate Texas.

In that regard, the tribes fulfilled their part of the agreements, as Union forces were never able to make it to Texas.

Steve Byas teaches Oklahoma History at Randall University in Moore, and lives in Norman.

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Oklahoma history: Why the Tribes sided with the Confederacy - Norman Transcript

Confederate flag spurs Olmsted County rental change, but commissioners don’t see need for further action – Rochester Post Bulletin

ROCHESTER A pair of Olmsted County commissioners said a specific policy targeting hate symbols on county property is not needed.

I dont want to be the morality police, County Board Chairman Mark Thein said Tuesday morning, citing concerns about a potential policy becoming overly broad.

The issue was raised following a 2021 complaint about a flea market vendor who was displaying a confederate flag at Graham Park.

The complaint spurred a review by the countys ethics committee, which recommended changes to county rental agreements, posting of signs stating the county doesnt support all vendors actions and consideration of a policy opposing hate symbols.

The committee referred to Red Wings recent adoption of a proclamation against hate symbols as an example of what the county could do.

The Red Wing City Council, while citing First Amendment rights, unanimously adopted a resolution on Aug. 9, 2021, denouncing the display of hate symbols on public property. It pointed to Confederate flags, neo-Nazi imagery and symbols of white supremacy as hate symbols that elicit fear and create pain for many people, especially those in vulnerable communities.

On Tuesday, County Administrator Heidi Welsch said a similar resolution by county commissioners would support the countys One Olmsted effort, which seeks to promote community diversity and inclusion.

At the same time, she acknowledged the issue comes with legal concerns.

It presents an ethical question, she said.

First Assistant County Attorney Brent Walz, who sits on the countys ethics committee, said laws about what can be banned from government property vary, based on the type of property.

Minority viewpoints can be expressed on courthouse steps with essentially no restrictions, other than you cant incite violence or you cant be obscene, generally speaking, he said. People displaying what most people would consider symbols of hate on the courthouse steps or in a parade, you cant really regulate that.

The county could place added restrictions in Graham Park and other areas that are routinely rented for private use.

We are looking at where those lines are drawn, he said, pointing out the county already restricts what can be displayed on its electronic billboard in Graham Park.

County Commissioner Gregg Wright said he worries about the potential for a lawsuit, if further restrictions are implemented, especially without clear definitions.

Its a long and winding road, he said, pointing to a willingness to allow added discussion, but stopped short of directing staff to do further work on the issue, unless another concern is raised.

Wright and Thein were serving as the county commissioners administrative committee in reviewing the issue. While saying a resolution is not needed, both supported efforts to draw a line to show a vendors actions arent necessarily endorsed by the county.

Welsch said county staff has already taken steps to adopt changes for county rental agreements, pointing out that the county doesnt endorse all statements, symbols and actions of the people renting public spaces.

Its sort of a disclaimer, she said.

County staff considered posting similar statements at Graham Park, but determined the action could be problematic without specific context.

Its going to raise a whole lot of questions, Welsch said, pointing to the potential for the signs to be misinterpreted, if specific incidents arent cited.

It means any complaints about vendors displays will continue to be referred to the person or organization renting park space.

If enough people go to that vendor, either the vendor will change who they allow at the sale or people will just not show up, Thein said. Let the market decide. I think thats the way to go.

What happened: Olmsted County commissioners opted not to seek a resolution aimed at hate symbols that could be displayed on county property, but supported clarifications added to rental agreements.

Why does this matter: The county's staff-led ethics committee reviewed a complaint regarding the display of a confederate flag during a 2021 flea market.

What's next: New county rental agreements will include language stating the county dosn not endorse all actions and displays presented by groups that lease space at Graham Park and other county facilities.

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Confederate flag spurs Olmsted County rental change, but commissioners don't see need for further action - Rochester Post Bulletin

62nd N.C. infantry: The remnant who fought on – The Mountaineer

Fourth in a series on the 62nd N.C. Infantry, which organized in Waynesville 160 years ago this month

The history of the N.C. 62nd Infantry, dismal as it was, would be even more so were it not for a remnant who escaped surrender at Cumberland Gap, to fight another day.

This remnant would endure to the end of the war, facing off in the Battle of Asheville in April of 1865 and then heading for Waynesville for a very different kind of surrender than the one demanded at Cumberland Gap.

The unit had formed in July of 1862, a month after Robert G.A. Love had advertised the plans to create another infantry unit for the Confederacy, one comprised of men from Western North Carolina. Those who joined came from Rutherford, Clay, Macon, Jackson, Henderson and Transylvania counties as well as Haywood, with Haywood men comprising four of the 62nds nine companies. These men had fought Union sympathizers, bushwhackers and Union soldiers in eastern Tennessee and had guarded Cumberland Gap against Union siege until Brig. Gen. John Frazer surrendered his 2,300 Confederates to Gen. Ambrose Burnsides army without a fight on Sept. 9, 1863.

But another portion, about 180 men, chose to go with their field commander at the time, Col. Byron Gibbs McDowell, who had told Frazer he would not surrender. McDowell, a Macon County native, called up the men of 62nd and invited them to join him in making a run for their lives. About 180 of his men were among the 300 to 600 at Cumberland who defied the order to surrender.

While most of their comrades starved, sickened and suffered as prisoners of war, this 180 would keep the adventures and the military activity of the 62nd alive. Their first challenge was to escape Union-held territory and return across the mountains into North Carolina, which was still held by the Confederacy. According to McDowells account, all of those who refused to surrender started out together.

In all about 600 responded, and led by Colonel Slemp and a man from Abingdon, Virginia, whose name was Page, as I remember, both of whom were perfectly familiar with the country, we moved out of the Gap, eastward, passing Kains Battery (a fortified point high on nearby East Mountain) and pushing one rifle piece over the cliff as we went along, McDowell later wrote.

We made our way along the north side of the mountain, on the Kentucky side, until we reached a point opposite Jonesville, where we encountered a pursuing force of Federal cavalry.

Our entire escaping force had kept their guns and ammunition, expecting a collision as we went out, and being thus prepared, an immediate dash was made by our men. Having the decided advantage of position, we forced the Federal cavalry to retire and were permitted to pass on, the Federals returning to the Gap, after burning the little town of Jonesville, in Lee county, Virginia, We made our way to Bristol, Tennessee, and Zollicoffer (a town now known as Bluff City), and I at once reported the surrender to Major C. S. Stringfellow, Adjutant-General, and awaited further orders from the General commanding.

With all the disasters surrounding the 62nd, McDowell found time for romance. His biographical sketch states that during the war Major McDowell met Miss Margaret Rhea near Bristol, Tennessee. They were married at Bluff City, Tennessee. Their first encounter may well have taken place at the time McDowell describes, as his remnant retreated into Confederate held territory in that area.

At some point after reaching Confederate-held territory, McDowell and his fellow soldiers returned to North Carolina.

After the surrender of Cumberland Gap, the men of the Sixty-second Regiment who were at home on furlough, and all those who escaped capture went into camp at Pigeon River, in Haywood County, N.C., McDowell wrote. After remaining there for a few days, they entered again into active service and never for one moment flinched from any duty assigned them, nor from constant danger to which they were exposed, to the end of the war.

By April 1864, seven months after the Cumberland Gap surrender, the escaped portion of the 62nd was stationed at Asheville. Its numbers would fluctuate from the time of the surrender until the end of the war like many Confederate soldiers, those in the 62nd were embittered by what seemed to be a rich mans war, and being so near their homes, some would slip off for a time to care for their families. At one time, one officer recommended the 62nd and 64th be sent to Charleston for service, as they would never be efficient so near their homes. That did not happen.

Meanwhile, the organizer of the unit, Col. R.G.A. Love, who had battled ill health throughout the war, became too ill to continue, and resigned as colonel of the regiment. George W. Clayton was promoted to colonel, and McDowell became the units lieutenant colonel. Asbury Thornton Rogers, from Upper Crabtree, was promoted to major, though Rogers was in a prisoner of war camp apparently his superiors thought he might be included in an officer exchange, though that did not take place.

This remnant went back and forth across the Tennessee-North Carolina line, much as it had done in its early days, fighting in the divided mountain regions against both Union forces and sympathizers with the North, not to mention deserters from both armies.

In March 1865, those left of the 62nd went under the command of Gen. James Martin, who was the Confederate commander in charge of troop movements in Western North Carolina. At times, some of their companies would be stationed at camps along the Pigeon or Tuckaseegee rivers, or even on Spring Creek in Madison County. As part of Martins forces, some of these men would see one more battle, followed by one last skirmish.

On April 6, 1865, Col. Isaac Kirby led 900 Union troops from Greeneville, Tenn. into Asheville, coming along the French Broad River Valley. Gen. Martin was not in the area, having taken some of the 62nds troops and gone off in pursuit of Union raider Col. George W. Kirk. Col. Clayton, the lead officer for the 62nd, gathered what troops he could, probably about 300 men, and they hunkered down with two cannons behind earthworks constructed along the river.

It was, in reality, a bluff. But the earthworks and trenches, combined with the cannon fire, may have convinced Kirby that he was facing a large force. He ordered a retreat, rather than trying to take the city. The historical marker in Asheville commemorating the battle credits the victory in which the only death was that of a Union soldier who reportedly drowned in the river to the forces under Claytons command.

For Asheville, the Kirbys retreat was a reprieve rather than a victory, for two weeks later Maj. Gen. George Stoneman moved through Asheville. Despite an agreement that the Union forces would march unchallenged and leave the city unattacked, Stonemans forces later turned back and pillaged the city.

After witnessing Stonemans treatment of Asheville and its citizens, Gen. Martin and his men, likely including that remnant of the 62nd, retreated westward, where they would meet up with William Holland Thomas and about 200 members of Thomas Legion. There, Thomas and Martin would negotiate a surrender that would allow their troops to keep their weapons as well as protect Waynesville from the ravages that had befallen Asheville.

A few of the members of the 62nd who had escaped the surrender at Cumberland Gap likely witnessed the last surrender of Confederate forces in North Carolina. But this surrender was different Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia the month before, and leaders recognized that the Civil War was practically over. This time, the men left fighting for the 62nd could accept the terms of surrender, knowing their next destination was not a prison camp, but home.

The men of this regiment were the very last men to lay doawn their arms, McDowell wrote. No braver or more noble hearted men ever lived than those composing the Sixty-second North Carolina Regiment of Infantry.

Sources for this story include the websites thomaslegion.net, which includes the history of the 62nd by B.G. McDowell and carolana.com: North Carolina in the American Civil War.

More here:

62nd N.C. infantry: The remnant who fought on - The Mountaineer

Warren Buffett’s company part of historic deal after claims of racist jokes and redlining – Daily Kos

Under theagreement with the Justice Department,Trident must invest more than $20 million in impacted communities of color in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware," Clarke said in prepared remarksshe gave on Wednesday at Malcolm X Park in West Philadelphia.

The funds will be used to provide credit opportunities in areas that were redlined by Trident, including neighborhoods around this park, she said.

RELATED STORY:Despite outstanding rating, banks still arent lending to black business owners like they should be

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the news releaseannouncing the historic agreement that the Justice Department probe follows his announcement last fall promising to mobilize resources to make fair access to credit a reality in underserved neighborhoods under the departments Combatting Redlining Initiative.

RELATED STORY: Redlined Black and brown neighborhoods are now targets for oil drilling, studies show

As demonstrated by todays historic announcement, we are increasing our coordination with federal financial regulatory agencies and state Attorneys General to combat the modern-day redlining that has unlawfully plagued communities of color, Garland said.

Read every word of Clarke's prepared remarks:

Good morning. My name is Kristen Clarke, and I am the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. I am joined today by Josh Shapiro, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania; Rohit Chopra, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Jacqueline Romero, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; Lyndsay Ruotolo, the First Assistant Attorney General of New Jersey; and Kathy Jennings, the Attorney General of Delaware.

Im pleased to be standing with you all today at Malcolm X Park in West Philadelphia to announce that the Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have secured an agreement with Trident Mortgage Company to resolve our claims of redlining discrimination in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, including communities in Camden, New Jersey, and Wilmington, Delaware. In addition, our state partners in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware have reached agreements with Trident and its affiliate company, Fox and Roach.

Our complaint, filed in federal court today, alleges that Trident violated the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Specifically, our complaint alleges that Tridents office locations were concentrated in majority-white neighborhoods, that Tridents loan officers were not directed to serve and did not serve the credit needs of neighborhoods of color and that Tridents outreach and marketing avoided those neighborhoods. The complaint also alleges that Trident employees exchanged emails where they referred to neighborhoods of color as ghetto and made racists jokes; theres even a photo of a senior Trident manager posing in front of a Confederate flag. Our complaint was filed along with a proposed consent order outlining the relief that we have secured.

Todays agreement is historic for two reasons. First, this is the first redlining agreement that the Justice Department has secured with a mortgage company. Mortgage companies like Trident issue over 50% of the mortgage loans in the United States, so they are important players in the credit market and their lending practices have a significant effect on the availability of credit. Other non-depository lenders should be on notice that the Justice Department will continue to enforce federal housing laws to ensure equal opportunity to access credit.

Our agreement with Trident is also the Justice Departments second largest agreement in history. Under this agreement, Trident must invest over $20 million dollars in impacted communities of color in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. The funds will be used to provide credit opportunities in areas that were redlined by Trident, including neighborhoods around this park. This infusion of lending resources into neighborhoods of color, including here in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, will help redress the harm caused by Tridents unlawful activity.

West Philadelphia has long been the home of strong and vibrant Black and Latino communities. Unfortunately, it also been the home of prolonged residential racial segregation, just like so many other communities across the country. Even with the passage of the Fair Housing Act more than 50 years ago, banks and mortgage companies, like Trident, continue to find new ways to alter their lending practices in ways that cause harm to communities of color. These discriminatory practices exacerbate wealth disparities and promote economic injustice.

And we know that the current wealth disparities between Black and white families are staggering. Today, the median wealth of a Black family is approximately $24,000. The median wealth of a white family is approximately $188,000. A white family is 30% more likely to own a home than a Black family, meaning the homeownership gap is larger today than it was in 1960, before the passage of the Fair Housing Act.

Despite these grim statistics, the Justice Department is committed to aggressively enforcing our nations civil rights laws to ensure equal opportunity and economic justice for all Americans. Todays agreement demonstrates that commitment.

Our enforcement action against Trident is part of the Justice Departments Combatting Redlining Initiative. The initiative is drawing on the strengths of the departments partnerships with the U.S. Attorneys Offices, CFPB, other financial regulatory agencies, as well as State Attorneys General. Together, we are sending a strong message to banks, mortgage companies and other lenders that they will be held accountable for engaging in unlawful, modern-day redlining.

I want to thank our team inside the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department for their work on this matter. I also want to commend our partners at CFPB, the U.S. Attorneys Office in Eastern Pennsylvania and the State Attorneys General for Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey for their work on this case. Together, we mark a significant step forward in our collective efforts to ensure all people have equal opportunity to access the American dream.

I will now turn it over to Josh Shapiro, the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

RELATED STORY: Kristen Clarke confirmed and either Republicans are eerily quiet or their voices aren't registering

Read more from the original source:

Warren Buffett's company part of historic deal after claims of racist jokes and redlining - Daily Kos

CoastLine: Tony Rivenbark, 1948-2022: "All I’ve done is theater my whole life." – WHQR

I love stories. The theater is stories. But life is stories. Thats what your life is, really, a string of stories. And then they stop, and its sad when those stories disappear because someone didnt tell them to someone else.

Tony Rivenbark passed away in mid-July of 2022. Some of the stories he wanted to tell are captured in his book, Images of America: Thalian Hall. Published by Arcadia in 2014, he dedicated the work to Doug Swink, in his words, actor, director, teacher, designer, playwright, historian, and the theatrical father of hundreds of thespians.

Many of those titles, in fact most, apply to Tony Rivenbark.

Within those titles are more stories, many of which we will never hear, his own biography and that of the Cape Fear region forever intertwined. While its likely there are private recordings done by those in his inner circle, we know of no comprehensive narrative that weaves together his biography and local history.

Tony and I had an appointment to begin such recordings, a project conceived of by his close, and, he liked to joke, oldest friend, Suellen Yates. He passed away the day before we were to begin.

Tony Rivenbarks most public-facing and prominent legacy: shepherding downtown Wilmingtons Thalian Hall from a disused building that had fallen into disrepair into one of the most beautifully restored historic theaters in the U.S. Under his direction, the Hall became a thriving center of cultural arts in the Cape Fear region. He served as Executive Director from 1979 until his passing in 2022.

He also acted in more than 200 plays, in theaters around town but mostly at the Hall, either on the mainstage or in the upstairs studio theater, now known as the Ruth and Bucky Stein Theater.

He mentored the younger generation: artists, actors, historic preservationists.

An historian in his own right, Tony Rivenbark understood previous centuries in the region in a way that few people do. Ben Steelman is another one of those special local citizens, and in fact, well hear part of a historical exploration with the two men from a 2015 CoastLine episode.

This is the part of CoastLine where I usually welcome the guest sitting with me in the studio.

Since I cant do that, a moment of silence instead.

SEGMENT 1:

My name is Tony Rivenbark and I am 73 years old.

This is from a StoryCorps interview in 2021, 10 months before his death. You can hear him speak through a mask. He talks with his friend, Travis Gilbert, Executive Director of Historic Wilmington Foundation.

TG: When was the first time you laid eyes on Thalian Hall?

TR: I had been coming to Wilmington all my life because my mother lived to shop and so all the cities we would go in North Carolina at some point or another but I had never seen or heard of Thalian Hall, so as a freshman in college here, I saw auditions for a play and I went down to where the address was, and I walked into this incredible building that I had never seen or heard of. And it was not in great shape. It had very faded, maroon carpet that was worn and threadbare. The walls were painted gray. The ornate interior was pink and white with gold paint. It had corduroy chairs. It had radiators. It was very shabby. But it was magnificent. The bones of the structure, the architecture was very much intact. The slender cast-iron columns that supported the balcony, the ornate proscenium it just blew my mind. Blew my mind.

And so I went upstairs to the balcony and watched the audition process. I had never been in had no background in theater. I had been theatrical but no background in real theater. I had seen theater. So I just sat there and watched the process, bathed in this magnificent building, never having any idea that I would have anything to do with it or change it.

The next night, the force pulled me back again and this time I accidentally got herded in with the other auditionees, mostly college students, and auditioned for the show. And Doug Swink came and said, I see on your little form that you have had dance. Would you like to dance for us?

So I went up and did the Charleston. I do a mean Charleston. And I was cast in the show and I did every show the college drama department did for the next four years, except for two, I think.

And that changed my life and thats all Ive done is theater my whole life. So walking into Thalian Hall, for good or ill in 1966, sort of set the course for the rest of my life.

Tony grew up in Duplin County and wanted to go to college at the smallest branch in the University of North Carolina system.

So he came to Wilmington.

TR: It didnt have dorms. So you didnt have to live on campus. And the idea of living with a stranger just, you know, made me very nervous. So I lived in a beach cottage, you know. Thats the attraction to Wilmington, anyway, is the beach. And I did not know anybody but by going into the theater and becoming a part, I became part of a theater family.

A show is like a theater family. It isn't the same people all the year long. It's a different family every six weeks.

I sometimes call Thalian Hall Wilmington's living room. It's the place that people bring their guests from out of town and say, oh, well this is what's in our community. It's a place you show off.

It was 1963 when the Thalian Hall Commission was chartered for the purpose of restoring the Hall as a performing arts center.

TR: The sixties were that period where Wilmington was changing in a bad way. Economically it wasn't doing very well, but old buildings were beginning to disappear everywhere. And Thalian Hall was one of the first buildings with an organization created specifically to restore it, which is the Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts. Further along was the Foundation looking at residential and what was happening there and how to get more people to preserve buildings and buy them and then find buyers to restore them. These were all important parts of making this town, particularly the historic district and downtown, be viable.

But in the sixties, it was a low ebb. By the seventies, it was beginning to change. And then, 1979 when I was hired was really kind of the beginning of downtown Wilmington becoming its own destination.

Although, says Tony, it was more than 20 years before Wilmington really got there.

Tony tells Travis that he went on to act in New York theater, did summer stock in Wilmington, and then had designs on Florida as a place to pursue acting.

TR: And then the job became available at Thalian Hall and I was hired on the spot. I was only asked to do two things: increase the income and stop the smoking in the building. That's all they asked me to do. And it wasn't very hard to create more income because somebody needed to understand the front of the house and the back of the house.

You need to understand the audience, the showroom, and understand the factory. And by making that work, and then actively trying to get people to use it, because I quickly came upon the realization that if you were going to fix the building and make it properly work for theater, which basically desperately needed a fly system for scenery and then the backstage needed to work, the auditorium was beautiful. It'd been restored, but the backstage was a disaster. And the only way was to make the building more important to more people.

It was important to a handful of people who were basically the theater folk and their audiences, but it wasn't important to the community in the same way. So it had to be more important to more people in town. That was one thing.

And so you had to get more shows in there that would bring in more different audiences. That was the first realization. And then the second one was, Wilmington, particularly in that period of time, kind of thought it was the only place in the world that was like it was, and in some ways that's true, but it was so isolated because the I-40 came in much later. Wilmington was like an island off the rest of the state. And they thought the way they did things was the way they had to be done. They didn't really look at how people did things in other places.

So I started going to theater conferences and looking at other historic theater restorations, and saw that there are many ways, you know, we are not that unique. There are other historic theaters and they have been successful and revitalized.

And so I started seeing that and then bringing some of those ideas back and then started bringing in people with the expertise from other places. So if you want to make a place important in your own town, bring somebody from somewhere else who says it's important. And then people will believe that.

And being that the building was owned by the city and the city hall was in, it was an advantage and a disadvantage. The city really didn't need a theater next to it, but it was already there. So they had to deal with it. Eventually I was trying to persuade the city government that the building was an asset to the community. That didn't just happen overnight or even in my head. But as time went on, we all came to the realization that reinvesting in that building was good for the community, was good for the city government, was good for the citizens.

Tony Rivenbark admits hes still learning about Thalian Hall.

TR: All of this is not as interesting all of the wonderful things that are in this town if you dont know the story behind it. I think. I find history the most exciting thing in the world. And every day we make more of it.

TG: The best history is a story. That's why historians fail because they aren't storytellers.

TR: I agree with that. Agree with that completely.

And Tony, the historian, DID tell his own and some of the regions lesser-known history through stories. Thats next.

SEGMENT 2:

When Tony Rivenbark, Executive Director of Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts, passed away in July of 2022, he left behind a magnificently restored cultural arts center, younger generations of thespians and preservationists, local history told in ways that are quintessentially Tony Rivenbark.

In 2015, he and Ben Steelman, a journalist and local historian, came to the CoastLine studio to explore the history of the Cape Fear region. It was just two weeks after a white supremacist gunman killed nine people in an AME church in South Carolina. That shooting raised new questions nationwide among white people about Confederate history and Confederate symbols and the appropriateness of those symbols in public spaces.

Keep in mind, as you listen to this part of the discussion, it is 2015 and while 2015 may sound like recent history, local and national opinion surrounding Confederate history has undergone a profound change in the last seven years.

TR: I mean, I'm from Eastern North Carolina. My family have been there on both sides, you know, going back to before the revolution. And so certainly I had ancestors at fault in the Confederate army. I was very interested in the civil war, you know, when I was in high school and of course that was the sixties, which was the hundredth anniversary. And I was president of the Duplin County Children of the Confederacy chapter and I came to Wilmington when they had the state conference and all this stuff. So I was part of all of that stuff.

You know, I never thought of it in terms of racially, though. It all had to do with the war and, you know, young guys love playing battles, fighting battles, whatever it is.

And we just happened to do the civil war. It was a colorful and interesting period only as time went on and when going to school and then the school was integrated by then. Particularly into college, I start seeing things in a different kind of light. And most of us, or many, certainly a great many people in the south have, you know, changed a lot of those attitudes and it has become, you know, what was not acceptable when we were kids and we never question it, is something that now we do question about those things.

RLH: And you told me earlier, Tony, that you took down a picture recently of Robert E. Lee. Tell us why you decided to do that.

TR: Well, I don't know. I think, you know, one time I was talking to somebody and they made some comment about me and they said, oh, you're just like the people that ride around in a pickup truck with a Confederate flag and a, and a gun rack on your car. And it irritated me. So I went home and pulled out all my Confederate stuff and put it up.

But gradually over the years I put it away. And the other day, this recent business of this terrible situation in Charleston, and I said, you know, I don't need a picture of Robert E. Lee hanging up. You know, it was a tiny one on the shelf. I don't really need that anymore. Plus the fact I don't have enough room for everything anyway.

So I've pulled whatever little bit there was left. Like I said, because I think it belongs in a museum now. It might be important as a piece of set decoration, but personally, I don't need it anymore.

RLH: Ben Steelman, you also grew up in North Carolina.

BS: Yeah. I can actually top Tony. I'm a sort of sideways descendant of Robert Frederick Hoke, the Confederate general who was camped out at Sugarloaf while Fort Fisher was falling. That's a whole different story.

My father's name was Hoke Steelman. So, anyway, so that was a minor point of pride. White southerners need to be reminded that not all of their neighbors feel the same way about their heritage as we might. And we have to admit that yes, slavery was, slavery is a horror and yes, the right side won the war.

RLH: There are a lot of people, many of them from Northern parts or other parts of this country, people who didn't grow up in the south, who don't really have that sense of cultural heritage internalized who look at the Confederate flag and do see the emblem of the fight to keep slavery, which is, you know, a fight for human oppression. So how do you tease that apart when you're looking at it through a historical lens versus a personal lens, Ben Steelman?

BS: Probably most white southerners rationalize it by saying by, by you hear the phrase a lot, it's, it's about heritage not hate. And they saw their ancestors as fighting to defend their homes. Most southerners did not own slaves. Certainly most of the privates in the Confederate army did not own slaves and they were defending their homes. And when their homes were occupied by the Yankees, they up and deserted to take care of their families.

So, I think that's part that's part of it, but we have to admit that yes, slavery was an issue. Alexander Stevens, the Vice President of the Confederacy wrote as much. Bedford Forrest said the same thing, although not as politely as Mr. Stevens did.

It's something we have to face.

RLH: When we talk about the reasons behind the civil war, there are people who will say this was a fight over states rights. Slavery was sort of an ancillary issue. Is that true? Is that a smoke screen? Tony Rivenbark?

TR: The underlying cause it had to do with the state's rights were important because people wanted to maintain the slavery as an institution. And it was dying out in the world. In other places, it was gradually being done away with, but you can't sugar coat it and the bottom line: that's what it was about. And that was about money and money was tied in with slavery. That was the wealth of the south was based in human, uh, flesh. Uh, and you take that away then great part of the wealth is gone. So yes, money, states rights, power, the country was divided in a sense evenly to some degree, but it was beginning to shift toward the Northern manufacturing and the southerners resented that. But still you can't take that slavery's the underlying bottom, dark side of this, no matter how you slice it,

RLH: We have some rich historical sites right here in the Wilmington area related to the civil war Fort Fisher, for instance. For folks who aren't familiar with that, Ben Steelman, can you tell us what Fort Fisher is and what it was for?

BS: Fort Fisher guarded the new inlet into the Cape Fear river and up to Wilmington. The new inlet no longer exists. It was closed in the, uh, late 1800s in a massive Corps of Engineers project led by the father of Henry Bacon. Bacon later became famous as the architect of the Lincoln Memorial. And he's actually buried here in town.

But anyway, that kept the port of Wilmington, which is usually normally a very small and significant port open, even as other Confederate ports were closed. And Robert E. Lee famously wrote that if Wilmington fell, he would not be able to keep his army in the field. And, in fact, the Army of Northern Virginia lasted barely 90 days after the fall of Fort Fisher.

So, a battle that's often overlooked when the final battle occurred in January of 1865, there are only about 1800 Confederates on one side and about four times that many Union soldiers and sailors on the other, but it was a very strategic battle. And more people recognize that.

RLH: When we talk about historic sites from the civil war, Tony Rivenbark explains why Thalian Hall is key.

TR: It was the center of entertainment in that period in Wilmington with 2000 blockade ships coming in. Most of the people sat around and waited for a ship to come in. There was nothing else to do but party. And this was the party town in the south. And one of the things people did was go to the theater. And from January 1864 to January 1865, there were over 300 different productions in Thalian Hall. That's how busy the theater was, because people had nothing to do while they were waiting for these blockade runners to come in.

BS: Wilmington was a civil war boom town. Most of the old residents moved out or moved inland for safety, but there are all these speculators, all these people who are getting stuff imported on the blockade runners. There are all of these young Royal Navy officers on reserve or half pay who are commanding or acting as officers on these blockade runners. And basically they were behaving like sailors in a port.

There's a famous letter. It's in one of Dr. Andrew Howes books, recounting a witness seeing a Royal Navy officer in fox hunting scarlets riding on the back of a poor in Wilmington, constable and whipping him with his riding crop. It was just terrible.

RLH: A listener asks about an incident in Wilmington when many Black people were killed and land and wealth was taken by white people. Ben Steelman tells the story of the 1898 coup detat when elected Black officials were forced from office at gunpoint by a white mob, an unknown number of innocent Black citizens were murdered. And a majority of African-American citizens fled the city, leaving everything behind.

Tony Rivenbark sets the scene where it happened at Thalian Hall.

TR: Out on the streets were filled with armed people to essentially enforce that will, and they could see it from that window. You can't see third street from the ballroom if you're sitting at a desk, but you can from Sterling Cheathams office.

RLH: Sterling Cheatham was the Wilmington city manager in 2015.

TR: And evidently it was a very intimidating force of all these armed people and every one of the aldermen resigned. And that was one of the few examples of an armed coup detat that held and was not treated, was not disciplined in any way by the government.

RLH: Is it true That is the only coup detat that we know of in American history?

BS: Some people say that.

TR: Yeah, I think that there's a couple of other instances of something similar to that, but this was very specific.

TR: The collector of ports of customs was a major federal position at that point, and that was an African American.

BS: Right.

RLH: And we know that the elected officials were forced out that's pretty well documented.

TR: Oh, it's absolutely documented.

RLH: What about the loss of wealth and land for local residents, people who were African American, who were forced out of their homes?

TR: I think that gets a lot fuzzier.

BS: It does. Some people, a lot of people like Alex Manley moved north and..

RLH: Alex Manley the publisher of the newspaper.

BS: And they lost their material wealth. Others sort of hung on as long as they weren't a threat to anybody. The fact is, of course, that Wilmington's economy needed Black labor to work. So, I mean, I've always sort of felt like 1898 wasn't like a massacre. It was more like a botched lobotomy or failed attempt at a lobotomy. They were trying to eliminate the Black middle class.

RLH: And they succeeded?

TR: To a great extent. You know, there were certain families that continued to stay on and still on to this day.

BS: Like the Sadgwars, for example.

TR: Yeah, and Manly was, interestingly enough, was actually a descendant of a former white governor, which I find also very interesting.

BS: Yes.

RLH: Theres a question from a listener about a series of tunnels that run underground in Wilmington. What are they? Were they ever used to move supplies and weapons during the civil war or to help enslaved people escape? Ben Steelman?

BS: There are a lot of brick-lined tunnels dating from the late 1700s and early 1800s, the most famous being Jacob's Run, which runs under the Bricks nightclub and all the way up to St. James Church. Father Abrams once showed me a little doorway you can open up and get in there.

The sad fact, though, seems to be that these were sewers. And though you get all sorts of great romantic stories that pirates had booty in there or that the underground railroad smuggled slaves out through there or anything, uh, doesn't seem to be much evidence for that.

TR: Jacob's Run actually starts up there above what used to be the law enforcement center and it runs down. And when you look at the old courthouse, you see how low the right side is between that and the judicial building. It's really very low. You go way down to the ground. Well, that was a stream that basically ran down eventually bricked that up all the way down so they could build streets and things.

Because downtown, you know, Wilmington is built on a bluff that was a very hilly area. There were seven, basically seven large hills. Bill Reeves referred to it as the seven sand dunes of Wilmington, like the seven Hills of Rome. And gradually over the years, was trying to level this off for building.

So you had this tremendous disparity between height and low, Thalian Hall stands on one of those hills. And the bottom of that hill is on the other side of the courthouse. And evidently at one point on Third Street actually was a bridge across Second. It was that low-lying area, but gradually over the years, it sort of smoothed it off.

RLH: So Thalian Hall, when was it built and why did local leaders decide that this community could support a theater of that size?

TR: Well, first of all, it had a theater right there where Thalian Hall stands for 50 years. So it wasn't a new idea, but the city had grown. The city was the largest city in the state. The city government was operating out of rented space on Princess Street. The courthouse had moved from the center of Front and Market to the corner of Princess and Third, not where the courthouse is now, but the one where that new bank building that's where the courthouse was.

The rest is here:

CoastLine: Tony Rivenbark, 1948-2022: "All I've done is theater my whole life." - WHQR

Fairfax could rename Lee Highway, other roads due to Confederate ties – FOX 5 DC

Fairfax considering changing name of Lee Highway, other roads

Fairfax wants to change the name of Lee Highway, Old Lee Highway and more roads in the city to continue a reconsideration of confederate names.

FAIRFAX, Va. (FOX 5 DC) - Fairfax wants to change the name of Lee Highway, Old Lee Highway and more roads in the city to continue a reconsideration of confederate names.

Download the FOX 5 DC News App for Local Breaking News and Weather

The city says they have undergone a year-long process of listening and learning, and now they're ready for action, following the lead of many neighboring communities who are navigating how to put Confederate history in context.

In 2019, the name Jefferson Davis Highway came down from portions of Route 1 in Arlington and Alexandria, continuing a reconsideration of Confederate names and monuments in Northern Virginia.

READ MORE: Nonprofit CEO mysteriously found dead in Fairfax home

Now, Fairfax wants to change the name of 14 streets, including Mosby Road, Plantation Parkway, Confederate Lane, Raider Lane, Reb Street and more. It will be up for a vote in July.

Fairfax County Supervisor Rodney Lusk of the Lee District has also announced plans to introduce a bill to change the district name to Franconia.

"Ive learned that for many of our neighbors that the name Lee District invokes images of the old gravel pits, or footsteps along Huntley Meadows, or pride in the history of the Laurel Grove school,"says Lusk. "However, for others, the name Lee stands for the most recognizable figure of the confederacy General Robert E Lee."

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The council will vote Tuesday on whether to redesign the city seal that currently features Confederate soldier John Marr.

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Fairfax could rename Lee Highway, other roads due to Confederate ties - FOX 5 DC

West Badin residents want street names linked to Confederacy renamed – The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press – Stanly News &…

A group of concerned West Badin citizens have been busy mobilizing to try and get the town council to have a discussion regarding changing the names of several streets in the western part of the town that have ties to the Confederacy.

While many streets in the eastern part of town, including Pine Street, Hickory Street and Elm Street, are named after trees, many of the streets on the western end, which has historically been home to the towns Black community, are named after slave owners and Confederate war heroes such as Lee Street, presumably named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Jackson Street, likely named after Confederate Gen. Thomas Stonewall Jackson.

Even though some of the names, like Lincoln and Grant, are named after historical leaders who made noteworthy strides in advancing the cause of freedom for Blacks, the group, which is comprised of around 200 people, wants to decide for themselves what the individual names should be.

The whole idea with that (deciding the merits of each individual historical figure) ishow would you say, Well this person is good and that person is bad when the main issue has been why was a predominately Black neighborhood named after all Caucasian leaders? said Avonda Wilson, one of the organizers of the group. If you want to change one, then you may as well change all of them.

Georgette Edgerton, another organizer of the group, said the streets in West Badin, which have been in place for more than a century, were intentionally named for these historical figures to give the people of West Badin a sense of patriotic citizenry, which in other words means to keep us in bondage.

Well, right now we realize no longer will we be put in bondage, Edgerton added.

The groups efforts comes when cities and towns across the country have been removing statues of Confederate leaders and renaming streets. Several streets in Charlotte with ties to slavery and the Confederacy, for example, were renamed within the past year.

Wilson said conversations about changing the street names has been discussed internally within the community for at least the last 30 years, but only in the past decade has it been brought up publicly before town leaders. No action has been taken on the issue, but members of the group are hoping this time will be different.

The group has been pressing the council to include on its July 12 meeting an agenda item allowing for discussion of the issue. According to information from Badin Town Manager Jay Almond, the council will have a special meeting at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Badin Town Hall to discuss street names in the town, though no members of the public will speak.

At this point, Wilson and Edgerton said, the residents of West Badin are not worried about what the new names should be; they simply want the issue to be discussed and a public hearing to be held during the July council meeting.

All we want them to do is actually just put it on the agenda, Wilson said.

Im praying that the town council will listen to the young people, Edgerton said.

If the council were to allow the names to be changed, Wilson believes the new names should reflect the population that resides within the area. Some ideas brought up include changing streets to honor prominent Black leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and also to celebrate the towns own Black history by highlighting key local figures.

This was built as a predominately Black neighborhood so if its going to be a predominately Black neighborhood, let the street names be named after predominately Black people, Wilson said.

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West Badin residents want street names linked to Confederacy renamed - The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press - Stanly News &...

Civil War buffs to gather Saturday in Westminster for annual commemoration of Corbit’s Charge, a Civil War battle fought on Main Street – Baltimore…

On Saturday, area history buffs will descend on Westminster for the annual commemoration of Corbits Charge, also known as the Battle of Westminster.

The battle took place on June 29, 1863 as part of the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War. Saturdays event commemorates the tragedy of war that took place on Westminsters streets, according to the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table, which organizes it.

Historical displays, infantry demonstrations, tours of historic sites, film screenings, a procession and gravesite services are planned throughout the day, beginning at 10 a.m.

We have a little bit of everything for anyone who is interested in local history, said Steven W. Carney, of Westminster, the event committee chairman. The event is meant to be educational and raise awareness of Carroll Countys rich Civil War history.

According to the groups website, the Battle of Westminster included 108 Union troops from companies C and D of the 1st Delaware Cavalry clashing against 5,000 Confederate Cavalry troops under the command of J.E.B. Stuart at the Junction of Washington Road and Main Street. It was named Corbits Charge after Capt. Charles Corbit, who bravely led the Union troopers into the fight. Although the battle was a Confederate victory, this act of suicidal bravery on the part of the inexperienced and outnumbered Union troopers helped to impede J.E.B. Stuarts ability to link up with the Confederate infantry in Pennsylvania. This was a contributing factor in the Union Victory at the battle of Gettysburg, according to the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table website.

This year marks the 20th commemoration of the battle. The first event was held in 2003, a combined effort of the City of Westminster, the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table, the Historical Society of Carroll County, and other groups, Carney said. Since that original event, it has been held in several locations and has taken a variety of forms, he added.

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This year, attendees can look forward to a activities for visitors of all ages. For children, an activity booklet and junior historian program will be available, along with many hands-on activities, Carney said.

Historical displays will include artifacts and weapons, uniforms and artillery. Local artisans will have wares for sale. Jeff Leister, known as the Tin Man, will bring his tinware and Rick Barrick , The Log Cabin Caner, will have his chair caning products on offer.

The 1st Maryland Artillery and the 3rd Maryland Infantry will help to bring history alive through infantry demonstrations. Film screenings will include The Road to Gettysburg and a new documentary on Corbits Charge.

A memorial service is planned at the Corbits Charge Monument near the courthouse to recognize the sacrifice of the Civil War-era civilians of Westminster as well as the soldiers of both the Union and Confederate Armies, according to the round tables website. The service concludes at the graveyard of Westminsters Ascension Episcopal Church, 23 N. Court St., with the laying of wreaths on the graves of two Civil War veterans, 1st Lt. John Murray, a Confederate killed during Corbits Charge, and Samuel Butler, Co. C 32nd Inf. U.S.C.T. , of the Union Army.

We are also proud to have representatives from the Ellsworth Cemetery to discuss its history and their efforts to preserve it, Carney noted.

Ellsworth Cemetery is a historic Black cemetery in Westminster, created on Dec. 21, 1876 when six Black Union Army veterans sought to provide a burial place for the Colored residents of Westminster, Maryland, according to the Community Foundation of Carroll County. The cemetery contains about 200 graves.

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday, and will be centered at Westminster City Hall, 1838 Emerald Hill Lane. For more information about the event, go to http://pipecreekroundtable.org.

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Civil War buffs to gather Saturday in Westminster for annual commemoration of Corbit's Charge, a Civil War battle fought on Main Street - Baltimore...

How to open your eyes to racism in the United States | Opinion – Deseret News

Our family lived in the South, and I fell in love with it.

The architecture, the green, the friendliness, the weather, the mens apparel (need I mention bow ties, boat shoes and seersucker?). And an air so heavy with moisture it wraps you like a blanket. For a woman from the desert, it was heaven.

The home we rented during our four years in Richmond, Virginia, was six blocks west of one of the most beautiful tree- and mansion-lined streets Ive ever seen Monument Avenue.

The avenue was aptly named for the large statues set atop huge and gorgeous marble platforms, with men regally mounted on horses or standing on powerful legs with outstretched arms.

The faces of these elevated men were unrecognizable to me, a Westerner, as were most of the names. I had to look them up.

Contrary to my expectations of the familiar Washingtons and Lincolns of the era these men were heroes of the Confederate States of America.

I remember being weirded out. The contradiction between the beauty of the statues and the avenue, and these mens attempt to protect the institution and practice of enslaving humans, did not have a natural resting place in my mind.

Still, Monument Avenue became the corridor of my life in Richmond. It was the route I drove to visit my husband, who was working more than 100 hours a week at the hospital downtown.

Its shady sidewalks were the path along which I pushed a large blue double-stroller, filled with small children, on morning runs.

I loved that street. I was forever willing to drive or walk an extra few minutes if it meant I could be on Monument Avenue.

And as time passed, I became more and more accustomed to the grand men of the confederacy hovering over me.

In my years in Richmond, I remember wondering how other people in a city with a population made up of 46% African heritage (Black), 45% Anglo heritage (white) felt about those statues.

I never asked.

Despite many of my husbands co-residents and co-workers being Black, as well as many of his patients, I didnt ask. Despite my life being filled with young moms and neighbors who were Richmond natives, all white, I never asked.

I wish I had.

I understand now that I was an outsider looking in at Richmond that the shock I felt at first seeing those statues, gradually faded. I understand that there is something miraculous about being on the outside, like you can see the flaws and the beauty of something that insiders take for granted or become too-used-to to notice.

It took me moving, getting out of the hustle of tiny children, out of the city with the hovering statues and putting the effort in to reading about law and history and individuals stories to realize that policies can change, but I, as a person, must change as well to make a concrete difference. Especially in regards to racism.

I have observed and been a part of many conversations about race since June 2020, after the infamous murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, that finally alerted so many of us to the fact that there is work to be done.

These conversations have been with an incredibly wide range of people from every heritage and persuasion extremely conservative to extremely liberal, loving to angry, hopeful to despairing.

It has been a necessary time of torment over the social construction of race. I view this unrest as positive movement toward finishing work that most of us wish had been done centuries ago.

Juneteenth, the day marked to celebrate the emancipation of enslaved people in America, was this month. It is a day when the words in our beloved Declaration of Independence, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, became truer.

It is truly something worth celebrating.

And I pray that our generation is the one that can see racism as an outsider.

Emily Bell McCormick is the founder and president ofThe Policy Project/Utah Period Project, a nonprofit organization that works to strengthen communities by implementing healthy policy. McCormick, a Utah native, and her husband live in Salt Lake City with their five children.

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How to open your eyes to racism in the United States | Opinion - Deseret News

Reactions to a post-Roe world and more Virginia headlines – Virginia Mercury

Demonstrations broke out Friday and continued into the weekend in response to the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginian-Pilot

The ruling becomes another flashpoint in Virginias most competitive congressional contests, joining inflation among the issues that will help determine control of the House of Representatives in November.Richmond Times-Dispatch

Yesli Vega, the Republican nominee for Virginias 7th Congressional District, downplayed the possibility of becoming pregnant as a result of rape at a campaign event last month. Ive actually heard that its harder for a woman to get pregnant if shes been raped.Axios

Lynchburg police are investigating vandalism at a pregnancy center that discourages women from having an abortion. If abortion aint safe, you aint safe was spray-painted on the building and several windows were broken. Fairfax police are also investigating arson and graffiti related to the Roe decision at a Catholic church in Reston.Associated Press, InsideNoVa

Seven members and associates of the MS-13 street gang have been convicted of sex trafficking in federal court after taking in a 13-year-old runaway and coercing her into commercial sex acts in Maryland and Virginia.Associated Press

Attorneys for the Washington Commanders worked to keep a former team executive from testifying about a phone call where he reported a sexual harassment allegation to Dan Snyder and Snyder appeared to brush it aside.Richmond Times-Dispatch

The statewide median sales price for a home surpassed $400,000 for the first time in May.Virginia Business

Nearly a third of people living in the Washington region, including Northern Virginia, struggled to access food last year, according to an analysis by the Capital Area Food Bank.Washington Post

Roanoke Times columnist Dan Casey asked readers for their impressions of the Jan. 6 hearings and was blitzed with responses. Most commonly, readers who responded sounded aghast by what happened, he wrote.Roanoke Times

A federal appeals court denied a request from Mountain Valley Pipeline to have a new panel of judges reconsider permits that have been struck down repeatedly.Associated Press

Loudoun Countys elected chief prosecutor has filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Virginia asking it to overturn an order from a local judge disqualifying the entire Loudoun Commonwealths Attorneys Office from a serial burglary case.Washington Post

A lawsuit is seeking to block a Charlottesville museum from melting down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has already been cut into pieces.Washington Post

Floyd Countys Board of Supervisors voted not to join the New River Valley Passenger Rail Authority, a body formed by a 2021 law to oversee the return of passenger rail to the New River Valley.SWVA Today

A proposed mural to honor local figures in Black history has caused discord, including a walkout of three members, among a Leesburg public art council.Loudoun Times-Mirror

A Virginia Beach couple for whom the Coast Guard had been searching notified officials they were safe and on course for Hampton. The pair had originally been sailing from Hampton to the Azores when their boat was struck by lightning.Associated Press

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Reactions to a post-Roe world and more Virginia headlines - Virginia Mercury

What would you have done if a freedom seeker had knocked on your door? – York Daily Record

Jim McClure| York Daily Record

Tour historic 18th century Mifflin house in 2016

The Mifflin House is a stone Hellam Township farmhouse with much of its original interior, as it was in the 18th century

Paul Kuehnel, York Daily Record

A member of the audience who had sat through my hourlong Riverfest presentation on a 90-degree Sunday showed he caught my big theme.

Big moral decisions confronted those living in York and Lancaster counties in the Civil War era.

After I had finished my talk on the Underground Railroad and Hellam Townships preserved Mifflin House, he told me that he was glad that I had concentrated on matters of right and wrong in the 1860s and before.

We need that today, he said. Particularly today.

He was saying that a consideration of thorny issues from the past might help us in this day of sorting through complex matters being brought to bear in the public square.

His remarks were gratifying and indicate that people are hungry to understand serious history, even under a withering sun on the green lawn of the John Wright Restaurant in Wrightsville.

I presented about 10 decision points facing people in the Civil War era, leading with a case that likely confronted countless York County residents at night: At their door, many would have faced distressed individuals or families of freedom seekers, enslaved people in flight from bondage using the loose network of safe houses called the Underground Railroad.

The context is that aiding such weary travelers could have been an act of civil disobedience, a willful breaking of state or federal law. It could have meant imprisonment, fines or both.

I asked the Riverfest audience to use the four Ds as a memory device.

More:'Marauders and Murderers' by York, Pa. author focuses on Civil War history mystery

More:The tale of William C. Goodridge of York, PA would make a good movie

Would they have denied the weary traveler, simply closing the door? Or even reported him to authorities. Would they have delivered the freedom seeker, inviting him in for food and lodging and then safely guide him along his way?

Or would they have delayed or distributed aid, offering a measure of help without unduly risking exposure of family and farm to legal authority? In this case, a property owner might say that the traveler could stay on the edge of his property and rest for a couple of hours and then proceed alone to a known safe house. Or give biscuits and milk to restore strength but ask them to be on their way.

Well return to these options deliver, deny, distribute or delay in a minute.

A sampling of other decision points that I presented at Riverfest:

If you were enslaved in Maryland or northern Virginia, do you run for freedom and face the threat of a beating or death or stay enslaved and live in bondage?

Those two states are useful in this discussion because they were homes to large populations of enslaved people and proximate to the Mason-Dixon Line. About 87,000 enslaved people were listed in Marylands census in 1860 and about 491,000 in Virginia.

York County would have been a destination, with its 40+-mile border with Maryland and promise of multiple routes to the Susquehanna. Relative safety awaited those crossing the river.

Maps show York County as host to major Underground Railroad routes, and historian Scott Mingus has identified at least 20 safe houses in the county.

York County would not have offered real safety from enslavers, so a freedom seeker would not gain liberty until reaching Canada or having traveled a considerable distance from the Mason-Dixon Line.

State and federal laws aside, the majority of York countians in the Civil War era were not in accord with the war or the practice of freeing enslaved people. In other words, county residents would have offered a mixed bag of assistance, if any, to freedom seekers.

A.B. Farquhar, a factory owner who hired a substitute to serve for him in the Civil War, gave insight about the county view of slavery. He wrote in 1922 about John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry and its failed goal of causing a slave insurrection. Farquhar said that enslaved people did not understand revolt, that they were, in the main, more interested in three meals a day than in political theory .

But there was a worthy minority Society of Friends (Quakers), free Black people and others who risked everything to aid those on the run.

S. Morgan Smith, a Moravian pastor who served as a Union Army chaplain in the war, was one of those who preached abolition. Smith like Farquhar, a noted York County industrialist after the war asked in a sermon one Sunday: Who are the persons who unjustly bind with the fetters of bondage and oppress him to the day of his death?

The milewide Susquehanna was a mighty big river for weary bands of travelers to cross without aid.

A survey of fords and ferries was undertaken in 1777, when the Continental Congress members in York feared British troopers would splash across the Susquehanna and capture them. Twice, the survey noted that guides would be needed to steer British raiders across at Wrights Ferry, running between Wrightsville and Columbia: The river is fordable in low water, but it is so wide and the bed so full of rocks and stones that the ford is only of service to those persons who know it perfectly well.

In the years before the Civil War, Robert Loney was one such person who knew it well. He came to York as a free man in 1819, lived in Columbia and knew the tricky river like the back of his paddle. He would guide freedom seekers across, working at great risk with the Mifflin family, who operated a safe house on a hilltop outside Wrightsville.

The Quaker family of Jonathan and Susanna Mifflin came to what is today known as Hellam Townships Mifflin House in the early 1800s.

With their son, Samuel, they operated what one newspaper account in 1913 stated: The house occupied a commanding position and was one of the most noted (Underground Railroad) stations in the country. One account tells about 13 freedom seekers gathered in their parlor for two days because the uncrossable Susquehanna was swollen with rain.

The Mifflin House also served as a Confederate artillery position in the Battle of Wrightsville in late June 1863. In that fight, the Union Armys initial plan was to blow up one span of the milelong covered bridge to stop the attacking Confederates from crossing.

One freedman fought the enemy with a cigar.

One old negro to whom was entrusted the duty of igniting the fuse sat very cooly on the edge of the pier smoking a cigar, Mingus wrote, citing a newspaper account at the time.

He faced 1,800 seasoned Confederates without panic.

In contrast, the day before, Farquhar, part of a group of panicking city fathers facing the Confederate invasion force, had sought out the enemy and cut a preliminary deal to surrender York.

Alone, and without authority to speak for the council, Mingus wrote, he rode off (to Abbottstown) in the early afternoon.

About 15 years ago, excavation had started in three places at the base of Highpoint, starting a sweeping land-use controversy known as Lauxmont. An order from government came for the developer to stop this high-end residential development on this prime river view property.

After years of complex litigation, Highpoint and Native Lands county parks emerged for public use. That started a cascading series of heritage projects that included Long Levels Zimmerman Center and the designation of the river region as the Susquehanna National Heritage Area, under the National Parks Service.

The Susquehanna National Heritage Region recently teamed up with Preservation Pennsylvania and the Conservation Fund to save the Mifflin House from demolition.

Instead of being cleared for warehouse use, the Mifflin House farmstead will become a regional welcome center and Underground Railroad historic site. Early planning calls for a trail to run from the house to the Susquehanna, replicating a possible path that freedom seekers took to meet up with Robert Loney.

At Riverfest near the end of my presentation, I asked the audience about which of the Ds they would choose if faced with that knock at midnight from a stranger on the run.

One member said he would seek a way to help in some way but would not put his family at risk from imprisonment or fines the middle ground of delaying and distributing.

Another audience member, a Quaker, said she would go the full route in helping a freedom seeker an act of delivery.

To the question of whether any audience member would deny or refuse any aid to a struggling traveler at the door, not a single person raised their hand.

With these cases from history after benefiting from examples in which weve done the right thing were now in a better position to not be deniers, to make a right moral decision.

Arent we?

Sources: Scott Mingus The Ground Swallowed Them Up and Guiding Lights: Underground Railroad Conductors in York County, Pa.

Jim McClure is the retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at jimmcclure21@outlook.com.

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What would you have done if a freedom seeker had knocked on your door? - York Daily Record

‘53% Of’ review examining the similarities on different sides of the aisle – New York Theatre Guide

In light of Friday's SCOTUS ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and its protection of abortion rights nationwide, Steph Del Rosso's semi-satirical political drama53% Ofnow inches closer to a horror play. The show kicks off in December 2016, and in 2022, where it could just as easily be set, it reminds us of the grave, lasting effects of that election. That said, it shouldn't take a catastrophic ruling for a play to pack a punch. 53% Ofis assembled from a collection of political talking points from both sides that, by now, feel worn thin.

53% Of centers around two small coalitions. The conservative Women for Freedom and Family moms' group of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, represents the 53% of white women who voted for Donald Trump as president in 2016, and a liberal allyship group of 20somethings in Brooklyn represents the other 47%. We begin with the moms in a quaint suburban home throw pillows embroidered with "Home Sweet Home," photos of kids, a fireplace at a meeting to decide who should introduce the newly elected president at an upcoming school visit.

Here, Del Rosso plays to the expected audience's (urban liberals) most stereotypical view of Trump voters, peppering the women's conversation with fear-mongering talk of "illegal aliens" and aborted children, and derisive doubt toward a local teenager who claims she was raped. We're meant to dislike them especially PJ, who shows up proudly sporting a Confederate flag sweatshirt.

PJ, though, introduces a class war, as even her fellow Republicans in the room are put off by her clothing choices and brash way of speaking. A similar, subtler war emerges in the second half of the show, in which we pivot to the cramped Brooklyn apartment where the liberal activists are planning their next event. However, they spend most of their meeting quibbling over whether the others are being progressive "correctly" and spend the other half performing a "white guilt ritual" that's meant to help them confront their own prejudices.

Del Rosso's intended takeaway is clear: neither Republican nor Democratic white women are a monolith, and the two parties aren't as different as they may believe themselves to be. As portrayed in 53% Of, both groupshave the catty, competitve dynamic of a high school clique, and their preoccupation with respectability and being a "better"conservative or liberal than the others means neither deserves to act morally righteous. It also prevents them from doing any effective work, whatever their cause may be. Performative activism and inaction, the showposits, are just as bad as openly supporting harmful actions.

For me, a social media-saturated Gen Z-er, all this rang true and relevant, but added little new to the conversations that have dominated my feeds for the past two years. The show offers little insight into the failings of white people, intentional or not, that many young audiences especially, and certainly POC of any age, have likely been exposed to.(The singular, token-ish POC character, RJ, exemplifies this, as she's contradictorily given a monologue aboutnot relying on POC to validate and educate us, which is seemingly meant to educate us.)

This also points to another issue 53% Of, which is written by a presumably liberal white woman,appears to be for audiences of liberal white women. For that specific group,53% Ofworks best as an intro-level reminder to check our biases and, to use a platitude, "do better." But it doesn't take a strong stance on what a different or better path forward looks like. While well-intentioned and well-acted, it's not the political theatre we need.

53% Of is at the McGinn/Cazale Theater through July 10. Get 53% Of tickets on New York Theatre Guide.

Photo credit: Grace Rex, Cathryn Wake, Marianna McClellan, and Anna Crivelli in 53% Of. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

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'53% Of' review examining the similarities on different sides of the aisle - New York Theatre Guide